MUMBAI
May 19, 2006

Ever since its acquisition of Veritas, Symantec has been trying to find a middle path where it can combine the best of the channel programs of both the companies and dish out an offering which will be appealing to its new channel network.

And this led to the birth of the new the Symantec Partner Opportunity Registration Program. This was earlier a part of the erstwhile Veritas channel strategy and Symantec had been tweaking it for eight months to make it more plausible and relevant to its partners.

Under this program, Symantec's elite Gold and Platinum partners can go onto the official PartnerNet portal, register the deals they are working on and, if the deals go through, reap the benefits of incremental discounts and rebates that would not have been available to them if they hadn't registered the deals.

"The idea behind this program is to proactively reward partners as they pitch of newer business opportunities. It is not applicable for renewal of existing business contracts. Rather it has been conceptualized to help our partners seek incremental business from these very existing business accounts or from newer prospects,” said Ajay Verma, Director Channels and Alliances, Symantec India.

Talking about the eligibility criteria for partners participating in this program, Ajay says that it is currently applicable to partners in Asia South, Pacific, Hong Kong and Taiwan and the channel should have certification in at least one product family. The channel can enjoy a rebate of up to 9% for successful business deals and the rebate payment is made quarterly. Earlier, this slab was kept at 5%.

Through the new program, partners are able to register opportunities early in the sales cycle by going onto the program's site, inputting information regarding the deal (which is then verified by Symantec) and then earning additional discounts and rebates once the deal closes.

But what happens if a partner registers a deal and some other competitor fulfills the same? Symantec will still reward the partner who has registered the deal, for spotting the latent opportunity there. However the percentage of the reward will obviously be lower.

The program is open only to the Gold and Platinum partners, as these sell the enterprise level products, which is value-based, rather than transaction-dependent. Also, the nature of such deployments calls for a higher level of investments by the partners and the rewards given by Symantec will help them recoup a fraction of that investment.

The vendor currently has about 60,000 partners worldwide, engaged in a host of specialized areas, including security and management, systems and storage management, data management and application performance. Symantec had recently revamped its channel program to create four levels of partners – Registered, Silver, Gold and Platinum. It recognizes partners in four different lines of business: channel, service and consultancy, technology and platform and those who offer global strategic services.

Symantec also created a single online channel window – the PartnerNet portal – scrapping the eight separate web sites that were present before. All registered partners are given a login and password, with which they can access their account information, order products and access various resources, including training programs, custom marketing material, product information, quote generation and independent third party information on the vendor.

Page(s)   1