McAfee Launches New Global Channel Program

McAfee, as expected, has announced their brand new worldwide channel program. As with all channel programs, McAfee’s goal is to provide a “profitable ecosystem.” So here’s a look at the new program, and what McAfee is calling a “listen, learn and deliver” approach to ramping up their channel strategy…

“Listen, learn and deliver” is the philosophy that McAfee took to reworking the program. And quite simply,  ideas for the program came direct from the partners. With that, the program’s enhancements include:

• Margin Advantage Programs
• Enablement Advantage Programs
• Integration of The Secure Computing Partner Program

Heading up the program is McAfee Senior VP Alex Thurber, a Cisco Systems channel veteran who brings renewed credibility to McAfee’s partner program moves. In a prepared statement, Thurber said:

“The launch of the enhanced McAfee channel program represents our ongoing approach of listening to partner feedback and rewarding partners for the investment they make in McAfee. We’ve modified the McAfee SecurityAlliance partner program to ensure we deliver a fully enabled and profitable channel and make it easier for our partners to do business with McAfee.”

A Closer Look

So let me break it down for you.

Margin Advantage is an incentive program that strives to help partners “predictably and consistently” bring in the dollars. Plus, there’s increase margin for certain “value-add activities.” The Margin Advantage program has three categories:

• Margin Building programs – which give partners a combination of margin enhancement programs such as deal registration, tiered pricing and teaming plans to maximize their front-end margin;
• Business Building programs – which include a Market Development Fund (MDF) program that drives pipeline opportunities through relationship building and demand generation activities; and
• Profit Building programs – which include a variety of specific incentive programs to benefit partners as well as their sales representatives and sales engineers.

What’s more, McAfee has introduced two new Margin Advantage programs available to the Americas. They are “Deal Protection” and “Incumbency Advantage” which are less like programs, and more like gentlemanly rules…

The McAfee Deal Protection policy states that if an opportunity has been approved as a deal registration or if an approved applicable teaming plan is in place with a McAfee partner, quote exceptions or special pricing will only be offered to the original McAfee partner. In effect, this offers Deal Protection for the authorized partner for this target opportunity. Similarly, Incumbency Advantage provides a registration option that will provide additional margin to the reseller that closed the original business.

Enablement Advantage

Pillar number two, the Enablement Advantage, is McAfee’s plan to provide  Channel Technical Enablement Engineers who will help partners become  “technically enabled.” Essentially, they’ll provide pre-sales content, demos and technical position know-how. This also comes with “Ready, Set, Sell,” which is a phased approach to partner training, sort of like a checklist.

There’s also McAfee’s new “ACE Partner Readiness Program,” which provides rewards for partner sales — along with tech pros — who display high levels of certification and competency in specific solution sets.

Secure Computing

The last pillar is the final integration of Secure Computing — McAfee’s year-old acquisition. The phasing approach to this integration has come to a head, and the final stage of the integration is complete. According to McAfee, the launch of the new McAfee Security Alliance Partner Program marks the last stage of Secure Computing’s partner integration.

Lots of Chatter

Meanwhile, McAfee’s partner program launch arrives at an intriguing time. In recent days, most of the major endpoint security software providers have made strategic moves.

Earlier today, Apax Partners acquired majority control of Sophos, the fast-growing endpoint security and data loss prevention (DLP) software specialist. And The VAR Guy’s blog team is tracking partner program moves at Symantec, Trend Micro and Kaspersky Lab. Back with more thoughts after we hit a few deadlines.

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