Cat Fight: Astaro Attacks Symantec

In response to Symantec’s recent announcement regarding its direct sales and automated renewal policies, Astaro Corporation, a leading vendor of security appliances, today announced a new promotion aimed at Symantec resellers. Astaro, a 100 percent channel-focused company, is offering a 20 percent discount on Astaro products through its “Symantec Switch” promotion to help alleviate the strain these partners may feel in the wake of Symantec’s new policies.

During a June 12 conference, Symantec COO Enrique Salem announced the following: “Symantec over the last 25 years has been very focused on a two-tier distribution strategy, but as we’ve built out a very strong direct sales force where we’re heavily engaged with each customer, it doesn’t make sense to continue to leverage both a distributor and a partner to serve let’s say, the seven, eight, 900 largest customers in the world.” He continued to explain that those top customers will now have the option to go direct, cutting out the distributor. Salem explained that “…if the distribution channel is not adding value there’s no reason to keep them as part of the equation.”

In addition to cutting out resellers, Symantec also announced a push to more automated renewals. Salem explained “…we’ve continued to drive a new set of automation — a new set of technology that will automate our delivery into the SMB market. We’ve proven in the consumer business that we can move more and more of our business online… We believe the same is true in the SMB segment, where we can automate or simplify the renewal process for many of our products…ultimately driving more efficiency but higher renewal rates.”