Veritas' Renewal Plan

Mountain View, Calif.-based Veritas, the largest hardware-independent developer of data and storage management software, plans in January to follow through on a promise to allow solution providers to sell support and maintenance renewal contracts to its enterprise-class NetBackup data-protection software.

The company also plans to make it easier for its partners to partake in services engagements and looks to add compliance services to the list of offerings to its solution providers.

Art Matin, executive vice president of worldwide sales at Veritas, said the company is preparing to implement a program to let its Elite and Premier solution providers sell support and maintenance renewals. "It's a reward for being an Elite or Premier partner," Matin said.

Those partners will be eligible for a fixed but narrow margin on the renewals--but only if the renewals are signed within a short period, probably 30 or 45 days, Matin said. "If they don't get the renewals done within that time, we're taking it back in-house because we're not going to let the customer get stale and fall out of support."

Partners said the changes will improve their profits. "If we get the service contract renewal piece rolled out efficiently like we anticipate and if we continue to work with the [professional services] subcontracting, we think that it's a no-brainer that we'll double our margin and our profitability with the Veritas relationship next year," said Dave Condensa, president and CEO of solution provider Helio Solutions, Santa Clara, Calif.

Veritas also is preparing to deploy an improved lead-management system, Matin said.

The renewal business is slated to be available to the channel in January, and the improved lead-management program is expected later that quarter.

For Condensa, the opening of support and maintenance renewals to the channel is big. "It's through service contracts that we maintain that ongoing relationship," he said. "When we're excluded from that, it really hurts that relationship in the long term."

Having the ability to sell support and maintenance renewals is huge for two reasons, said Larry Gross, director of enterprise storage at Technology Integration Group (TIG), a solution provider in San Diego.

"No. 1, [Veritas has] my loyalty to stay with the product," he said. "No. 2, I'm actually going out now and engaging and looking for renewals, where before, why look for them [when] I couldn't sell them. So it'll be huge."

Veritas also plans to add compliance consulting via solution providers early next year, said Mike Sinneck, senior vice president of consulting services at the vendor.

The new consulting service is in addition to four other practices already available, including business compliance, storage management, applied services management and utility computing.

Sinneck said Veritas' consulting services will be dependent on partners going forward. "I told my team, I expect you to bring partners into every engagement possible," he said.

To do so, Sinneck said he will expect 20 percent of consulting revenue to come from partners going forward. Also, he said his team's bonuses will depend on meeting such a goal. "We're going to put a measurement in place," Sinneck said. "We're going to track it, and that will tell me [whether] my leadership gets it."

TIG's Gross said having new compliance services will be important for customers still bewildered by the amount of uncertainty in the market. For instance, he said three recent seminars on compliance he attended offered three different reasons why Martha Stewart went to prison.

MICHAEL VIZARD and STEVEN BURKE contributed to this story.