Sybase opens doors to channel partners

Software Reseller scheme gives divisions own indirect sales teams.

Sybase is placing a greater emphasis on its channel relationships by establishing separate indirect sales models across its four divisions.

The move comes in the wake of a corporate restructuring in December last year, which split Sybase into four business units: the mobile and embedded computing division, enterprise solutions division, internet applications division, and business intelligence division (PC Dealer, 9 December 1998).

Under the Business Solutions Alliance (BSA), Sybase's direct sales and consulting teams will continue to service the enterprise group, which controls the development of the Adaptive Server database.

But the remaining three divisions will have their own sales force dedicated to selling to partners, according to Ketan Karia, European marketing manager at Sybase.

He told PC Dealer: 'About 50 per cent of Sybase's revenue is indirect so we already had a very strong channel, but we found we needed to engage different partners to support each of our high-growth areas. BSA is a recruitment programme to find a whole generation of partners to take our products to market and increase our market share.

Each of the divisions will operate their channel strategies independently as well as engage their own partners.

BSA was recently launched in the US, but Karia claimed Sybase had delayed the European launch to develop a number of regional initiatives, in particular training and marketing programmes.

He emphasised that the vendor's existing partners would not be com-pelled to join BSA. 'They will continue to be dealt with by our European Software Centre. They need only move to the BSA scheme if and when they see fit.'

Existing partners would continue to have access to all of Sybase's technology, but additional partners could be appointed for select products only.