Symantec's Vision Quest

Yet, as Symantec executives get ready to outline the next phase of the vendor’s technology integration at Symantec Vision in San Francisco this week, Thompson faces mounting pressure to show value from the merger in light of the fact that the company’s stock has taken a beating since the deal was announced in late 2004. And, since 80 percent of the vendor’s annual revenue—$2.6 billion in 2005—flows through channel partners, one of the most closely watched aspects of the merger continues to be the integration of Veritas’ traditional direct sales culture into Symantec’s channel.

Thompson admits that there is still a lot of work to do before the grand vision is realized. “When you do something as significant as this, I think of it as an evolving work in progress,” said Thompson. “The evolution over the last nine months allows us to think more holistically about what [Symantec and Veritas] as a team can do.” Once the sales reorganization is completed by January of next year, he said, there won’t be any distinguishable differences between the two companies.

One of the main goals of the merger, company executives said, was to develop a synergy between the two product lines that would help solution providers take steps to specialize in both security and storage. Whether that vision is being realized—and whether it’s happening fast enough—seems to be a matter of who you talk to. Several solution providers that partnered with only one of the vendors before the acquisition told CRN they’re in the process of picking up the other’s product line. But some VARs that have longstanding relationships with both vendors said the direct sales culture of Veritas is still readily apparent and continues to be a sore spot. And, unfortunately for Symantec, more than a few solution providers voiced doubts as to whether the expected synergy will ever materialize, saying they believe Thompson’s vision is simply a bridge too far. However, most solution providers CRN talked to appear to grasp the immensity of what Thompson is trying to accomplish and are willing to give him more time.

ADDRESSING CONCERNS
Going into the merger, one of the main concerns Symantec partners had was that Veritas’ direct sales culture would be difficult to integrate into a merged channel program.

Julie Parrish, vice president of Symantec’s global channel sales and strategy, said the vendor began to address those concerns first by eliciting feedback from partners. “In designing the [new] program, we asked partners what they liked about the programs and what we should keep,” she said. As a result, she said, some elements of both vendors’ channel programs have been retained in order to assuage fears from channel partners on each side about how the merger would impact them.

For example, Veritas had a policy of requiring certification for partners before allowing them to sell high-end multiple platform storage products such as Net Backup, Command Central and Storage Foundation, and Parrish says this policy has been carried over. “Veritas partners said they wanted to keep the certification policy in place because it goes a long way toward keeping margins healthy,” she said.

Pat Edwards, vice president of sales at Alliance Technology Group, a former Veritas partner in Hanover, Md., said he likes what he’s seen on that front. “The channel program infrastructure Symantec has brought forth and incorporated has been positive for us legacy Veritas folks because it gives us a chance to make money selling licenses again and protects us against bidding wars,” he said.

To help allay Symantec partners’ fears of channel conflict with Veritas’ direct sales force, Symantec has instituted a policy in which salespeople who take deals direct will lose their commission. “That’s something we as partners asked Symantec for and we got it,” said Steve Barone, president of Creative Breakthroughs, a Symantec Platinum partner in Shelby Township, Mich.

However, not everyone is satisfied with the progress on the channel integration front. Several solution providers, for instance, said they were getting conflicting information related to the integration of the Veritas channel. Marty West, district sales manager at DynTek, an Irvine, Calif.-based solution provider, said there are still foggy areas when it comes to who’s taking responsibility for addressing certain problems, such as when customers have questions about upgrades, maintenance and support contracts, and renewals.

One solution provider who requested anonymity was a partner of both companies and says he has historically had difficulty getting support from Veritas. And although he hoped support on the Veritas side would improve after the merger, he said that hasn’t been the case. The source said he has encountered resistance when it comes to getting presales support on legacy Veritas products. When his staff recently called for support on a 60-day trial version of Backup Exec, they were told that Symantec wouldn’t provide it unless they were certified on the product. “After considerable discussion, they relented and gave us a 60-day grace period to receive support ‘while we pursued certification,’ ” the source said. “Our concern is that the product should work and they should support us.”

A spokesperson for Cupertino, Calif.-based Symantec said certification is not required in order to sell or get technical support for Symantec Backup Exec and Symantec’s inside sales teams provide presales support for free. PORTAL POWER
In March, as part of the first step toward unifying the companies’ channel programs, Symantec combined eight legacy partner portals into a single portal. Symantec plans to use its partner portal as a central location for registering deals and getting information in order to facilitate the integration of Veritas. The portal will enable partners to work more closely with Symantec by giving them a centralized source of information and training, Parrish added.

“Partners should go to the portal and register so that we can see who you are and let you know where to go for information and engage with us,” said Parrish. “We integrated deal-registration systems back in December so partners have one place to go to register security or availability deals and track them,” she said. “That’s an important part of the story to showing [the] value of the merger to the channel.”

However, several solution providers said the portal needs work before they’ll consider relying on it as a primary means of interacting with Symantec.

“My sales force tells me every day that it’s still horribly short on what they need,” said one solution provider who requested anonymity. “A lot of the training information just isn’t up-to-date and the portal is missing a lot of critical information. You can easily tell it wasn’t designed as a heterogeneous site but it is the result of two large vendors’ sites coming together. There are still a lot of separate Veritas and Symantec sections, and because of this you can quite often get conflicting information.”

Another source said that, although the partner portal has information on deal registration, a lot of the information on rebates is out of date. “The process of registering deals and handling rebates is onerous and far too intensive from an administrative standpoint,” the source said.

Alliance Technology Group’s Edwards said that until Symantec makes the needed improvements to the portal, he’ll continue to call his channel contact when issues arise. “What I’m not doing is going to the portal first—there is too much stuff to get through to accomplish what I need to.”

In June, Symantec will focus on increasing portal functionality and improving content and campaign materials to support the partner program, said Parrish.

TRAINING DAYS
Another challenge is providing training on the combined product line. Parrish says training will form the basis of a points-based component Symantec plans to add to its channel program by next January in order to measure partner commitment. “We are looking for a very objective way to track and measure partner investment and appropriately reward them in our program,” said Parrish. “The intent will be to come up with a balanced structure that allows our high-value partners and also some smaller, vertically focused partners to show the value they can bring to the Symantec ecosystem,” Parrish said.

David Sockol, president of Emagined Security, a solution provider in San Carlos, Calif., is an early beneficiary of Symantec’s training focus. Emagined was originally a Symantec partner but recently began increasing training in the Veritas product line. Sockol’s decision came after Symantec, which had previously planned to charge for training for Veritas products, reversed course and decided to offer training for free.

“We’re in the early stages of training, but we’re very excited about being able to introduce Veritas products,” said Sockol. He’s focusing initially on applications with security components such as Enterprise Vault and Backup Exec for Windows. Sockol considers himself lucky because Symantec dedicated one of its channel engineers to provide the company with personalized training. “We’ve been rewarded for our training by getting a pretty high status already,” he said, “and we are continually getting more training and we can turn the better pricing around and be more competitive in the marketplace.”

To Parrish, this is proof positive that the company is on track.

SEEING CLEARLY NOW?
Creative Breakthroughs is another success story. It has embraced the Veritas product line and has seen customer interest in Enterprise Vault and Net Backup grow to the point where Barone said he has had to hire several individual specialists to deal exclusively with these products. “The issue for us was bringing Veritas people into our world,” he said. “It was rocky at first, but they have a nice blend of executives from both companies in place now, and you really have a tough time seeing the overlap between the two.”

DynTek’s West agrees that having a single channel contact streamlines the process of adding new products, and says the hoped-for synergy between the product lines is creating new revenue opportunities. For example, Symantec’s Bindview policy management solution fits in nicely with Enterprise Vault, an e-mail archiving solution that is one of DynTek’s main offerings, said West.

“We now approach enterprise accounts with a different mind-set as far as offering products and services,” said West. “Instead of looking at certain areas within an account, we can now take into consideration the entire enterprise.”

Despite these successes, some solution providers told CRN that no matter what Symantec does to guide solution providers to sell security and storage, they believe Thompson’s vision is fundamentally flawed. Andrew Plato, president of Anitian, Beaverton, Ore., said there’s a belief in the security world that it’s better to use multiple interlocking vendors than a single monolithic vendor. “Symantec has a lot of competition in the security business, and their products are fair to good at best,” he said. “In Veritas, they have a whole different set of competitors, and they are fighting on two fronts and not winning either battle.”

Thompson maintains that Symantec is well-positioned to handle present and future threats. “I don’t think it would be appropriate to suggest that any one company can solve all security and availability problems that customers have,” he said. “It’s true that in order to help customers protect their data you have to move security technology and capacity closer to the data itself. Our advantage is in seeing the data crossing the network and having the opportunity to touch the data when it’s at rest or when it’s being used as part of the application.”

The channel, for the most part, appears to be cautiously optimistic. “I think their vision is achievable,” said West. “But I don’t know if they are as close as a lot of partners hoped they would be by now.”