New Packeteer Programs Boost Profitability

The Packeteer Certified Expert (PCE) program coronates partners that have proven they possess the required knowledge and skills necessary to properly plan, install, configure and maintain all Packeteer products, said John Fomook, director of worldwide field marketing at the Cupertino, Calif., company.

Packeteer's product menu of WAN appliances monitor different classes of application traffic, and throttle back less-critical data traffic when prioritizing available network bandwidth. The products can be sold direct to customers or implemented as managed services.

Packeteer's Named Project Registration program is a deal-registration arrangement that gives Packeteer's Solutions Partners and Affiliate Partners competitive, double-digit discounts that stay locked in for six months after they first register a lead.

In contrast to deal-registration programs that pay partners for the time and effort spent even if a deal isn't closed, Packeteer's Named Project Registration program gives partners discounts that can't be beat unless a competitor sells at cost, said Tim Hebert, CIO of Atrion Networking Corporation, Warwick, R.I.

"If you don't win the deal, you don't get any compensation," Hebert said. "But you do get a real healthy discount and a way to maintain your margin. And that means that anyone else would have to be selling at cost to win the deal from you."

The big plus of the program is the six-month time period the discount is offered for, Hebert said. In some instances it takes time to educate customers about the value of application-traffic management. And when the customer is a slow-moving state or local government agency, the six months is a blessing, he said.

Worthy of note, Fomook agreed that qualifying as a PCE likely gives Packeteer partners a better chance at being tapped for subcontracting work by vendors such as BMC Software, which just last week said it would pick certified installers first when it came to aiding BMC VARs with the integration of third-party products that run on BMC platforms (see story, page 52). In April, Packeteer signed an integration deal to run on BMC's Patrol Dashboard.