Announcing the New Cloudflare Partner Platform

Garrett Galow
10 min readintermediate
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Overview

The article announces the new Cloudflare Partner Platform, designed to better support partners and customers by enabling scalable service provisioning and account management. It details the evolution from the previous platform and highlights the collaboration with IBM to establish a minimum viable product.

What You'll Learn

1

How to provision customer accounts using the Cloudflare Partner Platform

2

How to grant customer access to Cloudflare accounts

3

How to enable and configure services for customers on the Cloudflare platform

Key Questions Answered

What is the purpose of the new Cloudflare Partner Platform?
The new Cloudflare Partner Platform is designed to allow partners to sell and provision Cloudflare services for their customers in a scalable manner. It combines two systems: Tenants for account management and Subscriptions for service provisioning, addressing the limitations of the previous platform.
How does the IBM partnership influence the new platform?
The IBM partnership was crucial in developing the new platform, as it provided a real-world use case to ground the development process. The collaboration led to the establishment of a minimum viable product that was launched at IBM Think in February 2018.
What are the key features of the new partner platform?
Key features of the new partner platform include the ability to create and manage customer accounts through Tenants and the flexibility to package and provision services via Subscriptions. This allows partners to tailor offerings to meet customer needs effectively.
What steps are involved in using the new partner platform?
Using the new partner platform involves four main steps: provisioning customer accounts, granting customer access, enabling services, and configuring those services. Each step is designed to streamline the onboarding and management process for partners.

Technologies & Tools

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Key Actionable Insights

1
Leverage the new Tenants feature to create separate accounts for each customer, ensuring resource isolation and tailored management.
This approach prevents one customer's actions from affecting another's resources, which is critical for maintaining service integrity and customer satisfaction.
2
Utilize the Subscriptions feature to offer flexible service packages that meet the specific needs of your customers.
By being able to customize service offerings, partners can differentiate themselves in the market and provide added value to their customers.
3
Engage with the Cloudflare API for automating account provisioning and service management tasks.
Automation can significantly reduce the time spent on manual processes, allowing partners to focus on strategic initiatives rather than operational overhead.

Common Pitfalls

1
Failing to properly manage customer accounts can lead to resource conflicts and security issues.
It's essential to utilize the Tenants feature to ensure that each customer has a distinct account, preventing overlap and potential data breaches.

Related Concepts

Cloudflare Partner Program
API Integration
Service Provisioning Strategies