Famous five appointed to Veritas top tier

Vendor names 'master resellers'

Storage software vendor Veritas has revamped its UK channel strategy by creating a tier of 'master resellers' to specialise in key platform technology.

The announcement, focused on the enterprise level, sees five former Veritas distributors awarded the title of master reseller. They are CMS Peripherals, Ideal Hardware, Intechnology, PSL and Avnet Hallmark.

The master resellers will not only distribute Veritas software to resellers, but will offer additional support and advice to both the channel partner and the end user on a variety of platforms including NT, Sun Microsystems and IBM.

Neil Parker, regional director of Veritas Software, said the UK channel plays a major role in the company's strategy. "The UK channel represents 65 per cent of our UK turnover and is very important to us," Parker said, claiming that the scheme will allow for a "more profitable" relationship between Veritas, its channel partners and its customers.

"This development will play to the master resellers' considerable strengths and ensures that our customers continue to receive the speed and quality of service that they need to run their businesses," he said.

Bryn Sage, sales director at Intechnology, said the strategy will enable end users to define the roles of both the master resellers and the resellers more clearly.

"This has never been the traditional distributor/reseller relationship," Sage said, adding that the new master resellers will work with resellers to "develop a market and implement a solution, rather than just box shifting".

Under the scheme, master resellers will be able to augment their channel partners' existing skills with additional skills in three main areas - software management, hardware infrastructure and systems integration - thus filling any gaps, Sage said.

"This will help everybody, including end users, understand what our role is," he added.