Enterprise Security: Symantec

Another year, another Channel Champions victory for Symantec in a security category.

In the past, channel partners have hailed the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based security vendor for the ease of management, price/performance and ease of implementation of its security products. This year was no exception.

Symantec gave runner-up Cisco Systems a sound beating in these three areas to the earn top satisfaction rating for the technical merits of its products. Despite the San Jose, Calif.-based hardware vendor’s high scores in the product reliability and scalability areas, Symantec’s composite technical rating of 83.9 was still 2.6 points ahead of Cisco’s.

But this year, Symantec also gave Cisco a run for its money on the channel criteria, an area where Cisco usually excels. Symantec earned the top scores in five of the eight channel areas, coming in one-tenth of a point behind Cisco, 70.2 to 70.3, and well ahead of the rest of the field on the channel-program rating.

“The one thing about Symantec is that they listen to their partners,” said Andy Reese, national director of security consulting at Dyntek, Irvine, Calif. “Any time I make recommendations, it’s great to see that they actually do the things I recommend.”

Partners said that Symantec’s dedicated channel representatives facilitate this informed environment. “We have regular sessions with not just our channel representative, but also company management as well,” said Dave Hall, senior vice president and CTO at CompuCom, Dallas.

Still, the reviews weren’t entirely glowing. Symantec trailed Cisco by 5.5 points in technical education.

Allyson Seelinger, vice president of North American channel sales at Symantec, said recent changes to the company’s training program should start to take effect soon.

“We’re constantly continuing to evolve how we interact with solution providers and how we support them to keep us world-class,” she said. “We take feedback very seriously.”

 Published for the Week Of April 26, 2004