Red Hat’s partner program continues to advance with new improvements that encompass all stages of the relationship with its ecosystem and aim to strengthen three key pillars: simplicity, predictability, and profitability.
Through these updates, Red Hat provides a framework focused on co-investment as a lever to drive partner business in strategic areas. The commitment to optimized programs, specific incentives, and advanced digital tools enables faster growth, facilitates collaboration, and expands our joint market presence—supporting a model of shared success.
Below, we detail the main enhancements introduced to the Red Hat partner experience and how these initiatives are designed to boost their profitability.
Driving Predictable and Profitable Incentives
Red Hat’s incentive strategy moves away from a simple rebate model to focus on predictably rewarding partners who invest in Red Hat technologies and solutions. The new incentives will compensate partners for valuable activities throughout the entire customer lifecycle, including critical pre-sales activities such as workshops and assessments. This new offering, separate from traditional Market Development Funds (MDF), is designed to reduce the need for initial investments by partners to participate in incentive benefits.
An important enhancement that amplifies incentives is the expanded scope of reimbursements and opportunity registration for other indirect sales channels, including OEM and cloud opportunities. This measure not only significantly increases the number of partners eligible for incentives but also promotes profitability within a more diverse ecosystem. Additionally, partners will enjoy greater protection of their agreements, giving them increased confidence in their collaboration with Red Hat.
Finally, to align incentives with strategic priorities, Red Hat is broadening the activities that qualify for incentive earnings. Moving forward, revenue generated from application services and artificial intelligence will also be rewarded, alongside established products like RHEL, OpenShift, and Ansible Automation Platform. This way, Red Hat encourages its partners to focus not only on traditional product categories but also on areas that will drive future growth.
Evolving for Recognition and Growth
To adapt to modern business models, Red Hat is redesigning its program structure with a more transparent recognition and rewards system. The key innovation is the launch of a new Cloud module for its Certified Cloud and Service Providers (CCSP), scheduled for rollout at the end of the year. This shift marks a strategic move toward consumption-based models, as points will now be calculated according to Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) rather than one-time sales transactions.
To promote greater collaboration, the Sell With module will be available for any qualified partner to enroll. This streamlined and straightforward registration process opens new revenue growth opportunities for partners co-selling solutions with Red Hat.
Empowering Autonomy and Efficiency through Digital Transformation
The latest digital improvements to the Red Hat Partner Portal are designed to optimize efficiency, autonomy, and ease of doing business with Red Hat. As part of these updates, automatic MDF allocation for marketing and demand-generation activities managed through the Red Hat Partner Demand Center is now available. This automation eliminates manual requests, encouraging participation and ensuring data accuracy.
Furthermore, the digital onboarding process has been unified across all modules of the Red Hat Partner Program, making onboarding faster and more intuitive. User permissions within the portal have also been expanded, providing greater control and visibility over opportunities, tracking progress, and earning points.
Empowering an Ecosystem of Innovators
All these enhancements to incentives, programs, and the digital experience are designed to increase partner confidence, simplify collaboration, and, most importantly, generate more business and higher revenue for both partners and Red Hat in 2026 and beyond.
Our core mission remains clear: to ensure that the Red Hat partner ecosystem becomes a powerful driver of open-source innovation and stays at the forefront of the next generation of IT. These updates reflect that commitment and are tailored to deliver tangible benefits in key areas critical to our partners’ success.