| Novell refocuses on its partners |
Nov. 19, 2007
Novell's channel partners have not been happy lately. Novell knows that, and on Nov. 19, the Linux power announced a new initiative to increase revenue and profitability for solution providers and consulting partners that specialize in selling Novell technologies.
Among other benefits, Novell will offer enhanced partner education, joint marketing opportunities and free technical support for those partners demonstrating expertise in selling and supporting Novell software. Novell is also creating a new partner executive sales team that will be dedicated to partner success. Working with Novell now gives partners even more compelling options for delivering IT value to their customers, the company said.
A Novell reseller based in the Southeast said, "It's about time. Troy Richardson, former president of Novell Americas, was difficult to reach and he didn't get the channel. I had hopes that Novell would be getting its act together when Richardson went and [Tim] Wolfe came in. I'm still taking a wait-and-see attitude, but I like what I'm hearing so far."
Novell certainly seems to be realizing how important its channel is to the company's bottom line. Ron Hovsepian, Novell president and CEO, said in a statement, "A thriving solution provider and consulting ecosystem selling and servicing Novell software is critical to us and a significant investment focus of the company."
At the highest level, Hovsepian said, "We've made real progress in expanding our partner ecosystem this last year, with important agreements with Capgemini, Dell, IBM, Lenovo, Microsoft, SAP and more. … We're putting even more focus on our solution provider and consulting partners as we move into 2008. We're going to make it easier and more profitable for these partners to deliver Novell-based solutions, and we'll encourage customers to have their IT needs met by our partners, rather than directly from Novell."
Novell claims that over the last year it has invested significantly to ensure that it has the right partner sales and delivery capacity to support its key growth markets. Following the introduction of functional specializations in fall of 2006, Novell's solution provider community is now almost fully certified in one or more of four PartnerNet categories: Linux, Identity & Security Management, Systems & Resource Management and Workgroup. Today's initiative will further help Novell solution provider and consulting partners increase their revenue and profit growth when working with Novell, the company said.
Looking ahead, Novell will be adding numerous new benefits. For example, top-level PartnerNet members will be assigned a Novell partner executive who will be focused on, and compensated in relation to, the partner's success. In brief conversations with Novell's top partners, this concept proved to be very popular. A New York-area system integrator praised it, saying, "Finding the right person at the right time at Novell has been a real headache at times. With this, I'll have someone at Novell whose business is also my business. This has got to help."
Novell is also creating a market development fund to invest in market development activities with PartnerNet specialist partners. At the same time, Novell will encourage customers to work with partners by increasing the minimum spending level customers must meet to qualify for a direct license agreement with Novell.
The company is also creating additional incentives for partner profitability for partners that join the Novell PartnerNet program at the Silver, Gold and Platinum levels. Novell will be rolling out these new benefits over the course of the year.
On the technical side, Novell will partner and share domain expertise with consultants and systems integrators, who will serve as the primary route to customers for consulting and integration services around Novell technologies. At the same time, Novell will be making PartnerNet membership more valuable for its specialized partners, the company said; for example, partners that reach one or more technology specialization levels within PartnerNet will have access to free and unlimited technical support from Novell. Specialized solution providers and consulting partners will also have access to more focused sales and technical training resources.
"We don't represent a software vendor unless the software helps us truly help customers, we can get training and support when we need it and we can be profitable," Mike Norris, CEO of Computacenter, a leading Novell partner in the European Union, said in a statement. "Novell's improvements to their PartnerNet program help on all these fronts. We're providing our customers with great solutions to their IT issues, without breaking their IT budget or locking them into technology that won't serve them over the long run."
For more information about the changes to Novell's PartnerNet program,
see the PartnerNet site.
-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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