Mega opportunities to be found in key trends

Five key ‘mega-trends’ are presenting ‘tremendous opportunity for the channel’ according to David Dzienciol, Symantec vice president, SMB and channels for Asia Pacific and Japan, who says resellers can use the trends to drive their business.Dzienciol says the five are key things customers are focusing on and viewing as business problems – or opportunities. "Those five key mega-trends are cloud, virtualisation, mobility, the changing threat landscape and information growth – and how it all translated into opportunities,” he says, adding that there is a close link between many of the trends."Information continues to grow and that means you need to look at things such as data protection technology, how to manage data, security, data loss and archiving. With the cloud you’ve got issues such as how to get value, how do we ensure we help customers manage and protect their information... Information protection and management is at the core of it all.”Dzienciol says Symantec is very focused’ on helping partners identify new opportunities for growth. "We’re not recruiting more and more partners. We want to work with a smaller group of niche resellers.”He says Symantec is committed to continuing to invest in its partners ‘to help them achieve predictable, profitable growth with Symantec’. "The channel community is key to our success and with the enhanced Symantec Partner Program [launched in April] we are determined to help partners differentiate their business, maximise sales opportunities and accelerate profitability.” At the recent ‘Power Your Business’ themed Symantec Pacific Partner Engage, attendees were told Kiwi and Australian partners were some of the first to transition to the enhanced programme, which see partners achieving ‘specialisations’ by meeting certain requirements that increase their knowledge and proficiency in a solution family.Dziencol says the majority of the company’s revenue is generated through its partner community. "Our channel vision is to deepen relationships with our partners by helping them to identify new opportunities to accelerate growth and by offering market-leading solutions that help to secure and manage their customers’ information. Through Specializations, partners can add value to their solutions and services and gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace.”Dzienciol says the new enhancements to the programme provide Symantec with a platform infrastructure which has the flexibility and scalability to add and build new modules in response to changing market conditions such as the movement to the cloud; can align and integrate existing programmes which support other areas of the business such as the Technical Support Partner Program; and can incorporate new or acquired technologies such as encryption into the Specializations fold.”He says while Symantec remains ‘very focused’ on its resellers, it will also be increasing its focus on helping distributors ‘be successful’. That assistance is likely to include fiscal support through rebates for particular segments or sets of products and providing advice on ways to look at new delivery models, such as cloud distribution.