Sophos takes aim at Symantec, McAfee

It isn’t very often that an IT company completely surrenders the ability to sell direct. Most prefer to hang on at least to a few named – and lucrative – accounts.

But security software maker Sophos has decided to turn to the channel completely to narrow the gap between itself and Symantec, McAfee and others.

This week it announced a new three-level partner program with what it calls a two-way model between the company and its VARs.

The goal, said Mark Hatton, Sophos’ North America president, is “to provide a lot more value to these (reseller) partners than they’ve been seeing from their traditional (vendor) partners.”

That includes offering full margin on renewal of a deal generated by a partner, better pre- and post-sales support, enhanced training and a deal registration program.

“We think we’re going to be in a position where we will have a highly differentiated offering for partners looking for an alternative to a security vendor,” Hatton said.

Tara Shaw, president of Toronto security VAR eDrivium, a Sophos partner, said the new approach is “a welcome way of structuring the channel in Canada.

“Most people don’t want to compete against the manufacturer,” she said.

With Sophos offering leads to enterprise-sized organizations, there’s not only an opportunity to make money but also to get an introduction to these accounts, she said.

The previous program grouped partners under the titles of Enterprise, Registered or Certified member.

The new categories are called Platinum, Gold and Silver, with existing partners automatically shifted to the equivalent level.

However the structure of each level has been changed.

Platinum partners must have a proven security practice and generate $750,000 (all figures in U.S. dollars) of new Sophos business each year. However, about half of that will be generated by Sophos’ own sales team, which will qualify orders that will then be fulfilled by the partner.

“It’s a different model than saying, ‘We want to be channel-friendly, let’s refer a bunch of business to partners and see what happens,’” said Hatton.

To avoid partners fighting over deals, Sophos will limit the number of Platinum partners within an area.

Platinum partners will also be eligible to be members of the Sophos advisory council, have an assigned account manager to help generate marketing plans.

Partners at this level will likely be national solution providers such as Softchoice, Insight Canada and the security division of Bell Canada, all of whom are in the program.

Gold partners – some of whom will be groomed to be Platinum partners — are expected to generate $250,000 in new annual sales and access to online marketing and lead generation tools.

These partners, likely regional-sized VARs, are also expected to have one sales and one technical staff person trained by Sophos.

Silver partners don’t have a revenue target, but they still are part of the contract renewal plan and have online access to sales and marketing tools.

Hatton emphasized the extra income partners can make on licence renewals.

“We’re not going to take our renewal business and farm it out to multiple resellers,” he said. “That’s a big distinction because it changes gross margin levels” of partners.

The new program is quite a sacrifice for the company, because until now its sales staff generated about half of its revenue. And while the object of the revamp isn’t to dramatically increase the number of Sophos partners in the short term, it expects over time they will grow.

Part of the shift to all-channel began last year with the hiring in September of Mike Rogers to become Sophos’ North American vice-president of channel and OEM sales.

Before joining a California security start-up Rogers had been McAfee’s vice-president of worldwide sales for small and mid-size companies.

In Canada today there are four Platinum and four Gold partners. Twelve months from now “if we were to increase the number of Platinum partners by 50 per cent and they were all reaching their minimums, I would be happy,” said Rogers.

Sophos is based in Britain but has a substantial office of 220 people in Vancouver. Hatton said it will open a Toronto sales and marketing office shortly.

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Jim Love, Chief Content Officer, IT World Canada

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Howard Solomon
Howard Solomon
Currently a freelance writer, I'm the former editor of ITWorldCanada.com and Computing Canada. An IT journalist since 1997, I've written for several of ITWC's sister publications including ITBusiness.ca and Computer Dealer News. Before that I was a staff reporter at the Calgary Herald and the Brampton (Ont.) Daily Times. I can be reached at hsolomon [@] soloreporter.com

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