Channel Conflict

CF: The other big complaint was, of course, as you alluded, that there was channel conflict with the Citrix sellers. How are you addressing that?

EF: I think things have improved quite a bit from a conflict standpoint. You’re going to have some of that at times. But when you look at the new program, we’re segmenting our customers in two clear segments. Our segmentation will result in a smaller number of customers than we’ve previously had in our enterprise space. Then everything outside of that enterprise space will be what we consider a commercial customer account.

And that business is 100% channel. It had been heavily channel in the past but was not 100% channel. And that’s really the mode for us. All new business that we run through that segment will all be partner-driven, and partner-led, and it’ll be a channel motion, through and through. And that’s a change from what we’ve done in the past. I think the partners are definitely going to see benefit in that. And it’s a core tenant of the program as well, in that they make an incremental discount on every deal that they do in that space immediately.