CRN Interview: Harry Vitelli, Adobe Systems

A key part of Adobe's strategy for putting Acrobat on every desktop is its line of server products, designed to turn PDF files into intelligent documents for collaboration and for data sharing. Adobe has a lot of experience selling through distributors and is now working with integrators to sell its enterprise software.

Harry Vitelli, vice president of business development at Adobe's ePaper Group, spoke with CRN special reports editor John Longwell about the group's channel strategy.

CRN: What is Adobe's channel strategy?

Vitelli: We exist in a very unique category in the enterprise CIO stack. [Our products aren't] tools, but they're not final solutions either. We're fundamentally right in the middle. If you look at IBM having probably the best middleware, we basically sit just above middleware but below the SAP solution level.

All of these products map into an area we call document services. If you need to do something with a document,create one, collaborate on one, manage it through a process,we want people to come to us for a server technology that allows you to do that. Thus, the names of our products: Forms Server, Document Server.

When a customer wants to buy a solution, we typically find ourselves offering a component of that solution rather than selling the entire solution. So we have relationships with systems integrators and ISVs that will sell and market the entire solution to the customer.

CRN: These are OEM-type relationships?

Vitelli: We call them resell relationships, yes. We're embedded into a larger solution stack. That's one channel,and one that I work in a lot.

In business development, we're continually looking at what kind of ISV stacks we should delve into. ... At the solution level, we have a good relationship with systems integrators. ... This is where customers are buying into a very large investment. IBM Global Services, for example, just landed an $800 million deal with the State of California to automate its child welfare system. We worked with them on many aspects of that.

CRN: Are your systems integration partners all big players like IBM?

Vitelli: There are some really big ones, but then you start getting into others that are helpful both horizontally and vertically.

From a systems integrator point of view, we have a relationship with IBM Global Services as well as Accenture. Then we have a whole stream of relationships with companies like BearingPoint, Covansys, AMR [and others].

We have partner managers in the field, badged employees who are in our field-sales force,who deal with all of these systems integrators on a day-to-day basis. ... Our systems integrator strategy is not very well known, but it's actually fairly robust.

CRN: How robust is it?

Vitelli: I can't give you the number of systems integrators we have, but they're generating double-digit percentages of our server business. They're also becoming involved in nearly every one of our major deals. We've done a lot of work over the last 18 months to get a systems integrator program under way. And we're seeing the fruits of that labor right now.

CRN: How does your direct-sales force tie into the channel?

Vitelli: If our direct-sales force is leading on a deal, they have the ability to bring in a whole series of systems integrators they'll know about ahead of time that are in the account already, or they bring them in as subject-matter experts. And that partner is typically there to help the customer get the entire solution up and running.

CRN: What does your ISV channel look like?

Vitelli: We have relationships where we resell through them or co-sell with them. We categorize them as partners in enterprise resource management, such as SAP; content management [such as] IBM and Documentum; product life-cycle management, where we have good partnerships with PTC and Agile; and middleware, where we work with IBM in the WebSphere, DB2 and WebSphere Portal areas.

CRN: Do you have a certification program?

Vitelli: No, we don't, but we're working on that. I think you'll see us get a lot more aggressive at what I like to call self-service-type programs that would include certification.

CRN: How far off is that?

Vitelli: I can't give you any specific dates.

CRN: But you will have a certification program?

Vitelli: Again, I can't commit to that. All I can tell you is that today many of the relationships from both the ISV and systems integrator perspectives have been hand-selected.

We have day-to-day direct account managers on them. It's high-touch. We haven't started off and kicked off a program that I would consider low-touch where you get ISV and systems integrator partners that might be regional or very vertical-specific who can just come in and work through a portal, apply for a program, get trained. We're just not there right now. Our intention is to get there, but we're not there yet.