RSA, the security division of EMC, is growing its ANZ channel forces, with the news of several major appointments and what the company’s Country Manager ANZ, Mark Pullen called “a major channel project which involves a significant level of increased investment”. Indeed, he went on to say:  “All our investment for this year is increasing our channel organisation.”This major project includes several new senior appointments and changes to the channel partner program later in the first half of this year. “We are going to be changing our channel partner program for the better, where we will reward the partners who are committed,” explained Pullen. “If we can invest now in a time when the going is getting tough, that’s when you build loyalty, so we figured we were going to double down on our partner program,” he added. To do this and other tasks, RSA has appointed Phil Teague as General Manager ANZ Channels. Four roles within Teague’s team are yet to be filled.Other appointments include Gavin Jarvis as the Strategic Distribution Manager ANZ, who will be working on RSA’s exclusive distribution partnership with Express Data. “They are now such a big part of our business we need to manage them a lot more strategically,” explained Pullen, who foresees a flow-on benefit to the channel, thanks to increased partner enablement. Channel partners can also expect more support from a dedicated channel system engineer, who they can call on at any time for help. To further this enablement, Phil Owen has been named Technical Enablement Manager ANZ. He will be in charge of technical training and certification, which will be, in what Pullen described as “a large departure from a lot of vendors”, provided at no cost for channel partners who make the highest level of commitment.The company will operate a centralised model for the first half of the year and plans to invest more directly in New Zealand in the second half of this year or in early 2010. Francois Marais, RSA’s Information Security Specialist, New Zealand, has been in the country since July.Pullen was keen to point out that while a lot of vendors are likely to cut back on investment, and even retract back into Asia leaving resellers “to carry the support can”, RSA has the might of EMC behind it. “The resources are there to support those partners who see there’s value in the security business. In times of financial downturn, fraud goes up, all types of risk go up, so if there’s a partner that sees in their customer base that that’s happening, we are there to help them develop that part of their business.”For more information, call RSA free on 0800 540 333.