Novell steps up efforts to win back channel

News Christine Horton 2009-12-04 16:21

Dan Veitkus says Novell "cut a lot of dead wood" from its

2009 has marked something of a sea-change in the way Novell does business through the channel. After a long period where it seemed the vendor’s channel relationships had firmly taken a back seat, this year the firm threw itself into winning back the hearts and minds of its resellers.

Veitkus admits the firm has over -distributed in the past, and failing to add value to any partnerships. “We’re going with the relationships that bring most value,” he explains. “It’s always difficult to say goodbye to a long-time partner,” but he adds that it was important “to exit from the programme any partners that weren’t adding any value.”

In the UK Novell has reduced its distribution by 35 percent – including the addition of Avnet in August. Veitkus says he expects its number of ‘non-performing’ resellers to shrink by roughly the same figure.

Despite looking to bid farewell to 20 resellers quarterly, Novell is aiming to recruit 20-25 new resellers to support its different lines of business. This is primarily based around its identity and security management, datacentre automation and end user computing business.

“We’re sending a positive message to the marketplace. Novell is interested in quality, not quantity,” maintains Veitkus.

Veitkus says the firm want between five and seven percent of its channel partners in its Platinum category, 10-12 percent in Gold, and the remainder to be in the Silver tier. He says he expects to be “95 percent there” by January 2010.

This is a far cry from the ‘old’ Novell: “Before we had a huge population [in the Gold tier] – over 50 percent – in name only. The tragedy was that Novell was doing nothing or very little to that population, [like] just giving them a gold badge would make them feel better.”

However, that was then, this is now. According to Veitkus: “The company’s in a better position now to add value than it has [been] in a long time.

“This is a great opportunity to take another look at Novell.”