Extending Your Partner Network

Sometimes this means that the VAR becomes more of an integrator. Forsythe VB86 took this approach with a large application-porting project.

"We partnered with one of our manufacturers, and [had] another partner with database and application skills," says David Nolan, a vice president at Forsythe, one of Oracle's top ISVs. "The customer wanted and got us to take charge and bring the project together."

Sometimes partnering is to extend beyond a geographic reach. "We recently teamed up with another solution provider in the Silicon Valley area to help us design and deploy a worldwide VPN solution for a $500 million publicly traded medical company," says Quy Nguyen, CEO of Allyance Communications Networks. The problem was that Allyance is more focused on U.S.-based networks. "So we engaged another solution provider to help us with the international piece of the network, as well as [for] their expertise in the medical vertical market. With their expertise, we were able to fulfill the client's needs and win a $4.3 million contract," Nguyen says.

Sometimes partnering is just to gain additional expertise. "We use partners to help us deliver strategic solutions that sometimes extend beyond our internal depth or capacity," Forsythe's Nolan says.

Nguyen says it best: "Partnering with other solution providers is a great avenue to penetrate into market sectors. We attribute 30 percent of our revenue from these types of partnerships."