BLUE COAT’S MAJOR LEAP FORWARD

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Updated : September 12, 2013 00:04  am,Dubai
By Editor

Blue Coat’s remaining channel network in the region is much leaner and more profitable thanks to a major shake-up in their resale partnership

Blue Coat has goes against standard channel practice by actually purging a good number of their own partners as part of a dramatic realignment of their business operations in the region.

In a period of six months, Blue Coat has reduced the number of resell partners by about 40%, according to Pat Dunne, Senior Sales Director, Channels, EMEA. “We have very strong relationships and strong partners in the market who are accomplished in selling the products well,” said Dunne. “What we haven’t done in the last few years however is manage these sets of partners to the standards of the program. So in the last year, we have gone through the partners and looked at the ones doing the right thing, conforming to the program, doing certifications, and helping us attract and manage business. We looked at the certification programs and we decided which partners were still going to be in the program and which ones weren’t.”

The result is that Blue Coat has reduced the number of partners in the program quite dramatically here in the Middle East. In doing so, the company hopes to provide more opportunities to partners who are helping the company grow its business, according to Dunne.  “We’re growing in double digits as an organization while at the same time reducing the partners fairly dramatically; obviously this is creating more opportunities for growth for our existing partners,” Dunne added.

In addition, there was a realization within Blue Coat that the company’s messages to the partners were not being communicated effectively enough to enable them pass the same to the end user. The company decided to directly engage more with the partners through partner events like the Middle East Partner Conference held in March of this year. “At these events, we don’t just talk about the company and the future. We are actually helping our customers be more competitive in the market. We also want to find out what competitors are saying about us and how we should respond to that.”

With customers demanding more, Dunne says Blue Coat is empowering its partners to offer a solution rather than just selling a product. “We have a very good team in the Middle East that is able to sell our products very well. Our partners are working very well with this sales team and we need to extend that so more and more of our partners are able to sell the products and that way we are able to be more effective in increasing our market share,” added Dunne.

What differentiates Blue Coat from the rest of the security vendors is the superior quality, Dunne said. “Blue Coat is an enterprise-class product; we have 86% of the world’s top 500 companies as clients. It’s a brand that is trusted and the reason behind it is that quality and capabilities we have with the product, which is above and beyond any other technology in the market.”

Blue Coat is traditionally known for its security solutions although the company provides other services such as WAN optimization for which the company has been included Gartner’s Magic Quadrant. “Generally, we sell our products in conjunction with each other. The basis of our solutions is security-related in nature and then we seek to add other services,” said Dunne.

Blue Coat recently announced a new channel incentive program. This program is for Premium and Elite partners to encourage them do new business with Blue Coat by providing them with back-end rebates. “The rebates enable our partners be more profitable as they drive Blue Coat business forward and is managed by us in conjunction with our distributors,” explained Dunne.

And Blue Coat is on a positive trajectory, according to Dunne. “We are experiencing double digit growth within EMEA, which is very healthy growth, a trend we see that continuing for the next few years.” The growth is mainly driven by growing customer’s capacity requirements. “A lot of our business is coming from existing customers and with their requirements growing, they need a lot more equipment from us. We are still being perceived by our customers as a market leader; thus we are seeing a lot of organic growth from existing customers as well as winning new business from our competitors.”