Surviving And Thriving

The transition up the food chain from a smaller VAR program isn't always so smooth. Robert Deitz, CEO of GvTechSolutions in Shingle Springs, Calif., has wrestled with the issue more than most as he and his company work to bring newer, often smaller, manufacturers into the federal market.

"If we're successful, they usually grow and get acquired," Deitz says. "And we're usually successful. So we lived through the Symantec acquisition of Brightmail, the Cisco acquisition of Okena, the Blue Coat acquisition of Ositis and several others."

From his perspective, Deitz says the deals often hurt a smaller company's public-sector business. "While they're smaller companies, they have special pricing, special configurations, great service and focus from the reseller and the company," he says. "But when they get acquired, the bigger company usually has existing resellers and pricing that they try to shift over."

Deitz says 90 percent of his Brightmail customers were large licenses with 10,000 to15,000 users. But Symantec only offered special pricing for up to 2,000 users in the segment, meaning GvTechSolutions' customers faced up to a 500 percent price increase. "And the premium-support Web links and phone numbers changed without the customers being told," Deitz says. "So when [users] had a problem, the e-mail they sent was returned and the phone number didn't work. [That's] not a good situation."

When Cisco took over Okena, Deitz's firm was in the middle of a substantial Okena rollout. "With Okena, we had focus and one team to work with and we were moving forward," he says. "When Cisco took over, we didn't know who to talk to. Worse, they split up the communication among [three regional] reps. Not a good strategy. No one knew what was going on.

"When we pleaded to be the lead, we were ignored," Deitz adds. "That wasn't the way Cisco did things. The end result was two years of lost work. [The customer] now uses McAfee."

Even if the new vendor greases the skids for existing partners, what of the customers that may be skittish about making the transition with you? GeminiTech's James stresses communicating with users even as you're preparing to shift partner-program gears. "Rather than facing our customers and saying we don't know what's happening, we presented the broader portfolio of goods and services and shared how it would benefit them and us," James says. "We took the new portfolio of products and solutions now available to us, and we sold them and made them work with our customer base. When they expanded, we effectively expanded."

"It isn't all easy," Tier 1's Nesbitt says. "The merger happens and you deal with it. Embrace it and see it as an opportunity. Is it better for us now? Yes. But I don't even look back. We've increased our business; Oracle has increased their business. That makes the relationship work. We welcomed it, and it has proven very successful for us."