AMD Expands Fusion Partner Program II

For the first time, AMD’s channel program will have one uniform approach to supporting the broad array of partners that use the full breadth of the chips company’s products.

This morning, AMD unveiled the commercial and software partner tracks to its Fusion program, extending the same training, enablement and tools that it current provides resellers, custom systems builders and graphics cards resellers.

“We’re finally able to build and deliver a single, unified partner program that encompasses all of businesses and products, and that’s really exciting,” said Gary Bixler, a director of worldwide partner and the person who directly oversees the Fusion program.

The Fusion expansion will bring two large parters communities under a unified program. Under the commercial track will fall volume resellers—direct market resellers and large account resellers—and solution provider—value-added resellers and solution providers. The software track will include everyone from operating system vendors to game platform developers.

Through Fusion, commercial and software partners will receive access to training information and resources, relationship support for reaching customers and new sales opportunities, sales and marketing support, and training for how products work and can be integrated into holistic systems.

“We want to support the full complement of products through our partners,” Bixler said. “They will get the support for what they need.”

The Fusion program launched in 2009 is already producing tremendous benefits for AMD. The consolidation of support for its portfolio of processors, graphics cards and software has lead to an 80 percent increase in AMD-only sales. Prior to Fusion, many resellers and partners were bundling a mix of AMD, Intel and other competitive products into their solution sets.

With the inclusion of commercial and software partners under the Fusion banner, AMD plans to set up co-marketing programs, establish performance measurements across its partner communities, and work with partners to develop optimized systems. AMD believes the expanded Fusion program will help make it more competitive in the marketplace.

“We’re built around the notion that competition is good. We just want to compete on an open and level playing field,” Bixler said.