Programs In Motion

Get up, get out and make more money. That's the message the world's top IT vendors are trying to convey to their business partners this year.

Get up, of course, loosely translates to consider more upsell and cross-sell opportunities. Thanks to a raft of mergers and acquisitions, new product introductions and ongoing technology evolutions, vendors are asking their partners to embrace more of their product lines than ever before. Get out, too, is another message that vendors are promulgating this year: follow, if not lead, us into new markets, especially the midmarket, but also into new, untapped vertical fields.

As for make more money, well, that speaks for itself. Virtually every top vendor--from Cisco to Microsoft, IBM to HP, Citrix to Symantec--has uplifts in place to reward partners for driving sales of advanced technologies, mining new customers or knocking competitors out of target accounts.

The Hot Trends

A year ago at this time, partner profitability and program simplification were at the top of many vendors' lists. Same with deal and/or opportunity registration and lead generation. These topics remain hot again this year. But several additional issues also are taking center stage: program integration (thanks mainly to numerous mergers and acquisitions), midmarket coverage, cross-selling and program simplification. Consider what Julie Parrish, Veritas' vice president of Americas field and channel marketing, alone has on her plate this year as one example of what a top vendor-program manager faces today. For starters, her company is merging with Symantec, meaning she must help integrate her channel program into Symantec's already well-established program. She also is working hard on identifying synergies between her company's current product portfolio and Symantec's, and, accordingly, coming up with go-to-market programs for business partners.

Parrish also is looking at best practices in program management and following what others have been up to to help guide her as she takes on her new challenges. In particular, she's closely watching two companies that have worked to shift their programs to value-based ones: Microsoft and Cisco. Parrish also is considering special incentives to help reward partners and looking at ways to simplify her programs. One idea that is sure to help several of her largest partners upsell and cross-sell more Veritas technology: allowing direct marketers, including CDW, to sell a broader set of the company's Windows titles.

Then there's just getting things right. For example, Veritas has finally completed an internal systems migration that saw the company move to Oracle 11i. That could ultimately lead to an improvement in her company's partner portal.

Inside Our 2005 Guide

As we have for the past few years, VARBusiness is again singling out the best in vendor partner-program management and the most robust programs in the channel. Inside, you'll find a list of the industry's most powerful and influential channel-program execs from all of the top companies, and many up-and-comers, too: Acer, Lantronix, Ricoh, Trend Micro and others have executives showcased. Also inside: our five-star programs, the definitive listing of the industry's most robust vendor-partner programs. This year's list spotlights firms that rely on, invest in and innovate around partner programs that tens of thousands of channel companies depend on.

Also in this annual issue you'll find outtakes and insights from an intriguing roundtable discussion involving some of the best thinkers in vendor partner-program management today. In mid-January, VARBusiness invited Donn Atkins of IBM, Randy Cochran of Symantec, Steve Dallman of Intel, John Thompson of HP and Allison Watson of Microsoft to the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas for a day-long look at the toughest issues impacting partners and vendors alike. During the course of the day, these executives traded barbs and compared notes on a wide range of topics, including the general decline in partner satisfaction, top innovations for 2005 and internal company politics regarding business partners. These executives also discussed emerging partner business models and new go-to-market strategies.

Although vendors face a common set of challenges when it comes to managing partners--they must recruit, motivate and then properly reward their business allies--there is no end to the many ways vendors are going about this. One reason is the vastly different challenges and opportunities different vendors face. HP, for example, began the year with one CEO and one strategy, and it will surely exit the year with a new CEO, if not a new corporate strategy. Conversely, no one expects IBM to have to do the same. Says Atkins, IBM's general manager of Global Business Partners, "I don't have to go make aggressive left turns or U-turns. I've got to build on what we've got and take on new challenges that we have yet to address, if not solve."

No matter what your vendor partner of choice faces in 2005, you can read about their plans inside this edition and online at varbusiness.com.