New BEA Channel Chief To Build SMB Strategy

In his first interview since taking his post a month ago, BEA Systems' new channel chief said BEA will begin building a partner strategy in the SMB market as it continues to work toward reaching existing channel goals.

Morris Beton, BEA's new senior vice president of worldwide partner and alliance strategies, said that while BEA's biggest customer play is in the Fortune 2000 market, he has plans to expand BEA's channel efforts to the midmarket and into the small-business space.

"I'm a real believer in penetrating the small-business market," Beton said, speaking to CRN at the annual BEA Financial Analyst Day here.

Beton, who most recently completed a 7-1/2-year stint at Microsoft as vice president of services for the U.S. market, said building an efficient channel model for the SMB market has always been a challenge, even for a company like Microsoft that has a large play in that space.

Beton said that while he does not have a concrete strategy for using partners to tap the SMB market, building a direct-sales force for that area would not work well for BEA's business model. That means leveraging the channel makes more sense, he said. "There is tremendous opportunity there," Beton said.

In addition to new goals for the partner strategy, BEA remains committed to goals set in February 2001 when former channel chief Rauline Ochs launched BEA's Star Partner Program and made a significant investment in solution providers. Ochs resigned from BEA in April.

As Ochs' replacement, Breton said he will continue to work toward BEA's goal to derive 40 percent of its revenue through the channel by the end of 2004. BEA now is ahead of schedule to reach that goal, currently doing 34 percent of its business through the channel, he said.

BEA also put a compensation model into place under Ochs' leadership that compensates its direct-sales force more if it meets a revenue goal for selling jointly with partners. Beton said this kind of integration and compensation based on partner sales will be an area of strong focus as he brings partners and BEA's sales team closer together.

"I will be looking at ways to make that more tightly knit," Beton said. "One of the execution points where companies fail is [in this area]. It really is the differentiator in what makes the sales and partner engine work and not work."

BEA also has a new "go-to-market" goal within its partner strategy, Beton said. BEA is in the process of identifying about seven large systems integrator partners and about 53 ISV partners that it will name go-to-market partners. BEA will work closely with these partners to create solutions to present to customers in its top 2,000 accounts, Beton said.

In line with that, BEA also will work with top systems integrators so they standardize their solutions on BEA's platform, Breton said.

"We're pushing the idea that key, go-to-market partners need BEA as their standard offering," he said. "What I'm trying to do is make sure key SIs are lined up with us and we're the default offering [for solutions]."

BEA currently has nearly 1,000 systems integrators in its Star Partner Program. That number will grow under Beton's direction.

"I'm a huge believer in the benefits of growing a partner community," Beton said. "You can't just sit back and say you've achieved this level and now [you're] going to focus on something else."

Beton said he has not been at BEA long enough to come up with a specific goal for growing BEA's roster of systems integrator partners. But like its SMB strategy, it is a plan is in the works.

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