Old hand takes new post at CA

CRN: Can you provide an overview of how the current CA channel is set up in Australia?

Smith: Our channel is in the three areas I mentioned before: the volume products with the two-tier distribution model, the value-add resellers and the managed services provider business. We have now got groups of people dedicated to each of those. We have a group of people dedicated to the MSP. They are a bit different as they focus on the CA infrastructure solutions. They are what the MSP use to enhance their offering to clients. The volume business we manage through the distributors and resellers, and the rebate programs. With the value resellers we are taking a slightly new approach with them – as the people at CA who look after our value resellers we are now aligning to CA solution areas. The reason for doing that is we want them to be able to add value to what our value resellers are doing. They can only do that if they have knowledge or expertise around what our value resellers are actually selling. It also gives them much better ability to say ‘that is a good reseller for this particular solution area’.

CRN: Have you got any plans to swell your channel base? Are there any areas where you need to get more resellers onboard?

Smith: We are looking at that in two senses. One is geographic – we want to make sure in places such as Western Australia or Queensland that we have the right level of representation. The other, which has just started to take off, is in terms of our resellers’ target markets. For example, a company called Klikon Solutions, which is a 40-person company – relatively small by most standards – but has more than 100 clients that have 50 to 500 people, and provides managed services. We have made the MSP presence at the big end of town with the big SIs in the enterprise space, but Klikon is a great example of where someone has gone out and said ‘here is a smaller company which is in its chosen place in the market and we have been successful in providing our enterprise tools’. We have been able to scale down and help Kilkon.

CRN: Are there any areas in particular where CA resellers are finding the most success?

Smith: One obvious one is project and portfolio management. We have got the leading product there, according to the Gartner magic quadrant. It is a solution which needs domain expertise, so people have to know what they are doing to implement that properly. It is a mixture of having a great product and great implementation services, and project management. It is also a high value item.

CRN: What message would you leave with your resellers in terms of what they should look to achieve in the next 12 months?

Smith: I want to drive the value we have with partners. We want to set reasonable expectations that both the resellers and CA can meet. We want partners to know what support they can get from us and when they can get that support. From being in a training organisation, all the training we give to our direct people is also available to our partners. A lot of that is electronic learning, which is great as partners can access it at a time suitable for them. I want to make sure all our partners know about that, have got access
to it and understand where they can get it.

at ca hand new old post security takes