Veritas uses roadshow to set channel straight

By Stuart Finlayson

Storage software vendor Veritas is using the platform of its Australian Enterprise Data Protection roadshow to issue clear guidelines as to how it intends to do business with the channel in future.

Bruce Lakin, acting managing director and head of channels ANZ at Veritas, said that while Veritas intends to deal with major corporate clients - such as Telstra – directly, it intends to work closely with the channel in all other areas of its business.

"We want to address the different market segments in different ways. This includes having direct relationships with major corporations. What we are saying is that you have got to respect the fact that for good, sound strategic reasons, and for customer requirement reasons, we are going to do business directly with these customers, so we want to introduce the channel into those accounts under our management, providing those partners can add value to our proposition."

The better news for Veritas resellers came in the shape of Lakin's assertion that Veritas wanted to conduct the remainder of its business through the channel.

"To make that work we are introducing a partner category called Elite Reseller, which is based on an agreed set of commitments from the channel to ourselves. This includes the training of their people to achieve Veritas Certified Professional status, which means they are qualified to represent and support our product."

In return for participating in the program, resellers will come in for generous discounts on Veritas' products, giving them the incentive to invest in supporting the vendor.

"This is ultimately about being more consistent and laying a roadmap for our channel partners, and ultimately, the customers, so that everybody understands how Veritas will do business with them and how we will take our products to market," added Lakin.

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