CRN Exclusive: Brocade's New Channel Chief On Investing To Keep Partners On Board And Rewarding Them For Their Loyalty

T he Future Of Brocade

Brocade Communications’ new channel chief, Sandra Glaser Cheek, spoke with CRN about what the vendor is doing to keep partners on board and profitable with the impending acquisition by Broadcom on the horizon.

"We are investing far more than you've ever probably seen a company invest with the primary two goals of making sure our partners stay with us during this ambiguous time and that they are rewarded for doing that," said Glaser Cheek in an interview with CRN.

With Broadcom's plan to divest Brocade's networking business once the acquisition is complete, a deal that includes Brocade’s $1.2 billion of Ruckus Wireless last year, Glaser Cheek said the San Jose, Calif.-based company is aware of the uncertainty partners are experiencing. "We do know that the longer that this goes on, [the] more disruptive [it will be]," she said.

Glaser Cheek also talked about the company's new Network Edge Business Unit, increased channel investments, and what lies ahead for Brocade and its partners.

What has Brocade done since the Broadcom announcement to ensure you don't lose channel partners?

When the Broadcom announcement was made, we mobilized. Our executive staff understood the incredible importance that we don't disrupt our channel business. We have invested huge amounts of dollars in our Q1 and Q2 – our Q1 began on Nov. 1 -- to support our channels with two really important goals: maintain partner loyalty and retain our partners -- and don't disrupt revenue.

So we have a number of incentives and investments made globally in distribution and with our top partners and with our partners’ sales rewards programs. … We are investing far more than you've ever probably seen a company invest with the primary two goals of making sure our partners stay with us during this ambiguous time and that they are rewarded for doing that.

Can you give us more details around those new channel incentives?

What we focused on was giving distributors and our top-tier resellers obtainable goals with higher- percentage payouts on their rebates. So [there’s] a significant increase in their rebates just to really maintain business at this time. For many of our distributors, they've either newly picked up Ruckus or newly picked up Brocade and we didn't want to lose the momentum with them.

What's another channel enhancement you've created to help keep partners onboard and profitable?

We have a program called Brocade Rewards. This is a sales spiff rewards program that incentivized the sales rep and the sales engineers. We invested double the amount of money that we normally do in this. We included Ruckus products and then we increased the spiffs around that. So we feel like we are covering anyone from a sales organization that's customer-facing -- we've covered distribution, and then we're always rewarding our partner businesses in the form of increased rebates for hitting their goals.

This is for a six-month period … we're going to continue these incentives through the end of Q2, and that is the end of April.

Why is keeping distributors on board so important at this time?

As [Ruckus and Brocade] combine our programs, we have provided a lot of extra MDF to our distributors in [a] proposal-based format. We asked our distributors to come back to us with the most aggressive proposals focused around sales incentives. So not only are we motivating our partner salespeople, but we're making sure our distributors don't lose sight of the fact that we have a combined portfolio. So we have a lot of sales incentives in the form of MDF. Our distributors also had an increase in their rebates around hitting revenue goals and MBO [management by objectives].

What can you tell us rig ht now about the Broadcom acquisition as far as its plans to sell of Brocade's networking business? Are you close to finding a buyer?

Before the holiday break, there were a lot of interested parties. I think even more came out [over the past few weeks]. … We do feel like we're very close. We do know that the longer that this goes on, [the] more disruptive [it will be]. So we are all motivated to ensure that this closes as quickly as possible.

What has Brocade been doing to keep their channel community informed during this transition period?

We have built a whole communications strategy for our partners because we do know that in the absence of not hearing anything, you can get concerned. So we are communicating with our partners more regularly. The three tenets to the communications is that there's continuity, making sure that we're regular with our communication, and that we have confidence.

What would you tell partners about the future of Brocade?

We have a lot of confidence in the future of this company. We're going to continue to communicate with you and it really is ’hold tight’ because as soon as we know where our home is going to be, we're going full steam ahead. And we're even more excited because the Brocade ICX product line we announced last quarter, that is going to be renamed and new products that come out will be called the Ruckus ICX line. So we're really creating this whole portfolio for the network edge -- wired to wireless -- and we're continuing to develop at the same rate as before the announcement.

Can you talk about your new Network Edge Business Unit?

We've renamed the Ruckus business unit internally -- it's called the Network Edge Business Unit. From a channel perspective, that's really where most of our business is. We have integrated the Brocade engineering teams, our product management and marketing teams into one team, which we called the Network Edge team. And we've made some preliminary announcements around the ICX products, and we do have a fair number of new announcements that will be coming up soon. … We are really motivated by this network edge portfolio that we have and we have a lot of confidence around it.

We are not slowing down our development, especially around the cloud, for example.

What has been one of the biggest hurdles in the integration process of Brocade and Ruckus?

You can't underestimate how difficult an integration is when you use separate ERP systems, separate partner portals, different instances of Salesforce. In my experience, and this isn't my first integration, this is what really holds you up. You can design the programs, but if you don't have the infrastructure to really support that, that is really where we have been challenged.

H as the Broadcom acquisition halted the Brocade-Ruckus integration process?

What we decided was that we were going to move forward because we can't leave our partners really hanging without having a sense of what program do they belong to? What are the benefits? What's the opportunity?' So we are furiously working on the integration of our partner program strategy, demand-generation – all of that despite the ambiguous time we're in right now pending the outcome of the acquisition.

We haven't stopped our integration efforts and we're moving full steam ahead.

Why should Brocade partners be excited to sell Ruckus Wireless?

There's low-hanging fruit from a Brocade partner ecosystem standpoint because these partners were already selling wireless and there was very little overlap in our partner ecosystem. The low-hanging fruit for us is, how do we ensure that our combined solutions are motivating and enticing enough to do some competitive displacement around the wireless solutions that Brocade partners were currently selling? We really felt it was on us to make it as motivating for partners to sell our combined solution as possible and not be a requirement to sell both.

Why should Ruckus partners be excited to sell Brocade?

From a Ruckus standpoint, many times we were out of the running for opportunities, for example in E-Rate, where we didn't sell both the wired and wireless solutions, and we're seeing a lot of interest and momentum in education, for example, around the combined solutions. We are now in the running for opportunities that we may have lost just because we were wireless-only before.

What is your goal for 2017?

[Broadcom's acquisition of Brocade] may not close until April, but once we make the announcement of where we're going [it will give partners confidence]. We're using that as a catalyst to move forward because we don't have to wait for the whole acquisition to close. As long as we have the announcement of where we're going, is what we're hearing from our partners. They want to stay loyal. They want to continue selling our solutions. They just need to know where we're going so they can make their decisions.

What are your thoughts for Brocade-Ruckus in 2017?

We remain really bullish because Ruckus was growing faster than all of our competitors in this space. We were gaining market share, we had goals that we were reaching prior to this acquisition. … Now with the combined portfolio with the Brocade ICX from a network edge standpoint, we do feel really bullish. We just really need to find out where we’re going, where our new home is, so we can start putting into place all the things we're furiously working on now.