Veritas' Matin Discusses Partner Ecosystem

In conjunction with the launch of Veritas Software Backup Exec 10.0, the company's executive vice president of worldwide sales, Art Matin, discussed the vendor's ongoing channel efforts, program evolution and competitive landscape in an interview with Editor in Chief Michael Vizard and Editor Heather Clancy.

*ALSO: View a video excerpt of this QandA on the Veritas Web site.

CRN: What essentially is your role, and how do you interface with partners?

MATIN: My role is global. We specifically did not put in a global head of channels, which I know some companies do and some companies don't. It's something we've been contemplating. To a great degree, I'm kind of reliant on my three geographic sales leaders to manage the partner programs. We were reliant on [former Veritas channel chief] Michael [Sotnick] as kind of a thought leader to help make sure that we were at least sharing best practices around the programs. The programs are a little bit different. We weren't driving for 100 percent consistency in our programs territory to territory. And it shows up in terms of our partner participation. If you just look across the globe at the percentage of business through partners, it's highest in Asia-Pacific and Japan. The next-highest would be EMEA [Europe, Middle East and Africa], and the lowest would be in the U.S.

CRN: So what are the percentages?

MATIN: It's more than half through partners.

CRN: More than half of revenue?

MATIN: More than half of new license sales is through partners.

CRN: Is that a U.S. number?

MATIN: So the numbers are a very high percent, like 90-plus percent, in Asia-Pacific and Japan in aggregate. They're going to be greater than 80 percent in EMEA in aggregate. And everything in the U.S., they're going to be in the 70 percent or so range. There's both two-tier distribution and one-tier distribution. We have pretty significant partnerships with the large OEM manufacturers and the large global systems integrators. We're doing business through IBM Global Services, EDS, Computer Sciences Corp. as well as relationships with Hewlett-Packard and Sun [Microsystems] that take products to market for us. So if you add all that in, the indirect channel is going to be in that 75 percent range. And it's pretty consistent year over year.

CRN: Do the salespeople in the U.S. have a compensation model that drives them to the partners?

MATIN: We talked about that. We don't do anything that is abnormally skewed toward partners. So they get paid on the net business that comes through. Because we've been very partner-centric, with the majority of the business running through [the channel], it hasn't caused a tremendous amount of conflicts. But there's obviously sometimes where people say, 'Gee, I'm not sure I like the behavior or how somebody did something.' Like any business, one of the challenges is how do you get consistency? So one of the big themes we're trying to drive in our business this year and in the partner programs is more consistent execution and deployment against those programs.

CRN: In the initial call about the merger between Symantec and Veritas, it seemed as if you were setting things up so that the Veritas side would run the direct-sales force and the Symantec people would run the channel. Is that what we can expect, or is that view overly simplistic?

MATIN: I don't think that's either what they said or were trying to say, but I realize why people jumped to that conclusion. So there's some myths. One of the myths is that Symantec doesn't have a really strong presence in the high-end enterprise business when, in fact, they do. They have a very strong direct presence from a coverage standpoint. They just happen to have a model that is completely over toward a very high degree of fulfillment through the channel, almost mandated--really, only on the contracts where the customer demands a direct relationship. Otherwise, they do everything possible to fulfill it through the channel. Because they have such a strong business in the SMB and in the consumer business, people can easily overlook how strong they are at the high end of the enterprise.

We look and say that when you put the company together, one of the really strong points is the breadth of coverage from the very high end of the enterprise down to the consumer. I think we have an even deeper touch in some of these high-end enterprises than even Symantec does, but it doesn't mean Symantec doesn't have a lot of presence. And when we think about how we're going to line up, I think we're going to look and see how do we build and maintain a lot of the relationships we have with the high-end enterprise.

CRN: Will the Veritas brand continue moving forward?

MATIN: The company name is going to be Symantec. There wasn't dramatic debate on that. It's got one of the most credible brand recognitions in the enterprise, the full range from consumer to enterprise. I think with some of the products, there's no reason not to be able to maintain the Veritas brand affinity for some of the product groups. But the work on that hasn't really started.

CRN: Is it your perception that there will be multiple sales forces for a period of time?

MATIN: We have to do the work. Having been the president of McAfee, there's a lot to selling security solutions. It's complex, enterprise, heavy stuff. And it's not just the products; it's all the processes around them. Likewise, it takes a lot of skill and experience to sell the Veritas products. So certainly, going forward, we're going to make sure we come to a common value proposition to the customer. We need the specialization and deep skills on how to leverage and use each of our products to the customer's benefit for a long period of time. How we actually organize that and balance that between people who drive relationships vs. people who know product in depth, like the presales resources, we just haven't done the work yet.

CRN: What is the overlap in terms of channels?

MATIN: Honestly, I don't know the number answer to that. I don't think we know precisely. Part of the integration work is to lay out the different channel programs and the different channel reach by [geography]. But logically speaking, both companies are very reliant on the large Microsoft service provider community and the large Windows-oriented reseller community. I think one of the real strengths is that both of us had a strong presence with those firms. We'll collectively become an even larger portion of their business and in there get even more attention and investment.

CRN: Will the advisory councils be pulled in on the integration strategy on the channel side?

MATIN: We're going on a bit of listening campaign. That's partially through the advisory councils. We're certainly going to leverage the fact that we do have advisory councils, but I also think that sometimes in one-on-one conversations you learn even more. I want to talk to some partners that are already familiar with both companies and can give us advice on how this would work best for us. And then I want to go to guys who are the high-end, boutique security players that have made no investments in storage to date. Likewise, we have [to talk to] some of the high-end enterprise players that have only invested in storage and don't have any capabilities in security and to try to understand what their appetite is to try to spread out and expand.

CRN: How are you going about ensuring higher attach rates for your products?

MATIN: This launch around the Backup Exec suite is about a richer, more clothed solution for the customers. It's because the customers' needs have changed. We think there's going to be a very high demand for the suite, as opposed to individual point products. People understand that they've got to do more than just think about the data protection. They've got to think about storage management, recoverability kind of aspects. We're also looking at the Windows-capable channel and giving them the opportunity to expand up toward the enterprise space around the Windows market. I think that's an opportunity for partners--key partners--to expand their business with us and leverage the fact that they've got relationships in very high-end enterprises around a specific platform.

CRN: How does deal registration apply?

MATIN: We're just rolling it out. It's not as automated as we'd like. So it's still a pretty manual process. One of the things as we do this information [gathering] task is we look at what the partner portals need to look like, what the customer portals need to look like, what the CRM systems need to be. So some of the things that we had in process, we need to pause here for 90 to 100 days.

CRN: Can you give us a sense of your progress on your SMB efforts?

MATIN: I think we did OK, but not great. I think we have to keep working on it.

CRN: What makes you say that?

MATIN: We could execute more effectively internally with the coordination between the inside sales organization, lead management. We're rolling out and working on lead management approaches that feed more leads to the partners. I think the concepts were good, some of the tools we had our at disposal to execute--whether it was lead management, partner communications systems, lead tracking--all these things. We probably had a couple of missteps in execution, and we can do better.

CRN: Do you need to replace Sotnick?

MATIN: In the normal course of speed, we'd actually be working like crazy to replace Michael. Michael's role was vital to what we were doing. It's the primary face to the channel partner, the guy driving the programs. Given the merger, frankly, we're going to step back and work together with Symantec and get a sense of how we'd like to structure this and look at the people we have at our disposal. In the interim, we have a very good team.

CRN: How are you positioning yourself in utility computing, especially with these larger companies really focusing a lot of marketing in that space?

MATIN: The nature of our business is that we need to partner. Our kickoff meetings that we've got going on right now, the theme is customer first. The whole point is, let's listen to the market and guide our principles and actions by what our customers are telling us. So customers want participation and cooperation between Veritas and IBM, between Veritas and Sun, between Veritas and HP. And we work hard to try to enable that. The core value proposition of providing a heterogeneous solution in a very tight time frame--one-all platforms--is one of the core fundamental objectives that we have at the company.

CRN: What are you really thinking about? What are the problems of your day?

MATIN: There are two pieces to my job. One is growth, and the other is customer satisfaction, making sure that as the chief customer advocate in our company, everything is dialed around what's going on with our customers. I think that is where we have a chance to distinguish ourselves from the pack. We are at least among the elite pack of companies that do that well. This is something I want our enterprise partners to participate in. At the high end of the market, these companies want direct access to our developers. They want to be shaping our future product strategies. They want early access to our technology. We have to facilitate that relationship. In the medium and smaller businesses, they want something like we're delivering with the Backup Exec 10, which is something that's integrated, deals with more of their problems and is easy for them to deploy. They just want the problem to go away and be easier for them to manage. So I think about whether we're doing enough things as a company to align ourselves to deal with this.

The other part is how enabled and how motivated is that ecosystem that goes out and services the customers? Namely, the Veritas sales and systems engineer force, the partner force, the partners from a technology standpoint that we work with. We always need to tune up the partner programs. Look at things like enabling premier and elite partners to sell renewals. Look at deal registration or opportunity registration to do some margin protection. Go back and retune the lead management system for partners. Those kinds of things. We need to keep the partner community motivated and look at the training capabilities. So we've invested a lot in training for our partners, and we're going to continue to do that.

CRN: EMC is trying to take your oxygen away with its VMware, Dantz and Legato acquisitions. What's your story about how you compete with EMC?

MATIN: I think we just keep hammering away with product excellence and great customer support. Certainly, they're worthy competitors. That's the way the world is. And the noise is that we're going to be distracted [with the Symantec merger]. We're not going to be distracted.

CRN: Will the Veritas brand continue moving forward?

MATIN: The company name is going to be Symantec. There wasn't dramatic debate on that. It's got one of the most credible brand recognitions in the enterprise, the full range from consumer to enterprise. I think with some of the products, there's no reason not to be able to maintain the Veritas brand affinity for some of the product groups. But the work on that hasn't really started.

CRN: Is it your perception that there will be multiple sales forces for a period of time?

MATIN: We have to do the work. Having been the president of McAfee, there's a lot to selling security solutions. It's complex, enterprise, heavy stuff. And it's not just the products; it's all the processes around them. Likewise, it takes a lot of skill and experience to sell the Veritas products. So certainly, going forward, we're going to make sure we come to a common value proposition to the customer. We need the specialization and deep skills on how to leverage and use each of our products to the customer's benefit for a long period of time. How we actually organize that and balance that between people who drive relationships vs. people who know product in depth, like the presales resources, we just haven't done the work yet.

CRN: What is the overlap in terms of channels?

MATIN: Honestly, I don't know the number answer to that. I don't think we know precisely. Part of the integration work is to lay out the different channel programs and the different channel reach by [geography]. But logically speaking, both companies are very reliant on the large Microsoft service-provider community and the large Windows-oriented reseller community. I think one of the real strengths is that both of us had a strong presence with those firms. We'll collectively become an even larger portion of their business and in there get even more attention and investment.

CRN: Will the advisory councils be pulled in on the integration strategy on the channel side?

MATIN: We're going on a bit of listening campaign. That's partially through the advisory councils. We're certainly going to leverage the fact that we do have advisory councils, but I also think that sometimes in one-on-one conversations you learn even more. I want to talk to some partners that are already familiar with both companies and can give us advice on how this would work best for us. And then I want to go to guys who are the high-end, boutique security players that have made no investments in storage to date. Likewise, we have [to talk to] some of the high-end enterprise players that have only invested in storage and don't have any capabilities in security and to try to understand what their appetite is to try to spread out and expand.

CRN: How are you going about ensuring higher attach rates for your products?

MATIN: This launch around the Backup Exec suite is about a richer, more clothed solution for the customers. It's because the customers' needs have changed. We think there's going to be a very high demand for the suite, as opposed to individual point products. People understand that they've got to do more than just think about the data protection. They've got to think about storage management, recoverability kind of aspects. We're also looking at the Windows-capable channel and giving them the opportunity to expand up toward the enterprise space around the Windows market. I think that's an opportunity for partners--key partners--to expand their business with us and leverage the fact that they've got relationships in very high-end enterprises around a specific platform.

CRN: How does deal registration apply?

MATIN: We're just rolling it out. It's not as automated as we'd like. So it's still a pretty manual process. One of the things as we do this information [gathering] task is we look at what the partner portals need to look like, what the customer portals need to look like, what the CRM systems need to be. So some of the things that we had in process, we need to pause here for 90 to 100 days. CRN: Can you give us a sense of your progress on your SMB efforts?

MATIN: I think we did OK, but not great. I think we have to keep working on it.

CRN: What makes you say that?

MATIN: We could execute more effectively internally with the coordination between the inside sales organization, lead management. We're rolling out and working on lead management approaches that feed more leads to the partners. I think the concepts were good, some of the tools we had our at disposal to execute--whether it was lead management, partner communications systems, lead tracking--all these things. We probably had a couple of missteps in execution, and we can do better.

CRN: Do you need to replace Sotnick?

MATIN: In the normal course of speed, we'd actually be working like crazy to replace Michael. Michael's role was vital to what we were doing. It's the primary face to the channel partner, the guy driving the programs. Given the merger, frankly, we're going to step back and work together with Symantec and get a sense of how we'd like to structure this and look at the people we have at our disposal. In the interim, we have a very good team.

CRN: How are you positioning yourself in utility computing, especially with these larger companies really focusing a lot of marketing in that space?

MATIN: The nature of our business is that we need to partner. Our kickoff meetings that we've got going on right now, the theme is customer first. The whole point is, let's listen to the market and guide our principles and actions by what our customers are telling us. So customers want participation and cooperation between Veritas and IBM, between Veritas and Sun, between Veritas and HP. And we work hard to try to enable that. The core value proposition of providing a heterogeneous solution in a very tight time frame--one-all platforms--is one of the core fundamental objectives that we have at the company.

CRN: What are you really thinking about? What are the problems of your day?

MATIN: There are two pieces to my job. One is growth, and the other is customer satisfaction, making sure that as the chief customer advocate in our company, everything is dialed around what's going on with our customers. I think that is where we have a chance to distinguish ourselves from the pack. We are at least among the elite pack of companies that do that well. This is something I want our enterprise partners to participate in. At the high end of the market, these companies want direct access to our developers. They want to be shaping our future product strategies. They want early access to our technology. We have to facilitate that relationship. In the medium and smaller businesses, they want something like we're delivering with the Backup Exec 10, which is something that's integrated, deals with more of their problems and is easy for them to deploy. They just want the problem to go away and be easier for them to manage. So I think about whether we're doing enough things as a company to align ourselves to deal with this.

The other part is how enabled and how motivated is that ecosystem that goes out and services the customers? Namely, the Veritas sales and systems engineer force, the partner force, the partners from a technology standpoint that we work with. We always need to tune up the partner programs. Look at things like enabling premier and elite partners to sell renewals. Look at deal registration or opportunity registration to do some margin protection. Go back and retune the lead management system for partners. Those kinds of things. We need to keep the partner community motivated and look at the training capabilities. So we've invested a lot in training for our partners, and we're going to continue to do that.

CRN: EMC is trying to take your oxygen away with its VMware, Dantz and Legato acquisitions. What's your story about how you compete with EMC?

MATIN: I think we just keep hammering away with product excellence and great customer support. Certainly, they're worthy competitors. That's the way the world is. And the noise is that we're going to be distracted [with the Symantec merger]. We're not going to be distracted.