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Computer Associates introduced a new channel program in July, one that abandons the long-honored tiered system. Gone are costly training and certification programs that treated the channel as a revenue center. In their place is a model driven by sales. Channel Zone Editor Carol Ellison recently caught up with Computer Associates Alan Komet, Channel Manager for eTrust Security Solutions, to talk about the new model and look at what CA has in store for partners in 2004.
Ellison: Tell us about the new channel program.
Komet: We revamped our channel partner program completely. We realized that a tiered-model system—where theres a silver, gold, platinum model system—is outdated. We wanted to offer all components of our channel partner program to every one of our channel partners. We have more than 12,000 channel partners that we do business with in North America alone. We wanted to make sure that each one of them would be able to get every one of the benefits that we had so we introduced a program that really centered around four key areas.
Sales and technical training that would be absolutely free.
Free technical support over the telephone. We realized that a lot of resellers tend to be implementers, system integrators out on site somewhere. If they need assistance, we want them to be able to pick up the phone without any problems and without being charged for it. They should have access to our technical support and they do at absolutely no cost to them.
So those were the first two items that everyone was blown away with and the second two items were even better.