Symantec Partner Deal Registrations Jump 27 Percent

Despite the weak economy, solutions providers are registering more deals with Symantec Corp. But before The VAR Guy offers up some details he has to toss in the following qualifier:

The VAR Guy is not suggesting that Symantec’s revenue is skyrocketing. Rather, the company has made progress getting partners to communicate more effectively about potential customer engagements.

For the quarter ended in December 2008, deal registrations within Symantec’s channel partner system rose roughly 27 percent compared to the corresponding quarter in 2007, according to Randy Cochran, VP of channel sales for The Americas at Symantec.

Getting Back to Business

Again, The VAR Guy is not suggesting that the deal registrations indicate a Symantec revenue spike. But the statistic may suggest that Symantec and its partners — some of whom weren’t thrilled with the company in mid-2008 — have turned the page and are working more closely together.

When asked about the economy (by Ziff Davis Enterprise’s Mike Vizard), Cochran offered up:

“Everybody feels it and is getting pinched by it. As it relates to the Symantec portfolio, a lot [of our products] are not in the ‘nice to have’ [category], they are ‘have-to-have.'”

Cochran’s key point: Regardless of the economy around us, businesses need to stay current with security and backup.

Listening, And Learning

Meanwhile, Symantec has offered a “Mea Culpa” on its Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP) product. The initial offering ran far too slow for many customers and solutions providers, prompting complaints across the channel. But with the debut of SEP Maintenance Release 3, Symantec appears to have addressed those concerns.

During a conference call today, Cochran also touted Symbrain, an online tool that allows partners to potentially find untapped sales opportunities. Cochran says 95 percent of Symantec’s platinum partners have been trained on Symbrain since October 2008.

Oh, and the company is even managing to poke fun at itself through videos like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUTJ0UaNTJU

Hysterical? Perhaps not. (Correction: Certainly not.) But at least Symantec isn’t taking itself too seriously these days.

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