Symantec Makes Good on Partner Promises
The VAR Guy is skeptical when vendors unveil long-term roadmaps for their partner programs. Very often, the roadmaps change in mid-journey because of technical glitches or partner confusion.
That’s not the case at Symantec, which today unveiled a new Technical Specialist and Assessments Program, a Unified Technical Support Program, and a three-fold investment in its partner infrastructure. Symantec insiders last fall hinted that these enhancements would arrive in Q1 2007.
Instead of maintaining “Veritas” and “Symantec” technology silos, these steps complete Symantec’s journey to offer a single partner support system covering security and availability solutions.
The Technical Specialist and Assessments Program allows VARs to train–for free–at the own pace via Symantec’s PartnerNet portal. Unified Technical Support ensures that partners have access to 24×7 support for Symantec’s portfolio of security and availability products, notes Julie Parrish, VP of the Global Channel Office at Symantec. And Symantec has also overhauled its PartnerNet portal, providing a single destination for program information, sales training, technical enablement toolkits, and support.
The VAR Guy was particularly impressed with PartnerNet’s quoting system, which helps VARs to generate project estimates for customers.