Putting Partners First: The CRN 2025 Partner Program Guide

When it comes to why a solution provider chooses to join a vendor’s partner program, all signs point to the ones that offer the highest levels of lead generation, business development resources, training opportunities, incentives and more.

At the Cisco Partner Summit 2024 in October, Cisco Systems launched Cisco 360, the biggest partner program revamp in the company’s history with a new emphasis on the value partners bring to the table rather than sales transactions.

“The foundation of our program was hardware and transaction. That’s who we were as a company at the time and that served us well,” said Rodney Clark, Cisco senior vice president of partnerships and small and medium business, speaking about the company’s past during an exclusive interview with CRN.

“But what it rewarded was, through a rebate mechanism and a number of other discounting mechanisms, a partner who transacts. And the way that we do business today is quite different, our customer expectations are quite different, and we wanted our program to reflect that. It’s the first material shift in how we evaluate partners since the original push into the [partner] ecosystem,” Clark said.

As the IT industry rapidly evolves, so must the channel. VARs, solution providers and strategic service providers rely a great deal on the IT vendors they work with to help navigate those industry changes—and vendors’ partner programs are the chief vehicle for providing that assistance.

Choosing which IT vendors to partner with is more important than ever. The 2025 Partner Program Guide, presented here on CRN.com and in the April print issue of CRN, offers channel companies information about the partner program incentives, training, financial assistance and other resources that leading IT companies offer their partners.

Some IT companies are evolving their channel programs in tandem with their own strategic goals. In February, for example, Zoom Video Communications announced plans to evolve its partner program, including launching the Zoom Up Services Program, with the goal of becoming a partner-first company.

Also in February cybersecurity technology developer Rapid7 launched a major overhaul of its PACT Partner Program in a bid to improve consistency with partners while better enabling MSP and MSSP partners. And Dell Technologies recently debuted the Dell Partner Program for 2025 that offered bigger margin opportunities on PCs, storage systems and networking devices, along with more ways for partners to deliver AI through the channel.

That last provision is a common theme in recent partner program updates. As the tsunami of AI development continues to spread through the IT industry, numerous IT companies have been expanding their partner programs to provide channel partners with assistance and incentives to develop and build AI solutions and services.

In November Google Cloud debuted its new AI Agent Partner Program with incentives, product support and co-selling opportunities around AI agents. In January ServiceNow unveiled a major expansion of its global partner program with offerings to help partners work with ServiceNow’s AI offerings including Now Assist and AI Agents. And in February Schneider Electric launched a new AI Enterprise and Partner Ecosystem organization to help partners capitalize on the AI revolution.

The CRN Partner Program Guide provides detailed information about vendors’ channel programs including program tiers and requirements, partner incentives, training and certifications, business development, lead generation, sales and marketing support, vendor-partner communications, partner portal capabilities, service delivery, recurring revenue opportunities and more.

The guide is based on detailed applications submitted by IT companies —250 this year—that outline all aspects of their channel programs. The goal is to help the channel identify which partner programs offer the incentives, resources and assistance that channel partners need to be successful in today’s turbulent business climate and highly competitive marketplace.

To assemble the annual Partner Program Guide, The Channel Company’s research team analyzes the application data and designates some of the programs as 5-Star, recognizing an elite subset of partner programs with overall exemplary ratings. The 5-Star analysis covers partner incentives, margins and discounts, partner profitability, sales and marketing assistance, and subscription-based and consumption-based pricing availability. The criteria also include the availability of sales leads, deal registration, pre- and post-sales support, programs to help partners grow their services attach, training and education offerings, specializations and technical certifications.

Associate Managing Editor Gina Narcisi contributed to this story.