Sourcefire wants its resellers to take the lead on service delivery as part of far-reaching plans to boost partner profitability.

The intrusion prevention system (IPS) specialist will hand over responsibility for pre-sales services to partners from the start of 2010. Resellers will be shadowed on their first engagements while they get up to speed.

The vendor also wants resellers to eventually be the primary interface for first- and second-line customer support. Sourcefire currently handles all support issues direct.

Chris Peterson, who recently joined Sourcefire in the newly created position of vice president of worldwide channel sales, said the vendor is not looking to
add to its tally of 10-15 active UK resellers.

“You will hear us talking very little about expansion of partners,” he said. “We want to take the best partners and enable them to be just like Sourcefire employees.”

The services handover is just one of four things Sourcefire is doing to improve partner margins.

The vendor is also soon to launch its first automated opportunity registration tool and its first formal accreditation for channel sales engineers. Finally, it has pledged to boost product margins for partners that lower its cost of sale.

Sourcefire EMEA channel director Anthony Perridge stressed that Sourcefire is just one of three IPS vendors positioned in the top right of Gartner’s magic quadrant.

“It is a competitive market, but we are the only one that is focused purely on IPS,”
he said.

Marc Chambault from security integrator Integralis ­- which sells Sourcefire as a managed service -­ claimed business was strong.

“The move puts us more in the driving seat with the client relationship,” he added.

Danny White, commercial director at Sourcefire partner Pentura, said: “We are quite happy with the change in approach because we are one of the partners Sourcefire sees as being self-sufficient.”