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| Julie Parrish
Vice President, Global Channel Office | Enrique
Salem
Chief Operating
Officer |
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| On
channel value | Symantec continues to be a channel-led company and we
recognize the value partners play in reaching our broad set of
customers. | I don't [think] that somebody who's working
with the channel is driving as much value as somebody who's
working with a Global 2000 firm. |
| On
strategy | We are not changing our strategy and taking high-end
deals direct. | Now we're just saying they've got the option, the top
700, 800 accounts can go direct. |
| On
legacy | All accounts have had the ability to buy direct in the
past. | It doesn't make sense to continue to leverage both a
distributor and a partner to serve the largest customers in the world.
So those deals will now give the customer the option to go direct. |
| On
timing | We maintain a 2-tier distribution strategy and like
many other vendors have allowed our Tier 1 partners to fulfill complex
enterprise contracts directly. We made this change in April. We've been
operating for 90 days without this kind of uproar. | The other thing that we'll do is we'll move from a
two-tier distribution model to a one-tier for our largest partners. |
| On profit | Any margin improvement would be negligible. Symantec is
making the change to simplify these deals and not to improve margins. | There will be some margin improvement as a
result. It definitely will have a benefit on our overall sales and
marketing cost structure." |
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