Microsoft World Partner Conference Day 1

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“A good recession is a terrible thing to waste”.

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Generating Deals in 4 to 6 Weeks? Seriously?

What vendors are asking about this week at Amazon Consulting

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The VAR 500:Strange Bedfellows

Beth Vanni

I’m so glad I get time to sit on airplanes. Really. It seems to get the unlikely place where I get the best, most cogent reading done, while locked in those tiny seats. This morning that reading involved the much-awaited CRN VAR 500 issue (May ‘09) – OK, I’m a little behind….
So, there are three things I’m usually interested in with this issue;
1)  Who’s in the top ten?
2) how many new entrants have made it onto the list?
3) What the average year-to-year growth rate is of the overall group?

Granted,I’m still waking up to my first cup of Southwest Airlines coffee and I’m trying to glean a couple of these three things. But, immediately I have to do a double-take. It’s in the second sentence of the article. “The figure ($597,588,818,754 – total VAR500 annual revenues) is roughly $200 billion (yes, billion) more than last year’s number, largely because of the inclusion of the vendor services arms.” Huh? The vendor’s services arms?

Vendors were placed on a separate list of 25 in 2007 and 2008 and called “the Vendor Top 40” listing. The publication explains that the vendors were reintegrated onto the list, “recognizing their value as solution providers.” Well, yes, vendors add a lot of value to the IT market through their technologies and services. And, through the customer reach and services of their channel partners. But, isn’t putting the vendors’ own direct services divisions in clear and direct ranking competition with their very own channel partners IN A CHANNEL FOCUSED PUBLICATION pretty much heresy?   Now, I’m smart enough to understand that one size doesn’t fit all.  Would anyone really argue that IBM Global Services is a major force among independent global systems integrators in the IT market?  No, unless they wanted to forfeit their job.

What’s the Deal? Multi-vendor “DealReg” Is Here

Live from Diane’s Desk -  weekly update on what’s happening around Amazon Consulting – channel news, trends and partnering matters.

Diane highlights vendor’s need for clear visibility into deal pipeline and new solution to make it easier for channel partners to register multiple vendor deals in one partner portal.

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Day Three Cisco Partner Summit

Diane Krakora gives insight and perspective on day three of Cisco’s Partner Summit in Boston

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Second Day from Cisco Partner Summit with Diane Krakora

Highlights and perspective on the second day of Cisco’s Partner Summit

• Technology Vision Day
• Data Center Announcements  (code name California)
• Small Business Pro Services

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First Day from Cisco Partner Summit with Diane Krakora

Let’s hear it for Diane’s First Video Blog – Made possible by the generous gift of Flip Video cameras to all Partner Summit attendees!

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Cisco Resolves Long-standing Field Compensation Issue

News and Commentary from the Cisco Partner Summit

Beth Vanni

Thousands of partners are in the room.  3500 partners are participating in the Virtual Summit event.   Press and analysts hang on every word from the senior executives, listening for new major investments and innovations.   These are the hallmarks of the Cisco Partner Summit, this year based in Boston, one of the oldest and most sophisticated cities in the U.S.   Many also revere Cisco’s commitment to channels and partnering among the oldest and most mature in the high tech world.   Admittedly, their programs, automation, incentives and partnering commitment from the top-down is legendary.   But, then I listened closely to the keynote speech form Keith Goodwin, Cisco’s SVP of Global Channels……

The Cisco management team announced many channel program enhancements already this week including new services offerings, further extended credit terms to partners, eliminating on-site certification audits,implementing a new limited lifetime warranty  on certain products and adding a new 15% rebate for core switching products. Much of these announcements will really help keep partners focused and profitable on core Cisco technologies and will encourage them to continue to invest in training and pre-sales work. But,the announcement that got THE loudest applause from the audience was around Cisco field sales compensation. Something so basic that it’s hard to imagine Cisco still having this issue acting as a barrier to partner field engagement.

Channel Roundtable for SaaS “Pure Plays”

Sandra Glaser Cheek

We recently held a “SaaS in the Channel” roundtable event with about 10 pure-play SaaS vendors to discuss the challenges and opportunities that they face in developing robust partner programs and ecosystems. After discussing the particular challenges that each vendor faced it became apparent that that SaaS partnering is truly a blend of the old and new. Many of the most basic partner principles are challenging to this crowd – how to train partners effectively, how to craft the best business proposition, tracking evolving partner business models, managing multi-channel strategies, etc. And some of the issues are new – how to continue to educate the market on SaaS as a business and licensing model, how to handle support and when and where to get the partner involved, etc.