It’s a problem that smaller resellers have faced for years: being forced to join partner programs, pay high annual fees and take extensive training, all to sell a product. With no guarantee they’ll actually be able to make a profit selling that product to their small and mid-size customers.
Citrix clearly wasn’t getting the response it hoped for when it released its Access Essentials software, targeted at smaller businesses, two years ago (the second version was released in May) – otherwise it wouldn’t have completely revamped its channel strategy.
Resellers were interested in Access Essentials, but there were too many barriers – such as a US$995 annual fee to join its partner program, as well as two certification courses to complete. For a lot of smaller resellers, it just wasn’t worth it.
So Citrix has changed its strategy, eliminating these fees and courses. More interestingly, perhaps, is that it also changed its distribution strategy, signing on Ingram Micro as its exclusive distributor for Access Essentials in North America (Ingram, for its part, has been offering the software since it first came on the market).
However, Citrix has taken away distribution rights from Alternative Technology and Avnet for Access Essentials (though they’ll still offer other Citrix products).
Citrix says this is because Ingram is the best fit for that particular product. (As a backgrounder, Access Essentials is a remote access management and security system that supports five to 75 users, and includes a licence for Microsoft’s Windows Terminal Server.)
One can only guess at how Alternative Technology and Avnet are taking the news – perhaps Access Essentials wasn’t selling as well as they hope this will allow them to focus on their enterprise business. Or, perhaps, they feel snubbed. After all, dropping the barriers to Access Essentials should bring a slew of resellers on board – and these disties won’t get to see any of the profits.
This is something we’ve been seeing a lot more of lately – vendors being much more selective when it comes to their distribution partners. Perhaps Citrix wasn’t seeing as much business from the specialty distributors as it hoped for Access Essentials.
Or it wanted to make it as easy as possible for resellers to get their hands on the product through a one-stop-shop distribution partner. Ingram will market the software to its VAR channels, providing pre-sales assistance, trial software and order fulfillment – pretty much anything a reseller requires.
And this should make resellers happy. They no longer have to join Citrix’s partner program (though Citrix “advises” them to take its optional eLearning courses and still requires certification for its enterprise products), and they’ll also have easy access to the product through Ingram, which is ramping up for an expected increase in reseller demand.
The only ones that might not be feeling the love are Alternative Technology and Avnet.
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