For eight years Vericept Corp. has been slowly adding partners to sell its content control software along with its inside sales staff.
However, the Denver company has decided to fully embrace the channel by launching its first partner program with the goal of becoming almost entirely revenue-dependent on resellers.
Paul Fistori, the company’s new vice-president of channel sales, said Vericept already has a strong presence here through a deal with security vendor Entrust Inc.
Entrust’s Canadian VARs sell Vericept software, while Vericept includes one of its products in Entrust’s Intelligence Messaging Server for resale through its partners.
With the launch of the new Velocity partner program, however, “we’re making a new push into Eastern Canada,” said Fistori.
“We want to find strong security resellers and VARs that are experienced in integrating complex security solutions into large corporate environments.”
About 25 per cent of its annual revenue – which Fistori wouldn’t disclose – comes from the channel. He wants to have the infrastructure in place to raise that to 100 per cent, save for a few legacy accounts.
When he joined the company in January he decided the only way to meet demand for the products was through the channel, and not by half measures.
The direct sales force will be compensated for working with partners, he said, and not compete against them.
“This year we wanted to put a stick in the ground and really embrace the channel wholeheartedly,” he said.
He’d like to have seven partners in this country.
One will be Integrity Solutions of Vancouver, a 20-person solutions provider that has been a Vericept referral partner for some time.
“We believe this is a good fit for us,” said company president Karim Ladha.
Vericept products will help his firm get business from government and multinational organizations, he said.
“There’s demand and opportunity for products like Vericept in the marketplace, so its better being a fully-fledged partner that can provide the value-add as opposed to a referral partner.”
Verciept makes a portfolio of software that lets companies scan and classify inbound and outbound traffic:
–Vericept Content analyzes all Internet-based communication and attachments for violations of an organization’s corporate governance, compliance and acceptable use policies;
–Vericept Control automatically encrypts, blocks or quarantines suspect e-mail;
-Vericept Discovery classifies an organization’s databases and content repositories for violations of its storage policy;
-Vercept Desktop is an agent that monitors content as it is created.
Velocity is a two-level partner program offering a three-day technical and sales training course, the cost of which for the first year will be absorbed by the software company.
Certified partners have to send at least one staff member for training, are eligible for a 15 per cent discount on product for registering a deal and a further 15 per cent for closing a deal. Gold partners have to send at least two staffers for training, earn 15 per cent off product for registering a deal and another 25 per cent for closing it. They also have to commit to selling $500,000 a year in product and services.
Smaller resellers can also become referral partners
The company may offer training courses here for Canadian partners, Fistori said. For now, however, their choices are the company’s offices in Denver or Boston.
Comment: cdnedit@itbusiness.ca