SonicWall CEO: We've taken the best from our partner programme and the best from Dell's
Bill Conner joined as CEO at the beginning of this month when Dell completed the sale of its software group
New SonicWall CEO Bill Conner says the network security vendor has taken the best from its old partner programme and the best from Dell's, as it starts life as an independent company again.
SonicWall was acquired by Dell in 2012 and migrated to a Dell partner programme but was sold to private equity this year to become independent once again.
Partners are now being asked to move to SonicWall's new SecureFirst partner programme which is up and running in North America and will go live in EMEA in February next year.
SonicWall's channel strategy was questioned after the 2012 acquisition with some partners fearing that Dell's mixed channel model would be damaging to the partner ecosystem, but Conner has moved to quash any future concerns now the sale has been completed.
"We will go to market exclusively partnered with our channels," he said.
"We will still have direct touch that we'll partner with our channel for so they can sell together [with us] and win business, but we won't be fulfilling that on our side, it will be in partnership with our channel, even if we have direct touch.
"In certain complex environments the customer themselves want a direct touch from us, so we'll work with our partners in that effort."
Conner said that around half of SonicWall's partner base has already moved to the new programme, with the rest expected to follow soon - adding that partners can expect to see the benefits of the pre-Dell programme revived, as well as elements from Dell's own programme.
"From my outside perspective, and now inside, what they [the SonicWall management team] were able to do is take the best of the old SonicWall programme, the best of the Dell programme and create one programme that is 100 per cent channel now, 100 per cent security and 100 per cent us - and that's exciting," he said.
"We have planted that flag strongly and now we have got to build those relationships and mould that programme into a sustainable long-term value creation for our partners and ourselves. That's certainly the DNA of the company."
Eamon Moore, founder of SonicWall partner EMIT, said he expects SonicWall to particularly take positives from Dell's services and support capabilities moving forward.
"I think they've [SonicWall] learned a lot and I think they took the best of both businesses and tried to put them together," he said.
"They said to us that they were lacking some of that support in some ways, at a partner level as well, and I think they would have learned from that during the time with Dell and seen how Dell delivers support services across that range, and I think SonicWall are going to bring some of that in."
Services push
Conner himself admited that SonicWall may have been guilty of not addressing services as much as it should have in the past, and has now hired Keith Trottier to revitalise its worldwide services arm.
"I really believe that if you're going to be partnered on sales [with the channel] then you really need to be partnered and differentiated on service," he said.
"If I look at the whole space, people have focused so much on just the technology we've forgotten how to service our channels and our customers. It's not that we've forgotten it, I think it's just grown in terms of importance and value to the end user and the partner.
"[Keith] is going to be heading up our services team globally to look at how we increase efficiency and effectiveness, and use the next generation of services tools you have - the likes of video and social - as well as traditional services."
Increased exposure through Dell
While Dell's channel strategy has been questioned throughout its SonicWall ownership, Jason Hill, sales director at Exertis, praised Dell for raising SonicWall's profile and said that partners who shied away in 2012 should see this as a reason to reconsider.
"There were certain partners that when Dell first acquired SonicWall moved away [because] I think they had had a seemingly bad experience and thought the Dell thing wouldn't work," he said.
"Actually Dell was really positive for SonicWall in the way that it gave it exposure that it hadn't had before in certain channels, certain verticals and the world in general.
"What we hope now is that some of those partners will reconsider the SonicWall portfolio."