Reimagined partner program will better enable SIs to drive growth and profitability, while helping customers realize their full potential with data streaming

Confluent, Inc. (NASDAQ:CFLT), the data streaming pioneer, today announced Accelerate with Confluent, a program for systems integrators (SIs) that prioritizes excellence in Confluent Professional Services to empower partners to deliver comprehensive data streaming solutions.

Businesses hoping to thrive in today’s digital-first world need a modern platform for data in motion, in order to provide stellar customer experiences and seamless business operations. Apache Kafka® has become the industry standard for data in motion and is used by more than 150,000 organizations including over 75% of the Fortune 500. Confluent provides a truly cloud-native experience, completing Kafka with a holistic set of enterprise-grade features to unleash developer productivity, operate efficiently at scale, and meet architectural requirements. Underpinning the platform is a 99.99% uptime SLA and committer-driven expertise, providing support and services with over five million engineering hours of technical experience since 2018. This is coupled with the recent announcement of the general availability of Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink®, a fully managed service for Flink that enables customers to process data in real time and create high-quality, reusable data streams. Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink® enables users to build streaming data pipelines and Confluent integrates with leading vector database vendors to simplify and accelerate the development of critical generative AI initiatives. Confluent allows customers to experience Kafka and Flink as a unified, enterprise-grade platform to connect and process data in real time, wherever it is needed.

With Confluent, customers can accelerate their real-time data streaming journey across any industry and use case, helping teams be more efficient and focus more on productivity. However, Confluent SI partners don’t always have the resources they need to bring data streaming to their applications and end users without direct support from Confluent. Business and technology leads at these companies encounter a wide range of challenges with building and bringing to market new data streaming capabilities that offer their customers the best experience for working with real-time data.

“Creating a real-time central nervous system has become an imperative for every organization in order to compete and offer differentiated experiences,” said Paul Mac Farland, SVP of Partner and Innovation Ecosystem, Confluent. “Accelerate with Confluent reimagines our SI partner program, enabling our mutual customers to get to their business outcomes faster. Now, partners can more easily expedite repeatability, profitability, go-to-market efforts, and new service offerings, meeting customer demands.”

To help more organizations harness the power of data streaming, Accelerate with Confluent redefines the dynamics of Confluent’s partnership model. Accelerate with Confluent is designed to meet the ever increasing requirements of customers by building, expanding, and innovating through the support of SIs. Partners will be able to choose from multiple avenues for Partner engagement with Professional Services. These paths include:

• Co-Delivery - Enables customers to harness the collective expertise of both Confluent and certified partners. By integrating specific and complementary skills, this collaborative approach ensures the delivery of holistic solutions.
• Strategic Staffing - Further enhances the customer experience by incorporating subject matter experts from Confluent partners into ongoing engagements. This not only expands the delivery team, but also has the potential to significantly increase sprint velocity, driving accelerated project timelines.
• Crafting Long-Term Data Strategies - Partner Led - Understanding a customer's overall data tech stack is crucial for devising long-term data strategies. Confluent partners don’t just provide a service. They help businesses establish a robust framework for data streaming maturity, ensuring sustained success in the ever-evolving data landscape.

To address this ongoing challenge, Accelerate with Confluent includes new capabilities to drive higher efficiency with Confluent’s SI ecosystem.

SI service offerings embedded into Confluent’s GTM

SIs that join Accelerate with Confluent will get access to a wide variety of opportunities that will allow them to showcase their Confluent expertise. Recent examples include the Confluent Migration Accelerator and recent GA announcement of Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink. This will align joint GTM engines to better tackle the $60B market opportunity associated with data streaming.

Variety of new tools to form a strong partnership

The Confluent Partner Portal has also been updated to improve partner collaboration, drive sales, boost marketing efforts and optimize technical activities. Confluent will also accelerate joint GTM strategy and empower partners to lead the opportunity with the appropriate sales and enablement tools on hand. Confluent enablement is dedicated to developing, delivering and measuring results-driven product and sales enablements to drive growth through consumption and new opportunities.

Build a partnership to engage early in sales cycle

Confluent's vision extends to the creation of a robust partner ecosystem, emphasizing recruitment, onboarding, and continuous training based on established methodologies. Confluent goes beyond conventional support by facilitating early-stage involvement. This includes availability of technical resources to ensure readiness to build and deliver the right solutions for customers.

By leveraging Confluent's industry-leading data streaming platform alongside Confluent partner solutions, companies can develop modern, real-time generative AI applications. With Confluent’s Data Streaming for AI initiative and several partnerships with technology providers, public cloud partners and services partners, scaling next-generation AI applications with a shared source of real-time operational and analytical data has never been easier.

Confluent Partner Testimonials

• “Confluent's partner program is leading to substantial growth as we grow EY's Data in Motion Practice,” said Doyle Leabch, North America Head of Integration, EY. ”The partner program's new offerings, focusing on advanced training and increased access to sales and executive resources, are poised to elevate our joint go-to-market strategies. Aligned with our commitment to a robust Data in Motion practice, these innovations promise cutting-edge service offerings, reinforcing our differentiation in the market.”
• “SVA is a proud partner of Confluent,” said Stefanos Katsios, Division Manager Big Data & Analytics, System Vertrieb Alexander GmbH. “Through a lens of shared visions, our partnership has become the driving force behind an accelerated journey toward new horizons. Partnering with Confluent enables us to present a distinctive value proposition in the market. This collaboration not only positions us to secure new business but also leverages the strong alignment between Confluent’s products with our own, enhancing our competitive edge.”
• “Accelerate with Confluent empowers success and amplifies growth through partnership: where our professional services capabilities can truly enhance customer experience and ROI while delivering transformational results,” said Siriwat Vongjaukorn, CEO, MFEC Public Company Limited. “With Confluent’s partner first approach, we are ready to scale our Confluent practice and joint go-to-market engagement with a differentiated value proposition of industry specific use cases and relentless innovation for maximum customer impact. We believe our partnership with Confluent is poised for rapid growth and this program is well timed to ensure we are both successful in driving customer adoption.”

Additional resources

• For more information on Accelerate with Confluent and Confluent Partners, click here.
• Read this blog post for more information about Accelerate with Confluent
• Read the blog for details on Confluent’s placement in The Forrester Wave™: Streaming Data Platforms, Q4 2023.

About Confluent

Confluent is the data streaming platform that is pioneering a fundamentally new category of data infrastructure that sets data in motion. Confluent’s cloud-native offering is the foundational platform for data in motion – designed to be the intelligent connective tissue enabling real-time data, from multiple sources, to constantly stream across the organization. With Confluent, organizations can meet the new business imperative of delivering rich, digital front-end customer experiences and transitioning to sophisticated, real-time, software-driven backend operations. To learn more, please visit www.confluent.io.

Confluent and associated marks are trademarks or registered trademarks of Confluent, Inc.

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