Veritas Overhauls Partner Force Program

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The Veritas Partner Force program, which got the vendor on its feet with partners after Symantec sold the company to Carlyle Group investors three years ago, just got an overhaul. The refresh is designed to help partners sell more of the vendor’s 360 Data Management portfolio and multicloud data management solutions.

Veritas’ Barbara Spicek

Barbara Spicek, vice president of channel and alliances, who joined the company in September, is leading the charge. The new channel chief said that in addition to a partner-program redesign, to make the program simpler, more profitable and more predictable, Veritas is launching a more structured worldwide distributor program.

“Veritas has evolved so much in terms of technology because we really are a much broader company in terms of full blown offerings around 360 data management and multicloud solutions. I felt like we need to make sure that we can take our partners along this journey,” Spicek told us.

Taking a deeper dive into Partner Force program enhancements:

On the distribution front, Veritas works with 80 distributors worldwide. The vendor’s new, structured program with distributors is designed to drive more business in the midmarket and commercial segments, particularly among its unmanaged partners.

Veritas works with traditional systems integrators and VARs, as well as MSPs and cloud service providers (CSPs).

“We scale the entire scope of partners,” said Spicek. “Specifically, when it comes to MSPs and CSPs, we are actively offering to help them design integrated as-a-service offerings — backup as a service [and] disaster recovery as a service.”

As a multicloud vendor, Veritas has partnerships with Microsoft Azure, AWS, Google and IBM; it currently has Azure/Veritas and AWS/Veritas integrated offerings.

Veritas is extending opportunities to its global distributors, including managing reseller relationships, providing technical support and partner enablement. Distributors also will receive joint marketing funds that reward volume business around data management and protection.

About 3,500 of the company’s 9,000 partners worldwide  are based in the U.S., the bulk of whom are registered – or unmanaged – partners. Only 140 U.S.-based partners are in the silver, gold or platinum program tiers.

Veritas isn’t looking to expand the number of partners it works with, but is interested in working with existing partners to help them evolve and grow their businesses.