8e6: No Throwaway Partner

These days, convincing 8e6 Technologies of the benefits of selling indirect would be like preaching to the choir.

For the past year or so, the Orange, Calif.-based company, which develops Internet filtering and reporting solutions, has been talking to VARs around the globe to determine the best ways to partner with them. The culmination of those efforts: PartnerFocus, the formal channel program unveiled by 8e6 in August.

In business since 1995, the company has been relatively low-key about its partnership operations. But when Paul Myer, 8e6 president and CEO, joined the vendor four years ago, his channel spirit was hard to suppress.

"I was steeped in a channel background. I was at Compaq and NEC Technologies, did channel marketing for NEC monitors and was one of the people behind NEC's Channel Link partner program. We recruited 5,000 VARs in a year," Myer says. "I understand the role of the channel in an IT company's success."

8e6, in fact, already works with about 200 IT partners. The vendor actually wants to whittle down that number--to about 50 by year's end--and forge close alliances with the ones that remain. "We have partners, but they're not all the right ones," says Paul Hafen, executive director of channels at 8e6. "Some have done one-off deals with us, and some aren't taking a strategic approach to deploying our solutions."

Hafen says the ideal 8e6 partner today is a midsize security integrator with a good mix of engineering and sales savvy--about 50-50. "They have the best penetration into the customer base we're targeting: enterprises in the financial-services, health-care and government sectors," he says.

Micro Technology Groupe, a solution provider serving the K-12 education and desktop-publishing markets, has been working with 8e6 for nearly a decade now. The VAR is one with which the vendor wants to build a closer relationship.

"These are the biggest and most positive changes I've seen 8e6 make to its partner initiatives," says Steve Katsman, vice president and CIO of Micro Technology, Bristol, Pa. "They aren't authorizing everyone under the sun to sell their solutions."

Katsman says 8e6's products yield a healthy margin for Micro Technology, and that the VAR has been able to establish long-term customer relationships through its partnership with the vendor.

"We're offering partners great margins--a baseline of 30 percent and 40 percent with deal registration," Myer says. "And it's a simple program. There are no tiers to add complexity. In terms of leads, we're directing VARs to people who have actually told us they're interested in our solutions."

Often, 8e6 passes done deals to its VARs. "Sometimes the deal has actually been closed," Katsman says. "We're just filling the order."

Next, 8e6 will unveil new products. "These will be appliance-based, like our current products, and they'll integrate with the solutions we have now," Myer says. "That means they'll present excellent upsell and cross-sell opportunities to our VARs."