CA, the new official name for Computer Associates, has announced a major restructuring of its channel in Europe that will now be headed up by former UK, Ireland and South Africa area manager, Tony Martin.
Details of the reorganisation were revealed at its CA World user conference, which was held in Las Vegas recently, by EMEA General Manager Andrew Dutton, who joined CA this summer from BEA Systems.
Criticised in the past for not making more use of partners and looking to maximise licence revenues from customers, CA promised a new era where “power will be delegated to people who deal with customers” as Dutton puts it.
Announcing Martin’s appointment he said, “If you are serious about dealing with partners, systems integrators and ISVs could you possibly allow that role to be given to a junior executive?” In addition to signalling its intent with Martin’s appointment, Dutton said CA would be investing in upgrading and upskilling its channel teams so that “senior executives deal with senior executives”.
Speaking afterwards Martin explained that CA would adopt a different approach with different categories of partner depending on their needs. He will work closely to support its broadline distributors – currently CMS Peripherals in Ireland – in pushing volume product lines such as CA Anti-Virus, Pest Patrol and ARCserve through to a broad range of resellers.
“Those partners want technology suitable and adaptable for that route to market,” said Martin. As a result CA will be offering a new capacity-based licencing model around backup product ARCServe 11.5 while the acquisition of iLumin will add email archiving technology to CA’s portfolio. It is also releasing a number of suites of security products including anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewall products, which are branded as Protection Suites, with a version being bundled with Microsoft Small Business Server.
Frank Kennedy, CA’s Irish Country Manager said he was on the verge of signing another Irish distributor in addition to CMS and David Dunne had been recruited from HP to manage the local channel.
CA’s approach to the large system integrators such as Fujitsu Services, Bearing Point, EDS and Accenture is being driven by the needs of end users who are struggling to align IT with business needs. The Integrated Information Flows unveiled at CA World, which provide partners with workflows and other knowledge to implement CA products more efficiently, will be key to supporting system integrators, Martin believes.
Martin also said that ISVs, VARs and “service-based resellers” will be vital in getting CA into key vertical markets that it is targeting including retail, financial services, manufacturing and government.
In terms of support for partners CA is to cease charging partners for technical training. “The reason we have done that is we are saying to our partners that the more people they get certified, the better incentives we will give them,” explained Martin. The company has also established a CIO University at its EMEA headquarters in the UK which will be open to partners, customers and CA staff.
Martin wants to encourage partners to register potential opportunities with CA and he return he says the deals will be protected from its own sales staff dealing direct. “For every deal they register that closes we will give an additional five per cent rebate,” he said.
Martin pointed out that CA is actively recruiting resellers in Ireland – particularly those who have specialist skills in vertical markets.
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