Symantec woos VARs with partner initiatives
Security and storage giant launches plans to unite its partners with Veritas's.
Security and storage giant Symantec has unveiled three initiatives under its global partner programme to unite its partners with Veritas’s.
It has launched a Technical Specialist Programme that allows partners to complete training online at their own pace. Symantec has also unified its technical support for partners, offering 24-hour support on all of its products. Finally, the vendor has migrated its PartnerNet portal onto a new platform and improved partner access to sales training, toolkits and support.
Torgny Gunnarsson, regional vice-president EMEA at Symantec, told CRN: “These initiatives all boil down to the channel being instrumental in our success. The coming fiscal year will offer a huge mutual opportunity.”
He said the firm had spent time putting its combined [Symantec and Veritas] channel programme together and acknowledged it may have seemed distant to partners.
“We wanted to get the partner programme right rather than rushing something out for the sake of it,” he said. “However, we think we have been more visible than ever before while we have integrated two major software companies.”
Gunnarsson said the vendor is still looking to recruit channel partners and has completed a distribution review, resulting in a line-up of Computerlinks, DNS UK, Ingram, Computer 2000, Bell Micro, CMS, Hammer, Horizon and Microwarehouse in Ireland.
Alex Tatham, director of commercial products at Bell Micro, said: “This is excellent news. Getting partners up to speed techically allows them ac-cess to improved pricing and deal registration. However, the killer point would be to make order processing transparent too – another good upgrade to PartnerNet.”