RSA gets VAR lift with revamped programme
Vendor feeling buoyant after revealing recruitment success of SecurWorld Partner Programme
Security vendor RSA has hailed the first year of its revamped SecurWorld Partner Programme as a success with over 100 new partners and 80 per cent of existing partners making the switch from its old programme.
The vendor has over 530 partners across Europe and is looking to boost reseller ranks further in 2006.
Jo Pettifer, international channel program manager at RSA, said: “SecurWorld is the single biggest investment we have made to date and that is reflected in the uptake and progress so far. Last year saw us build the foundations of the programme, but this year we plan to build further on that.”
Pettifer said the vendor will introduce new tailored categories to the programme to attract different types of partners, such as system integrators, direct marketing resellers and managed security service providers.
“We are very keen to recruit more resellers and organic growth is key to our success,” she added.
One of the major successes of the programme is the deal registration initiative according to Pettifer, with more than 1,000 deals being registered and around 250 of those being brought to a successful close. It also moved its online sales training onto the RSA SecurWorld Partner Portal, and has seen 10,000 sales and technical training courses completed online since last year.
George Anderson, security solutions business development manager at Computacenter, was pleased with the programme, but urged RSA to stay ahead of the game.
“I think the new partner programme is going well. RSA are enforcing it very well and we have been on both the wrong and the right side of that. They are policing the channel and making sure that their partners stick to the rules.
“There is now a bigger emphasis on ID access management, and the market is much more competitive for RSA now. Its products are coming up against vendors such as Sun and Novell and RSA definitely needs to be more flexible to cope with that,” Anderson added.