Symantec sees tremendous value in investing in committed, capable partners

Amitabh Jacob,
Director – Channel, India,
Symantec

Symantec is one of the world’s largest software companies and an unparalleled provider of security and information management solutions. It has breadth of market-leading information protection and information management solutions for the endpoint and data center and it also owns premium brands across mobile, backup, DLP, security, availability, authentication and hosted services. To know more about the company, its channel strategy and expansion plans, VARINDIA talked to Amitabh Jacob, Director – Channel, India, Symantec. Excerpts:

Security landscape is highly vulnerable as organizations often switch vendors in case of a breach. Do you see that scenario changing soon?

Competition today is what Symantec used to be a few years before. We looked at the point issues or point products. When we look at solving a specific customer job, replacement is fairly easy, whether it is an antivirus to solve a point issue or a DLP to solve a particular issue. But when a customer looks at you as a security partner, he wants a partner to initiate right from consulting to protecting his 3 layers that he has and then the ability to manage the same going forward. For customers, we do it with the help of our partners. The moment you look at solving the bigger problems, replacement doesn’t bother us so much.

Tell us something about Symantec Partner Programme, how it would help partners?

We wanted to build a new programme based on the feedback from our partners. Globally, we worked with our partners every step of the way to redesign the Partner Programme, validating with 92 partners from all partner types in 27 countries and with four to five global analysts.

Through the redesigned programme, eligible partners will have access to a more comprehensive enablement portfolio and a host of valuable sales, marketing and technical benefits designed to help them increase customer demand and adoption, speed the sales cycle and accelerate their success.

Do the partners have the chance to promote themselves to expert levels or there are a set of partners who will go to those expert levels.

A number of partners today are doing resell, manage and integrate. Depending on their focus, in some areas, they may choose, to remain as a principal level partner and not an expert. In some areas which they have heavily invested in, they might decide to move to the expert level because they have the right skills and they focus on a particular vertical where the skill is valuable. So it will be a flavour which is combined. That is one of the best things about the programme. We are not bracketing a partner into one function. He has an opportunity to earn depending on what he does. A few partners might do all the three. Some of our larger partners do resell, manage and integrate and they have an opportunity now across all the three, depending on the solution area that he is focussing on to get rewards, to build competency and to deliver stellar customer experience.

How has the response been from the partner community globally and in India?

The response from partners has been overwhelmingly positive. Our partners have been involved in shaping the programme, and they see the opportunity that the programme provides.

Do you run training programmes for your partners?

Yes, of course. We have communicated the programme to all the partners and we are conducting training programmes for all our partners directly or through our distribution. That is an ongoing process and we will continue it till October 2014.
Also, partners need not register themselves again. Existing partners can automatically switch over to the new programme.

 

satinder@varindia.com