“Specializations have opened up new business avenues for partners”–Ajay Goel

Why did Symantec see a need to initiate a program like Symantec Enhanced Partner Program?
The IT landscape is undergoing multiple changes. Large enterprises and SMBs are facing stringent budget cuts, yet cannot do away with implementing the right technology to address key business challenges. Customers continue to make it clear that we need to be able to deliver consulting services around our products.

Today, partners need to be both solution and market specialists, rather than being tech­nology generalists for their customers. It is important that they focus on delivering value-added services to their customers and no longer be just sellers. Customers are increasingly looking up to them as their IT experts for upcoming solutions and market knowledge for the same. In order to deliver consulting services around our products and create more scalable consulting business to meet our customers continually evolving needs, Symantec aims at creating greater opportunities for specialized partners to succeed in the market. It is with this vision that the Enhanced Symantec Part­ner Program has been rolled out. Based on a specialist model, it rewards partner invest­ments for competencies in solution or market seg­ment specializations. It is designed to help partners build competitive advantage over others in the market, thereby improving reco­gnition and increasing their profitability. These enhancements reflect and encourage a partner-led approach in some of Symantec's most important markets.

Specializations are the recognition by Syma­ntec of partner knowledge and exper­tise in a solution area or market that is impor­­tant to both our partners, customers and Symantec. Spe­ci­a­lizations document, that a partner has achieved accreditations and met other requirements, demonstrating that they have the skills and experience to deliver a positive customer experience from solution identification through deployment, configuration and support.

Does this program allow partners to specialize in a domain considering they would not be able to offer all services from Symantec?
A partner would acquire specializations depen­ding on the partner's focus and investment. Symantec has a very broad portfolio spanning security, storage and systems management, so the notion of specializations is to help partners focus on those areas of competency that best match the partner's area of focus. Some partners who already have a broad set of competencies could leverage on multiple specializations. Other partners with more of a niche focus could focus on just one specialization. Either way, Symantec rewards partners based on the program framework.

What has been the response so far from your partners?
We have seen an encouraging response from our partners in India. We are seeing some of our key partners investing their time and efforts towards getting the training and enabling their team to be more productive and effective on the field. Additionally, they do feel that the specializations have opened up new business avenues and opportunities. This is one of the key aims of our Partner Program and we are sure that our Indian partners will find it beneficial across multiple aspects.

What are the key specialization levels this program has?
The Enhanced Symantec Partner Program is based on a ‘specialist' model, rewarding partner investments for competencies in solution or market segment specializations. Specializations and revenue will be required to attain Silver, Gold and Platinum levels within the Symantec Partner Program.
Symantec offers two groups of specializa­tions: Solution Specializations and Market Segment Special­ization.

Solution Specializations:
l Enterprise Security
l Data Protection
l Endpoint Management
l Storage Management
l Data Loss Prevention
l High Availability
l IT Compliance
l Archiving and eDiscovery

Market Segment Specialization:
l Small and Midsize Business

Then we have the Master Specializations which are aligned with Solution Specializations, and are available to solution specialists who maintain an active consulting practice in the specialization and meet other requirements.
Master Specializations are available in the following 5 solution areas: Enterprise security, data loss preven­tion, IT compliance, data protection, archiving and e-discovery, endpoint management, storage manage­ment, and high availability.

What is your near short run expectation from your partners?
The continuous development of new techno­logies and an evolving cyber threat landscape presents unique challenges to customers in their business operations. In the absence of a dedicated IT team, and in the wake of emerging enterprise technologies like cloud computing, virtualization etc, the customers require expert advice from partners about the right solutions and technologies to be deployed. We expect our partners to make the most of the Enhanced Symantec Partner Program and other learning opportunities that Symantec brings out for them at regular intervals which helps them to be a trusted partner of the customers. Today, a channel partner is expected to be the trusted expert on whom the customers will rely on completely for all their IT needs.