BMC partners up

BMC Software's channel chief Jason Andrew is keen to stress that the company's current channel focus is not a rehash – it is a 're-energisation'. Andrew – a Kiwi now based in the United States as BMC's vice president, worldwide strategic alliances and partners – says the company is going through a 'transformative' period for its business with channel partners as part of an 'aggressive' growth plan. "These past six months and the next six months are transformative for our business around channel plans," he says. The company, which celebrated its thirtieth anniversary in December, is building and aligning itself to an indirect strategy as one of five 'transformative'  areas for BMC. "We want to increase from $2.1 billion [current revenue] with aggressive growth, without aggressive costs." The company currently gets one-third of every dollar from its reseller partners. "We want that to increase to 40, 50, 60 cents... and to keep moving forward through growth [in reseller business]," Andrew says. He says BMC is training self-sufficiency in the selling cycle, and empowering its resellers with 'decent' margins. The company also provides margins on maintenance. Asked why the focus on resellers now, Andrew says: "BMC very rarely loses in a bake off with our competition. We lose when we're not in the sell cycle." He says the company doesn't have the strength in numbers within its own team to be across all customers. "In New Zealand, every big fish [technology provider] is swimming there and it's a little pool. Our focus is to work 100% with strategic partners and resellers. We have to go in [to a potential customer] with a partner. As well as its channel focus, the five areas include winning the cloud and software as a service – the faster growing part of the business, Andrew says.