Sybase has recently recruited several partners and is concentrating on developing a 90 day fast track program for them. This will help in educating resellers to identify their target set of customers anD Acquire business

Recently Sybase has gone into an overdrive to recruit more channel partners. What are your expectations from them?
We are currently focusing on this comprehensive program, which will help in accessing our portal, licenses and technology adaption so that the partners can manage their SMB sales for dot com and all sorts of businesses.

We are looking at recruiting partners who can deliver our technology, and so we have initiated an aggressive partner recruitment drive. This will be a 90-day fast track program enabling partners, where more preference will be given to educate our partners about our technology, its deployment and how to sell it.

Sunil Jose MD-India and Sub-continent Region, Sybase Software

We will help our partners on territory and client mapping and release market development funds for them accordingly. This could be in the form of joint seminars, events, promos, etc which will be needed to reach out to their set of target customers.

We also expect our partners to win some business during this 90-day program. To help them further we will give them access to our channel portal, where they can read a lot of technical information about database management technology and learn how to leverage it for their client's business needs.

At the end of the day, we don't want our partners to just sell software. We want people who are efficient, experienced and at the end of the day can offer data management solutions.

Do you have multiple tiers of channel partners in your partner program or just one?
We have two tiers of partners as part of our channel eco-system across the country. We have divided our 50 odd channel partners into two sections-where 20 would be gold partners and 30 will be silver. Some of the global integrators are part of these 20 gold partners.

Gold partners would also receive lots of importance and channel team will support them close the bigger project deals. Here our global alliances with large systems integrators play a major role.

The remainder 30 partners whom we call our regional system integrators are managed by our distributors in the market place. These 30 partners are qualified with an existing sales course which they can put to use to run the Sybase business, acting a lot like fulfillment agents along with value addition.

So, typically you are concentrating on the solution provider rather than the partners who are largely into hardware?
Currently, we are trying to balance both the segments and we will do this by focusing more on our database and infrastructure products. This way, partners can easily take their database and start working upon it. At the same time it will be easier for partners to sell the database solutions in the country, and build on their existing clients for the same with our assistance.

A Workaholic To The Core There is a fine line that separates a workaholic from a control freak. Sunil Jose would like to believe that he treads that fine line, while still on leaning towards the workaholic side. He has not taken a holiday for the past several months, as he spends most of his time planning and strategising for Sybase's partner and customer acquisition in the country. This trait is borne out by a funny incident that took place when he had taken his family, comprising his wife and daughters on a few days' holiday to Disney World. While the rest of the people were shouting with fear and excitement on a roller coaster, Jose was the only person busy checking his emails on his Blackberry. Not a very adventurous person, Jose likes to spend whatever free time he gets with his children. “I try not to involve myself in any official work on Sundays and hang out with my family instead,” he said. These days, his colleagues have been exhorting him to take a more active part in the Castrol corporate soccer tournament. This has been a refreshing change from his regular work schedule and he hopes he will finally be able to shake off his workaholism and make this a more regular feature of his life.

What is your go-to market strategy?
On the marketing front we have decided that we will become a lot more aggressive. We are concentrating on the partners who are looking at large enterprises that can deliver performances to the core. Recently, we started a partner recruitment drive where we go to every city and make it a point to share our technology with the leading 15-20 partners and make them aware about our products. If we are assured that the partners are interested in our technology we try to include them in our network.

This aside, we also train the partner's sales teams who are the real evangelists of our technology and show them how to position our solutions with the customers. To do this, we have lots of technical training sessions for them on a regular basis.

Minakshi Shetty
(minakshis@cybermedia.co.in)

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