In a year of change at Symantec, Sean Forkan was a constant as vice-president and general manager of Symantec Canada.
In Canada, Symantec said goodbye to industry veteran and longtime Symantec Canada channel chief Fred Patterson – he would later land a new role at Cisco Canada. Forkan found Patterson’s replacement from within, promoting director of enterprise sales Jim Willis to director of channels.
Symantec president and CEO Steve Bennett laid out a 24-month restructuring plan in January that Forkan is tasked with implementing in Canada. A greater channel role is at the heart of what the security vendor is calling Symantec 4.0. Reforms include a unified engineering division, a reduced product lineup with fewer SKUs through product integration, and a simplified go-to-market strategy. For the channel, the strategy includes $50 million for channel support and another $3.5 million invested in lead generation.
Symantec later confirmed the channel program will be migrating away from a specializations model focused around products to more of a competency model.
