As such, he advised partners to take on the role of being trusted advisors to their customers, maintaining and tightening relations with them.

Red Hat has also been actively increasing its involvement with the channel as it aims to move its business focus predominantly to the channel.

In addition to its distributor partnerships with Avnet and Ingram Micro, the company most recently with CingleVue.

McLaren said it is open to the proposition for more partners.

"Channel-led has an opportunity. We're putting in place enablement programs and promotional ideas to recruit channel partners and to provide them with the ability to drive more business for them and for us," McLaren said.