Try as they might, Symantec officials are still struggling to clarify just what will and will not change for their reseller partners in the wake of executive comments at Symantec Vision 2008 last month.
Talking Heads
Symantec's Julie Parrish did her best to explain away some of the comments made by COO Enrique Salem during a financial analysts' meeting in Las Vegas on June 12. Still, in the areas of timing and motivation for tweaks to the vendor's channel program, there remains some distance between Salem's assertions and Parrish's rebuttal.
Julie Parrish
Vice President, Global Channel Office
Enrique
Salem Chief Operating
Officer
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."
