Altiris Aims To Level The Field For OEMs, VARs

Recognizing that the strength and resources of OEMs such as Hewlett-Packard and Dell can unfairly outweigh those of smaller VARs in customer deals, Altiris plans to compensate both, which the vendor hopes will help increase its market share in the IT life-cycle management space, said Greg Butterfield, president and CEO of Altiris, Lindon, Utah.

"Two things will change. No. 1, if a VAR is involved in a transaction, and the transaction ends up getting on an OEM's invoice for reasons that are beyond the control of the VAR's ability, then [the VAR] will still be compensated for Altiris revenue," Butterfield said. "We've also created an environment where from a synergistic perspective VARs that are now working with our OEM partners can provide presales technical support, sales integration, knowledge transfer and deployment of our software. So VARs are getting software revenue, and they're also getting what many of them are looking for--the higher-margin service revenue dollars."

As part of the program, tiered Platinum, Gold and Registered reseller levels will be in place to reward partners for meeting revenue commitments. Additional margins or rebates will be available to partners that provide technical sales support, lead generation and other services.

In addition, Altiris vows to better coordinate its OEM and business partners based on the strengths of each to help minimize channel conflict and to extend Altiris' reach into the SMB market. Altiris also plans to better match customer leads according to partner expertise via an online business partner portal.

Fritz Byam, COO of ITS Communications, an Altiris partner in Grand Rapids, Mich., has already seen the results of the new program firsthand. "Our formal relationship is with HP, and HP sells the [Altiris] licenses, then they refer the professional services to us and we get a referral fee on the license," he said. "So we get the services and the entrance to the customer."