Intel Partner Alliance Intros New Tiers, Lifts Points Cap
With Intel Partner Alliance, Intel will consolidate three existing partner programs — Intel Technology Provider, Intel Cloud Insider and Intel IoT Solutions Alliance — into one.
As a result, the company has had to rethink its partner tiers, which were Member, Gold and Platinum under the Intel Technology Provider program, since the new Intel Partner Alliance represents a far broader group of partners, ranging from OEMS and resellers to FPGA designers and manufacturers.
For Intel Partner Alliance, there will be three tiers: Member, Gold and Titanium. Each tier will come with role-specific criteria, meaning that depending on the type of partner, there will be different kinds of requirements for reaching a certain level.
"It's truly an entirely new construct that widens the aperture of the partner ecosystem that we're seeing. It puts that under a single front door for our partners to enter," Eric Thompson, Intel's general manager of global partner enablement, said in an interview with CRN.
With the change in tier model, it's possible that some partners who were on the lower end of the Platinum tier in the Intel Technology Provider program may find themselves in the Gold tier in Intel Partner Alliance, according to Thompson.
However, he said, Intel is lifting the points cap for the Gold tier, among other adjustments, so that the benefits are "essentially equal" and partners don't lose anything they previously had.
"We have always had a value in all of our partners," Thompson said. "We look at Gold as a very valued tier across all these different roles."
