Novell’s Javier Colado: Making His Move
New Channel Chief Javier Colado has his eyes on multiple opportunities to bolster Novell’s partner program. In this quick email interview with The VAR Guy, Colado describes some of his executive experience, and some of his initial goals.
Novell announced Colado’s move into the channel chief position on Sept. 12. At the time, The VAR noted that Colado will need to build some bridges between Novell’s SUSE Linux and ISVs and integrators.
The VAR Guy traded email with Novell PR in recent days, and lined up an online interview with Colado. Here’s a look at the quick Q&A session.
The VAR Guy: Did you raise your hand for the job? How did your name get on the short-list of candidates?
Colado: Well, ever since joining Novell the channel and partners have been a big part of my job – for the last two years I was area general manager and vice president for western Europe, Middle East, and Africa and was responsible for all operations, sales and marketing. And before Novell I’ve had executive positions with McAfee and Lucent Technologies, where channel was the focus.
Our CEO Ron Hovsepian knew my background and approached me about the job. He reasoned that I had both the right skill set and understood first-hand the challenges we face internally to really be successful. I jumped at the opportunity.
The VAR Guy: Where were you based prior to moving into this position and where will you be based now?
Colado: I’m based in Spain, in Madrid. Over the next couple of months I’ll be moving my whole family to the Boston area and I’ll be working from Novell’s Waltham HQ. It’s an exciting time.
The VAR Guy: Do you see an opportunity to connect the dots between SUSE Linux ISVs and integrators/partners? If so, how so?
Colado: Absolutely. First, if you look at just the Novell portfolio, we have a lot of cross-selling and upselling opportunities for our partners. There are ways ISVs and integrators can, for example, cross-sell our identity and security management products into a Linux opportunity and add a lot of value for customers with high-margin services.
On top of that, we have made great progress with the ISV community during the past year. Our goal now is to keep on increasing the number of certified applications running on SUSE, and on top of that to take the ISV relationships to a different level, so integrators and solution providers can benefit from all these efforts. We therefore plan to work much more closely with some of these ISVs, by for example running common campaigns through our partner ecosystems.
The VAR Guy: What did you do during your previous posts at McAfee and Lucent?
Colado: I was with McAfee, originally Network Associates, for almost 6 years. I was responsible for their business in the western European countries, and for the last 18 months I was senior vice president of worldwide service providers and mobile division. This was a new division aimed at the major telcos, service providers and mobile operators both to fulfill their own corporate security needs and enable them to offer security services and solutions to their customers.
Before that, I was with AT&T/Lucent for about 9 years. I was Managing Director for business partners and channels for Spain and Portugal, responsible for all the existing channel organizations within Lucent, as well managing sales in that territory.
A constant in my career has been a focus on developing and nurturing business through the channel and partner networks. This is what I really enjoy.
The VAR Guy: Any other key messages you’d like to share with the NOVL partner community?
Colado: Creating this new role at Novell is a reflection on how important it is to our business. Novell is already executing on a transformation from a direct to an indirect sales model — managing this transition is absolutely critical to Novell’s continued growth and success.
We started on our channel and partner transformation strategy some time ago, and have made great progress. We need to do more. The main goal is to build on the existing momentum and accelerate the channel transition. We need to make our existing partners more successful by further refining the value proposition we offer, and this is a major initiative in place today. On top of that we need to identify and recruit new partners. We have a very aggressive plan to make this happen.
Fix this if you really honor partners.
http://dockets.justia.com/docket/court-txedce/case_no-2:2008cv00201/case_id-109826/
Opn: For those readers who aren’t familiar with the case, can you share some details?
http://boycottnovell.com/2008/05/20/astrum-sues-novell/
http://www.crn.com/channelcommunity/thread.jspa?threadID=6691
Opn: Thanks for the “old” news. Anything “new” here?
‘On top of that we need to identify and recruit new partners. We have a very aggressive plan to make this happen.’
I think there are alot of VARs who would be more interested in the specifics here. As it was you, VAR Guy who made the statement:
‘there’s no money in file servers these days.’
And I did verify that there is no money in selling Novell operating systems these days, after investigating your proposition.
If there is little to no incentive to existing small partners to sell their O/S, what are they going to do to entice new partners? Maybe it is the statement he made regarding, ‘high-margin’ services business. What if I am a small VAR up to my eyeballs in high margin services business supporting my Microsoft accountbase?
What is going to entice me to start recommending Novell to my clients? Anything short of the greenback dollar ain’t going to cut it, in my estimation, and I think it means more greenbacks than I am already making, otherwise it doesn’t make sense to a VAR. Or does it? VAR Guy?
OK we know the IBM takeover never happened, although they danced Do Si Do and it never amounted to anything to date. I see the Alamand Left with Microsoft going on and the large judgements to keep them going and then, of all things, my mom told me tonight that her broker put her into 5 stocks:
GE, 3M, Novell…
I said: ‘Stop, mom, did you say Novell?’
I advised her that this could go to $20 if they get bought out, but I didn’t see much upside potential from the $5 level we see the stock in now, without buyout rumors flying. Or if the Nasdaq goes up and ‘lifts all boats’.
Maybe the regulatory enviroment will change as the Dutchboy has too many fingers in the dike and a Novell/Microsoft merger would be possible, especially if it is presented as a ‘saves jobs’ kinda thing. I want to tell her to ditch the stock, but I would look like an idiot if they pop due to buyout rumors, or dramatic profitability improvement, etc. What should I tell her?
HurdyGurdy: you’re putting The VAR Guy in a tricky position. He doesn’t make buy, sell or hold recommendations. And besides, he’s stuffing his mattress with cash during the current Wall Street financial crisis.
How’s that for dancing around your question?
VAR Guy,
You are lucky to have cash to stack under your mattress, consider yourself fortunate.
My first guitar teacher, who, when he talked would accumulate a white spit glob in the left side of his mouth as he talked (and kept a hankerchief close at hand to wipe it off) taught as one of his first songs: Greenback Dollar – Kingston Trio. This was back in the 3.x days after I paid for my master CNE out of my own pocket, when every reseller was making 30 to 35% margin on selling Netware, as this was prior to the ‘onslaught’ of the online resellers. This margin not only helped pay for my living expenses but also helped pay for my guitar lessons. Nonetheless, I would like to share with everyone one of the verses:
And I don’t give a damn about a greenback-a dollar
Spend it fast as I can
For a wailin’ song and a good guitar
The only things that I understand, poor boy
The only things that I understand
Eventually, I moved on to another guitar teacher as this one was a little nuts (and I am sure he has passed away by now). You see he had taught himself guitar while living in a nudist colony in the 1950’s. Now I don’t want to talk about Kerouac and the beatniks, as this is not an appropriate venue for these things, however. I think the song is appropriate. Why? Because the writer REALLY DOES CARE about the greenback dollar as it can buy one a guitar and a good song on a jukebox. So in reality, it is the Greenback dollar that matters not only to the writer of the song, but everyone.
And if you are an IT salesperson what are you going to sell? Big Greenback dollars or ‘no to little’ Greenback dollars?
After all you need the guitar and the good times, don’t you?
HurdyGurdy: George Washington is the only face on The VAR Guy’s cash, so our resident blogger isn’t that lucky. Not yet at least.
Well if you stop concentrating on open source and start selling Microsoft and their higher margin companion products (Symantec, Email Spam Software, Database products, etc, etc) then you will turn George Washington into my favorite President: Benjamin Franklin