Symantec's New CEO Is Committed to Growing with the Channel - Salem to Focus on Enhancing Symantec's Relevancy
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While Thompson was manically focused on growing Symantec’s revenue and size,
Salem is taking a different
approach by choosing to focus on the quality of the business and enhancing
Symantec’s relevancy in the marketplace. His belief is relevancy will triumph
revenue performance, and will ultimately make the difference between a
successful company and a failed business.
“[Thompson] did a fabulous job of building scale, and I’m looking forward to
using that scale to be the leader. I’m not excited about being the CEO
of the fourth largest software company. I’m more worried about relevancy
position compared to other companies. When we have leadership in certain
segments, we will maintain our relevancy,” he says.
That’s not to say Salem isn’t
concerned about revenue growth. He is. With relevancy comes growth and new
opportunities. Achieving that growth, he says, requires the support and success
of Symantec’s 59,000 partners around the world. That dependency and shared
success is the reason Salem says
Symantec will remain committed to its channel partners—OEMs, value-added
distributors, resellers and retailers—to engage with customers and drive
Symantec product sales.
“The question that should be asked is, ‘Can our partners make more money
with us?” he says. “We should help our partners get into more accounts. With
our integrated products, our partners can get into more accounts and recognize
more opportunities.”
Symantec is in the process of integrating two of its most recent
acquisitions—Altiris (systems and configuration management) and Vontu (data
loss prevention) into its portfolio and channel programs. And it is still
grappling with fully integrating the storage management technologies acquired
with Veritas five years ago. The company doesn’t have the most stellar
reputation for assimilating the companies it acquires, and there are numerous
examples of gaffes that have negatively impacted Symantec’s sales.
But integration of both the channel programs and underlying products and
technologies is what gives meaning to the information management framework
created by Symantec over the last decade. Salem
recognizes the integration shortcomings and says improving integration and
partner training will be a priority going forward.
“If you don’t do a good job of integrating the technology in a way that’s
easy to understand by the customer and implement by the partner, you’re doomed
for failure,” Salem says.
Integration is also critical in the rapidly growing and evolving
software-as-a-service and managed services marketplace. Symantec acquired
managed security service provider Riptech in 2002, providing it with the
foundation for becoming one of the largest providers of security services. It’s
developed a remote backup service that currently manages more than 30 petabytes
of data and is adding more than 5 petabytes per quarter.
Symantec has come under fire for the way it handles renewals for its
subscription-based services. While solution providers are often compensated for
the initial sale or referral of a service, some say Symantec unfairly cuts
partners out of the renewal revenue business.
Salem acknowledges that the services
renewal business is a tricky issue. While stating the partner should get a commission
for making the sale and have access to the back-end revenue, he believes
partners can and should make more money on the integration services required
for migrating customers to a services offering and through the sale of
additional service offerings.
“We need to keep the partners selling more and more things, and have the
partners selling more services,” he says. “The only way we’re going to grow is
if the partner brings us to the customer.”
Last summer, Salem was criticized
for telling market analysts that Symantec would take more of its top tier
accounts direct and give large customers the option to bypass solution provider
and distribution channels. While the reports were later refuted, the coverage
raised doubts in Symantec’s commitment to channel partners, especially after Salem
takes the helm.
“The amount of business we do through the channel is increasing, not
decreasing,” he says. “The partners that are going to be successful with
Symantec will be the ones that invest into growing their Symantec business.”
