GE Access, formerly GE IT Distribution Group, today announced its service provider (SP) program, identifying opportunities in the application service provider (ASP) market for its Sun authorized resellers.
In an exclusive interview with VARBusiness, John Paget, executive vice president of the Sun Business Unit at GE Access, outlined the company's plans to help its Sun authorized resellers take advantage of the growing SP market.
"To be successful, a reseller must make a change in the next few months. So, we've been helping our resellers make the transition to become a solutions or services type of VAR," says Paget. While he says some resellers will look to become SPs, "most want to figure out how to leverage an SP relationship through partnering with or selling to an SP."
The SP program will educate resellers on how to compete in the SP space. The program offers business planning, education, training, sales and marketing resources, closing support, solution architecture support and maintenance services.
As part of the initiative, GE Access, based here, will conduct nine daylong seminars from March 13 to April 7 in eight cities throughout the United States. The seminars will help resellers understand the development of the SP market and understand the SP-related technologies and their potential impact on revenue in the SP space. (The seminars will be offered in Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago, Detroit, San Jose and Irvine.)
Some of the tools offered through the initiative include marketing resources, presentation templates, SP profiles and links to SP Web sites. GE Access will also offer an SP guidebook to help resellers successfully transition their businesses into the SP space.
The program comes one day after the formal announcements of the company's name change from GE IT Distribution Group to GE Access. The change comes as a result of parent company General Electric Co.'s acquisition of Access Graphics Inc., also based here.
