Q&A: RSA's entourage land in Oz

Gabriel:

"It's also what the partners have asked us for, it's not something that we designed back in Boston in corporate by ourselves.

"We've listened to our regional teams especially here in this region it's a significant investment in the channel, in this region and we believe it's going to return us excellent results."

Phillip Teague general manager Partners and Alliances A/NZ (pictured):

"We've introduced a third tier that allows us to engage with top level strategic partners down. In each of those portfolio there's a particular level of product adoption that will take place and within those tiers there's revenue targets and other KPO's that we put in place and for meeting those partners get rewarded.

CRN: Can you explain the new 3 tier program?
Teague:

"There a couple of areas that structured the tiering. Financial revenue objectives within the partner base but also that is complimented with the portfolio of products that sit in those tiers.

"So in the top tier we have our key three products that we're offering which DLP, nvision and SecureID, in the middle tier there's two solutions there and in the bottom there is only one. It has requirement around enablement training and go to market associated with it."

Ben Corser Channel Sales Director APAC:

"The reflection of the growth from our products allows partners in the different tiers to get themselves scaled and rewarded."

CRN: Would RSA consider a discount program instead of rebates?
Teague:

"Within Deal registration there is a discounting that is associated with partners that provide incremental business or adding strong value-add so we've got that component as well."

CRN: How have partners received the program?
Teague:

"There's a lot focus around presales and services around here and I think in parallel to that our sales team is lining up heavily with our partners as well so there's account planning taking place also our presales team is aligning to our top tier partners so that's further embellishing the training side of it.

"That's really important because we're now providing a holistic security solution with the introduction of DLP and enVision to the market so to make sure the guys have the right message we're providing it's extremely favourable for partners at the moment."

Corser:

"The feedback so far is positive. The feedback is other vendors are consolidating and RSA is actually investing. We have dedicated training team in place now specific to Australia and New Zealand partners so in a time of uncertainly RSA is actually heavily investing back in to the channel."

CRN: You have one distributor in Australia [Express Data] are looking at expanding?
Teague:

"Absolutely. This is their opportunity to really excel here, they are focused on RSA and they have a lot capacity to deliver on what we're expecting.

"I will be reliant on, in conjunction with ((Gavin Jarvis)) the distribution manager for Australia and New Zealand and there's key objectives that we're looking for from our distributor and that is driving new business within those tier partners and also enabling them as well.

"ED is stepping up. We're looking at doing national coverage."