Someone To Listen

I have some advice for Veritas Software CEO Gary Bloom as he chooses a replacement for the outgoing Don Foster, who was vice president of channel sales: Pick someone who can and will listen to your channel partners.

The same advice goes to Mike Borman, who will be filling some pretty big shoes in taking over for IBM's retiring Peter Rowley, who was vice president and general manager of global business partners. Borman's experience as the architect of IBM's direct model will not endear him to solution providers who don't know him, but his plan to get on the road right away to meet partners is on track. Perhaps he also can eavesdrop on a few of IBM's new Insight Exchange Webcasts (a program IBM is unveiling this week) for some additional insight (pun intended).

What I hope will become immediately apparent to both Borman and whoever is named at Veritas is that the old volume tiering channel programs of bygone years will suit only a fraction of today's solution providers. You must provide a multilayered approach to partnering, one guided by plenty of real-world feedback.

The 15-months-in-the-making channel overhaul being disclosed this week by Symbol Technologies is a great example of good listening. Symbol channel chief Stanley Jaworski believes that the vendor's core partners fit into two primary models,those that are transaction-oriented and those that are focused on using technology to re-engineer a customer's business. Clearly, these partners have different margin and certification concerns.

I believe you'll also find more open ears at Hewlett-Packard, where executives are assessing last year's PartnerOne rollout. I recently chatted with an SMB solution provider in south New Jersey whose status was in jeopardy because of its revenue size, despite the fact that it was Compaq's highest-rated service provider for the region. After I mentioned the irony to Kevin Gilroy, who heads up HP's commercial channels efforts, the two talked and the solution provider's status was reinstated,both because of its services reputation as well as its work in several emerging solutions areas, including IP telephony.

Who is listening to you?

HEATHER CLANCY, Editor at CRN, loves to hear from solution providers at (516) 562-7446 or [email protected].