Washington, D.C. – During this year’s annual Partner Engage conference, Symantec (NASDAQ: SYMC) executives took the time to reinforce the company’s investment in and appreciation of its channel community by promising to continue delivering quality products and continuing to make it easier for its partners to do business with.
Just a few months after his comments caused a firestorm of confusion about Symantec’s channel commitment following a call with financial analysts, Enrique Salem, Symantec’s COO, kicked off the event’s first keynote session yesterday by stressing the importance of the company’s channel ecosystem of partners.
“The majority of Symantec’s business has gone through our channel partners and that will not change,” Salem said. “Our future is linked to all of you, make no mistake about that. We couldn’t be in business without you and I therefore expect great things from all of you. What you can expect from us, is great things in return.”
Given the state of uncertainty brought about by the current weakening North American economy, Salem admitted that no company in operation today is immune to what’s happening in the market place.
“We’ve seen a change in tone from the buying economy,” he said. “Customers are taking longer to decide before they purchase and in some cases, partners will have to take extra steps in the sales process by sometimes even having to convince the company’s CFO about a product now.”
For Greg Rokos, president of Montreal-based ESI Information Technologies Inc., an IT services and solutions provider and also long-time Symantec partner, the challenging economy just means that ESI, as a partner, has to be able to correlate volume with value.
“This is a challenge because there’s always a cost issue and figuring out how you’ll be able to bring value to your customers,” he said. “As a partner, we have to be able to talk deeper and wider with our customers.
Customers are looking to simplify their systems and we have to show them how they can save money, consolidate and virtualize their infrastructures.”
In the next couple of weeks, Symantec’s channel leadership structure will also undergo some element of change. Julie Parrish, Symantec’s worldwide channel chief, last week announced to internal staff that she will be departing the company at the end of the month in order to pursue other “personal interests.”
Right now, there is no confirmed news on where Parrish may end up, however there are rumours circulating that she may soon surface at storage and data management solution vendor, NetApp.
Michael Murphy, general manager of Symantec Canada, said Parrish leaving the company was her decision to make.
“I’ve known Julie for several years and I wish her well,” he said. “Other publications have written she’ll end up at NetApp, and I’m not in any way confirming the rumour, but all I can say about NetApp is that they’re a partner and competitor of ours.”
When asked if there are plans for a replacement for Parrish, Fred Patterson, director of enterprise channel sales at Symantec Canada, said it’s still too early to say.
“When it comes to the channel and whenever there’s a change in the organization, you keep your focus on your partners and customers,” Patterson said. “The depth of our channel knowledge and experience is great and it’s full steam ahead for our company. This will not change.”
Murphy also explains that most of the company’s revenue now comes from the enterprise space, where previously it was dominated by consumer purchases. Today, it’s about 72 per cent enterprise sales versus the 28 per cent of consumer sales that make up the vendor’s overall revenue streams. This is where partners can find a lot of business, he adds.
In Canada, Murphy says it’s no surprise that the company’s sweet spot is in the mid-market space. With a diverse group of partners in Canada, Murphy says Symantec’s strategy is to divide and conquer account bases on a region by region basis.
Patterson says many partners today tend to only focus on certain technologies they may have developed a comfort-level with. “I encourage our partners to look at what they’re (working with) on a daily basis in order to see how they can further expand on that,” Patterson advises.
Salem says for Symantec’s partner community as a whole, the biggest opportunities today are in the areas of virtualization, information risk management and software-as-a-service (SaaS). Adding on to that, he said are three key investment areas for the company: data loss prevention (DLP), e-mail archiving and compliance.
“We’re going to continue to invest in things like endpoint virtualization, storage and SaaS,” Salem said. “More of our products will be moving from being delivered on-premise to being delivered as a SaaS.”
Regardless of the state of the economy, Salem says partners can continue to take advantage of the many market opportunities that are present today. Partners, he says, can continue to work to identify risks and help customers remediate on them.
“Together, we can weather the economic storm,” he says. “With the technologies we have in place, we should be able to gain market share given the strength of our product portfolio and with the help of you, our partners.”
