More Business For Veritas Partners?

In our 2004 Annual Report Card (ARC) partner satisfaction survey, Veritas finished second behind Tivoli in the enterprise storage management software category. The result was an improvement over 2003, when it finished third, but a disappointment for a company that won the survey for two years straight immediately before that. In particular, partners this year gave Veritas generally strong scores but faulted it in key areas, including perceived weaknesses in channel conflict, sales partnering and the company's partner portal.

But changes are likely to address shortcomings there and elsewhere. For example, the company, which stunned Wall Street with the surprise disclosure that its enterprise sales were slowing, has decided to regroup and reorganize. Art Matin, executive vice president of worldwide sales at the Mountain View, Calif.-based company, says the company is steering more of its own resources to focus on its biggest accounts.

"Think of the classic market triangle; we're taking patch people and refocusing them on named accounts," he says. While hoping to provide better service to Veritas' largest accounts, which are often catered to directly, Matin concedes that will leave more midsize customers uncovered, he says. The net of that: "We will have to depend more on partners and allies to serve their important customer accounts," he says.

The total number of accounts Veritas believes it can call on directly is only in the few hundreds, meaning some Fortune 500 accounts will need more attention from partners.

Other Changes In the Works
Veritas also is making bigger and broader changes throughout the company. In late September, for example, it reorganized around three new product groups. The reason: to better enable "the company to accelerate its growth, align its product strategy with customer requirements and drive its vision for utility computing," is the company's official line.

What that means is that some of Veritas' best managers will have more control over specific initiatives, enabling the company to zero in on what is and what isn't working in key segments, and to help it adjust its portfolio and strategy more quickly.

To that end, Mark Bregman was named CTO of Veritas' software unit. His mission is to help make the company a leader in utility computing. Former chief marketing officer Jeremy Burton, meanwhile, was named executive vice president of the company's data protection group, while Kris Hagerman was named executive vice president in charge of the company's storage and server management group. Burton gains overview of Veritas' NetBackup software, Backup Exec software and other products, while Hagerman will now oversee the development and market strategy for Veritas' Storage Foundation suite, Volume Replicator, Clustering solutions and other products.

Another change at Veritas, and one that will likely have a more immediate impact on the channel, was the elevation of Julie Parrish from senior director to vice president of Americas field and channel marketing. Parrish has longstanding ties to the channel and Veritas, too. She helped run channels at 3Com for years during a period when its ties to the channel were at their absolute strongest. For the past few years, she has worked side-by-side with Michael Sotnick, vice president of Americas partner sales; the two arguably represent one of the best one-two combinations in alliances today.

One of the first things Parrish wants to address is weaknesses with Veritas' partner portal. That needs an overhaul, and she has had to get in line with everyone else at the company clamoring for IT makeovers. (Remember: Veritas has gone from $600 million in sales to $1.7 billion in just a few short years, putting enormous strain on IT and other parts of the company.)

As for Sotnick, he has overseen the reduction of Veritas' partners, which hasn't always been popular, and now commands a force of approximately 400 or so allies. But look for him to begin building the company's base back up, not quite to the point where it once was, but in select, key areas. For example, the company's recent acquisition of KVS, a leader in e-mail archiving solutions, means Veritas will simply need more allies with Microsoft skillsets to make the most out of that opportunity.

"We're better focused and better organized to engage partners than at any time in our history," Sotnick says. "Along with the new products and strategies, it has never been a better time to be a Veritas partner."