Talk about timing. Earlier today, I expressed concern that Symantec wasn’t really promoting its SaaS (software as a service) platform during a partner conference here in Washington, D.C. A few hours after my rant, Symantec launched a partner program for the Symantec Protection Network. Here are some of the details.
The Symantec Protection Network (SPN) is a SaaS platform that initially supports online storage, with online security to follow sometime in the next few months.
SPN launched in early 2008 but Symantec has been mostly quiet about the platform’s launch and expansion. The challenge: Finding a way to ensure partners can participate in the SaaS effort.
“Delivering SaaS and figuring out a way to fold the channel into it isn’t an easy challenge,” conceded Chris Schin, director of product management for SPN at Symantec. “Everything about this program is premised on a credit card ordering model. We can take the orders direct, facilitate seamless upgrades and downgrades for activation plans.”
Partners, in turn, will use an agency model. For every customer billing, the initial partner receives a commission. Roughly 200 partners are already participating in the SPN recurring revenue model, according to Schin.
The new SPN partner program includes two levels. According to a Symantec press release:
- The Select partner level allows any Symantec partner to resell Symantec Protection Network online services and benefit from automated service account provisioning and billing. Select partners act as authorized sales agents and make use of Symantec’s automated online portal.
- The Premier partner level is available to Symantec Gold, Platinum or Silver Corporate Reseller Partners who have shown a commitment to developing SaaS revenue streams. Premier partners receive higher commissions and are trained by Symantec to provide comprehensive sales, ordering and service management support to their customers. Premier partners also benefit from the flexibility to transact as an authorized sales agent or through a more traditional reseller buying model.
To be sure, this is a tricky time for Symantec and many channel-friendly software companies evaluating SaaS. The natural path for many early SaaS strategies involves direct sales to customers. But Symantec has worked overtime to design its strategy to include SaaS.
Posted In: Managed Storage Services | Software as a Service and Hardware as a Service
Tags: Software as a Service and Hardware as a Service | Symantec Protection Network | Symantec Protection Network Partner Program
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Your views on Symantec Protection Network are pretty much on target. It did get off to a slow start. We’ve been speaking with Symantec about SPN since late 2007. We finally gave it a try in July and we signed up our first few customers in August.
Will it make our company rich? No. Is Symantec doing a good job engaging us? Yes. Do we see a bright future for SPN? Yes. In two or three years, I expect our recurring revenue from SPN to be quite substantial. We’re laying the foundation for that future now.
We’ve had a lot of success selling Backup Exec for about 5 years. Now we’re going back to those customers and recommending they extend Backup Exec with offsite services from Symantec Protection Network.
The customer response has ranged from confusion (why do we need that?) to instant sales. But in every case, the conversation is opening up doors for us. We’re educating customers about saas and closing some new deals. We’re happy.
I think you’re all underestimating SPN. It’s an extensive platform that will take on security, virtualization services and more over time. It’s going to be a big, massive Symantec cloud. And partners should learn as much as they can about that cloud. We’re getting in early.
John,
This product looks pretty good. I am curious how they handle a seed backup? It takes a bit of time to push 50GB over the wire. Not too practical.
Lane,
I’m a Product Manager at Symantec working on Online Backup.
At this time, a seed backup needs to take place over the wire. Once the initial backup is done (and in fact before it completes in many cases) we begin storing only the delta (changed) bytes so that another full backup is not needed–ever.
However, we definitely understand the need for alternate solutions for large amounts of data, and we have several under investigation. Stay tuned to the blog and forums (or look for email updates if you’re a current customer) for news in this area.
Richard Goodwin
SPN Product Management
Rich,
Thanks for the insight. I will be on the lookout for what you end up with, once you have it figured out I am sure the product will be excellent. We have been a Backup Exec user and reseller for many years.
Thanks