Digest: News from Computer Associates, SAP, Juniper Networks

Continuing its march into the SMB (small and midsize business) market, Computer Associates International Inc. last week launched SMB Specialist Track to advance resources and opportunities for its partners serving the sector.

The track provides participating VARs with benefits and tools beyond the standard partner program, many of them online, including sales tools like demand generation, sales and technical training, marketing tools and support, and free second-level technical support, said George Kafkarkou, CA's senior vice president of SMB and Consumer Channels.

"To cater to the SMB base, we need a reseller base," Kafkarkou said. "It's a different skill set and a different strategy. The SMB, day to day, needs to focus on their business, not their IT business and that means a different way of selling and serving."

The launch accompanies CA's release of six security suites designed and priced specifically for the SMB market.

CA has designed much of its market penetration strategy, Kafkarkou said, around the SMB presence of Microsoft Corp., which just this summer launched its own SMB track, Small Business Specialist.

CA is approaching an estimated 150,000 Microsoft partners who serve the sector and has offered free demonstration kits and one free product for resale to Microsoft Small Business Specialists.

CA's SMB protection series is a perfect fit for Microsoft's own SMB line, Kafkarkou said.

To promote sales by individual salespeople at its VARs, SAP AG signed on to Globoforce Ltd., an online sales incentive company, whose online program will allow VARs to reward those salespeople with credits toward gift certificates at national and local venues.

Part of SAP's "Drive to Win" program, the company expects the move to motivate new leads and increased sales among its 1,600 VARs worldwide, Diane Pereira, channel marketing manager for SAP Global Marketing, said in a statement.

A "team captain" at each VAR may manage the organization's Globoforce account online and will allocate points to "players" accordingly, Globoforce said. Players will receive periodic updates recounting their credit balance, which is redeemable through Globoforce's network of merchants. Participating merchants include Macy's, The Gap, Amazon.com and some local venues, making the program relevant across geographic boundaries, Globoforce said.

Juniper Networks Inc., a growing force in the network solution provider space, announced Wednesday a new specialization for VARs specializing in application acceleration and new opportunities for service providers it acquired in a pair of recent corporate takeovers.

The J-Partner Application Acceleration Specialization is a chance for resellers and solution providers to study the emerging application acceleration technology and add another tool to their belts, the company said in a statement.

With the purchase this spring of Redline Networks and Peribit Networks, Juniper added an application acceleration line including Juniper Network DX for data center acceleration and the Juniper Networks WX product for WAN acceleration.

The new specialization track and new product line give partners the "ability to deliver higher value to customers by addressing critical business challenges associated with 'Webifying' business applications, centralizing servers, consolidating data centers and achieving regulatory compliance," Juniper said.

Partners affiliated with Redline and Peribit are to be incorporated with Juniper's general J-Partner program, to maintain consistency, the company said.

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