Open Text to launch eLearning classes

It will launch face-to-face and eLearning classes for staff and partners in July and a sales education program for its APAC region in three months time.

It will also make an announcement next week about entering the China market with a new distributor and reseller model.

Chris Petersen director of channels Open Text APAC said eLearning has already been a feature on its online Partner Portal but now it is bringing in a third party education provider to roll out eLearning classes.

There will be 12 different classes available 24/7.

"The eLearning classes are available for resellers on their own time so that they don't have to lose revenue to take part," said Petersen.

"When we talk about our partners there is a great level of understanding around the Open Text solutions because of the breadth it opens to the market.

"Education is going to be ramped up in the next six months and we will be launching a sales education program in September for APAC. It's a big step forward," he added.

Petersen said the company has 10-15 partners with some coming from the acquisition of Red Dot. Alphawest has already moved across to Open Text.

"We are very excited about our channel partnership," he said.

"It's only going to become more important for us in the next 12 months. Approximately 75 percent of our business goes through the channel. We don't have direct sales force."

Graham Pullen, general manager and vice president Open Text APJ said the company is also looking at how to take the Cloud to mobile devices.

"We are already starting to see customers pushing for us to open their community channels with social networking tools such as Wiki, facebook, Twitter and Blogs," said Pullen.

"We need to allow organisations to do more with less, content is key."