Less than two weeks after agreeing to merge with Western Digital for $685 million, SSD maker Virident Systems is expanding its channel presence with a new worldwide partner program. The Virident Impact Program (VIP) features two tiers, Member and Elite, to enable partners of various sizes to incorporate FlashMAX II cards and FlashMAX Connect software into their portfolios.

According to Virident, the VIP includes technology training and sales support, as well as joint marketing, co-branding and a loyalty program. Registration is open for for all resellers and service providers with “proven expertise” in server-side flash. Later this year, the vendor will extend its channel initiative with a set of PCIe certification tracks for sales, presales and support professional. Like Impact, the courses will be available across the globe.

The mastermind behind Virident’s aggressive push to establish a partner ecosystem is Dawn Marie Ruszel, an EMC veteran who joined the company in July as senior director of worldwide channels. She highlighted in a statement that:

“Virident is dedicated to building a world-class channel program and selling through partners. We’re committed to protecting our partners’ profitability and will strive to keep our program simple to use. We’ll go to market with partners who have experience selling flash storage hardware and software and those who are looking to add server-side flash storage as a platform. The VIP is designed to provide partners with the tools and support they need to be successful.”

Virident, one of the the fastest growing players in the flash market, is one of the vendors that was acquired this month. The other is Whiptail, a privately-held maker of all-flash arrays that was picked up by Cisco for $415 million. The network giant will package the company’s hardware with its homegrown management solutions to make UCS more attractive to data-driven organizations.