Softricity Launches Channel Partner Program

The Softricity Solution Provider program provides sales support such as access to Softricity consultants and engineers, training, co-op marketing dollars and discounts ranging from 10 percent to 35 percent, said Les Yetton, COO and head of field operations at Softricity, Boston.

"Either you get the whole channel thing or you don't. They get it," said Jim Gildea, president of Aegis Software, a Watertown, Mass.-based solution provider that joined the program. "They don't compete with us, they support us," he said.

The company partners with Citrix Systems and Microsoft, recruiting Citrix Gold, Platinum and Certified Consulting Partners to sell its products through its channel-only sales strategy, Yetton said.

The company's application delivery and management platform, SoftGrid, supports both Microsoft Windows desktop and Terminal Services environments. Applications are centrally housed on the SoftGrid server but are sent to the client device on demand in bits and pieces to be executed locally. The platform's SystemGuard technology keeps the applications from altering the registry of the server's operating system, eliminating software conflicts.

"If you have Citrix with a big server farm, you're going to see a lot of applications that don't play nice in the farm. You have to silo them out, which requires lots more hardware, management overhead and IT resources," Yetton said. "With our application, the software is never installed on the Terminal Server," he said.

Softricity expects to expand its North American partner program to include 30 members by the end of 2003. The company is also building programs for partners overseas, he said.