Veritas tweaks channel

Storage software giant Veritas is tweaking its channel, under a plan to improve its engagement model and better recognise partners' areas of specialisation and expertise.

Veritas would provide more support to its top-level Elite resellers and was renegotiating contracts with these resellers based on their areas of specialisation, said Bruce Lakin, the newly appointed acting managing director and manager of channels, Australia and New Zealand at Veritas.

In the past, the company had put channel partners into one bucket without recognising where they excel. The change would see these partners receive more marketing and lead generation support and better pricing, Lakin said.

There are 12 existing Elite partners that have direct contracts with Veritas and sell at least $2 million worth of Veritas gear per annum. Veritas also intended to recruit more resellers that buy through distribution into the Elite program, he said.

To become an Elite partner, resellers also require four Veritas-certified professionals and four sales professionals on staff.

The company was in the process of promoting an additional four partners to the Elite level, Lakin continued. He estimated that over the next 12 months, there would be four to five partners that could make the transition to Elite status.

Veritas was also conducting a distribution review that may not mean it reduces the number of distributors. 'We're talking to those distributors about how we can match our objectives with their objectives,' he said.
'We'd like more support - we're not looking for an exclusive relationship. What we want to be is [their] most significant vendor, if not by volume, certainly by value,' he said.

Its second-tier Premier and Select partners currently buy through Tech Pacific, Express Data, ACA Pacific and Ingram Micro.

The company would also spend 50 percent more on channel marketing this calendar year than it did last year, Lakin said. A partner portal is also due by the end of 2004.

Veritas has 22 dedicated direct sales staff and 13 channel sales staff. Direct staffers are servicing nine customers with direct contracts, Lakin said. 'We prefer to [service] customers with the channel, and in the past we haven't been consistent in executing [our] channel commitment,' he said.

Lakin, was formerly CEO at Prophecy International and general manager of Toshiba Australia's Information Systems Division.