Upping the ante

Does Symantec's impending split mean partners risk placing their chips on the wrong vendor?

Symantec is promising to give back more to partners that put more in under what it claims is its most generous partner programme ever.

The competency-based scheme, which went live on 7 October, sees the security and backup vendor offering a slew of new accelerator, growth and customer retention rebates to partners prepared to make big investments in technical and sales headcount and joint business planning.

According to Mark Nutt, vice president of partner management, EMEA at Symantec, those on the highest Platinum tier could potentially be more than twice as well off than under the old regime.

But just two days after Symantec formally launched a partner programme rewarding VARs for investing across the breadth of its portfolio, the vendor's board announced plans to split into two separate firms.

Talking to CRN, Nutt was quick to shoo the elephant out of the room, claiming the scheme's competency-based character would allow it to retain its relevance even after the corporate schism occurs in December 2015.

"We know we've got at least 12 months ahead of us when this programme will be key to us building stronger partnerships and driving growth in the market," he said. "And when you think about the fact that it's competency-based, the programme is foundational for the success of both our information security and information management business."

Andy Wright, commercial director at SCC, which is one of Symantec's largest UK partners, also appeared convinced that the investment partners are being asked to make would not be wasted.

"Because it's a competency model, as the business splits the competencies will remain," he said. "I can't imagine that in the first year of two big businesses they're going to try to reinvent the wheel on this so I'm pretty relaxed. You've got to remember that this is very much about technical skills and we are refreshing those every year anyway."

Wright also came out in favour of Symantec's impending split, which will see it break into two independent, publicly traded companies focusing on security and information management, respectively.

"I think it's a feature of today that many of the vendors we work with have grown beyond their core competencies and it's actually becoming quite a confusing landscape to engage with," he said. "Having two very focused Symantec businesses going forward does seem like the right thing."

Like many other vendors this year - EMC among them - Symantec is raising the bar for top partners under the new scheme, which soft-launched in May after a 12-month design phase. As well as delivering a revenue number, Platinum partners must invest heavily in technical and sales capabilities across a number of competencies to attain the top-level badge.

Although Nutt said Symantec is still in the process of allocating partners to each tier, he conceded there would be fewer Platinum partners than under the old regime.
"Does that mean we've demoted partners?" Nutt asked.

"Well actually, as a Gold partner today you will earn more with Symantec than you earned in the previous programme as a Platinum partner. For Gold partners, like for like, there's upwards of an 80 per cent uplift in financial benefits."

Top Platinum partners will potentially see their total compensation package more than double, Nutt added.

This comes in the form of new "growth accelerator" rebates of up to eight per cent and a two per cent rebate for achieving retention rates and renewals. A rebate of up to five per cent through the new "Symantec partner development fund", which sees Symantec invest against proposals from partners to drive growth, is also up for grabs.

Wright agreed that SCC will be "considerably better off" under the new model "if we deliver the things that Symantec needs" around services, competencies and customer sectors, as well as renewals.

"This has already kicked off a deeper level of planning between the two firms," Wright said.

"With the extra rebate and investment on the table from Symantec, we can put more pre- and post-sales effort into the deployments."