As compliance continues to drive security spending, Symantec Corp.is enhancing and expanding on its business processes and best practices, in addition to introducing two new partner service programs as the company continues to rely on its partner community.At the company’s annual Partner Engage event this month, the Cupertino, Calif.-based security software vendor treated partners to a glimpse of the new software and service offerings that Symantec has in store for its partners and end users.
Randy Cochran, vice-president of channel sales at Symantec, said the company’s main focus is to be help users successfully manage IT risk so that IT performance can be optimized.
“Our technology can be described in six key areas, ranging from security, IT compliance, information risk, storage, infrastructure and business opportunity,” Cochran said. “We need our partners in the centre of all of this to help us get to where we want to be.”
Reflecting back on Symantec’s 25-year history, John Thompson, chairman and CEO, said the company will continue to create and develop solutions that will help bring confidence to customers when it comes to storage management and security.
“We have the best portfolio of technologies and capabilities now, (better) than we’ve ever had before,” Thompson said. “We have to continue to enhance these capabilities to continue to make the process of partners working with Symantec easier. As time goes on, we will continue to enhance our business processes and best practices as well.”
With promises of continuous change and innovation, Thompson assures partners that Symantec will always be a channel oriented company.
He says the company relies heavily on its partners to help reach out to customers on both a local and global basis.
Fred Patterson, director of enterprise channels at Symantec, says because of the constant and growing demand, the company is always looking to attract channel partners to help scale the marketplace.
To help meet the needs of both its current and potential partners, Symantec has launched two new partner service programs to help support its growing channel base; they include the Authorized Consulting Program (ACP), to help partners sell Symantec branded solutions to customers, and the Authorized Technical Assistance Partner Program (TAPP), that offers partners technical support.
Symantec’s new ACP program is available to gold and platinum level partners and is only available within North America, whereas its TAPP program is open to its silver, gold and platinum partners and is a worldwide program.Jeffrey Hausman, vice-president of product management for global services at Symantec, explains Symantec’s continued relationship with its partners.
“We want to work better with our partners to give them better tools and capabilities for them to be able to provide the right solutions to their customers,” Hausman said.
In the ACP program, Symantec gives partners access to information on best practices, intellectual property and advice including tips and tricks, as well as access to a hotline to their support organization where partners can also receive product resources to help them drive business.
While there are still no plans to introduce this program outside of North America any time soon, Hausman said depending on the success of the program, Symantec remains open to the possibility of extending it into other geographical regions as well.
With Symantec’s TAPP program, the establishment and maintenance of relationships is paramount to the program’s success.
“In this program, we provide the partner with technical support and we work with them to ensure handshakes between both them and us,” Hausman said. “We make sure the relationship between the partner and Symantec is holistic so the customer’s getting a better overall experience.”
Both of these programs are designed to help Symantec partners expand on their service portfolio as well as help them increase revenue opportunities. Hausman said Symantec alone can not meet all of their customer needs and in trying to do so, they are dependent upon their partner community to help drive customer satisfaction.
Both of these programs are designed to help Symantec partners expand on their service portfolio as well as helps them increase revenue opportunities.
“Our goal is to attract mid-market partners and customers in secondary markets,” Patterson said. “We want to get into these spaces and we want our partners to take advantage of these offerings because there are many opportunities in the marketplace for them to still tackle.”
When it comes to offering advice to Symantec’s partner community, Thompson says partners should focus on one area of expertise and leverage their customer and revenue success from that.
