Julie Parrish's decision to leave Symantec to join storage vendor NetApp comes at an interesting crossroad for the company's partners and creates a leadership vacuum at the software company.
 | ROBERT C. DEMARZO | |
| Can be reached via e-mail at rdemarzo@everythingchannel.com. | ||
The Parrish departure should not have come as a shock to anyone. There were rumors circulating for the past year that she was exploring new opportunities and was reported to have met with NetApp several weeks ago after the departure of channel chief Leonard Iventosch. Symantec had plenty of time to pull together a story around her departure and what the plan was for moving forward. There are good candidates inside and outside Symantec who can address the issues and provide leadership. What the company really needs to do is turn from a defensive posture when it comes to its partner program and products and start showing it is a real innovator. This is not the time to pull back on channel resources, especially as competitors are focusing on extracting more business and allegiance from the channel on a global basis.
There is a playbook Symantec can follow, and it comes from HP and IBM, which successfully turned partner sentiment around after disappointing satisfaction results several years ago. Partners were more or less beating them up at every chance. This type of behavior—also fanned by competitors—feeds on itself and could go on for a year or two before it is quelled. Guess how? For starters, the executives who run channels start spending all their time in the field with partners, whether they are members of their program or not. They also start finessing the top executives who run the business units to fund more channel initiatives, talk about the channel more and provide innovative products. A perfect example of this is HP's midmarket server and storage offering. It is a great channel product designed specifically for a market that buys exclusively from the channel, and the executive who owns that business is all about channel.
Parrish is making a new start at NetApp. It's time for Symantec to make a new start and show the market it is a leader, not a follower.
Do you think Symantec will rise to the occasion?
Everything Channel SVP and Editorial Director Robert C. DeMarzo is at
rdemarzo@everythingchannel.com.
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