CA to roll out One partner program by October

Computer Associates (CA) will roll out its global partner program 'One' in India by October 2004. The company claims that
this program is its global statement of intent that it wants to do more business through partners. 

"This program is not something new for Indian partners, but it has a global corporate structure to it, which will help us explain
to partners the value of working with us," says Piti Pramotedham, MD, Asia South, CA. He explains
that CA has several channel programs running successfully in the past few years. The One program will envelop all of these under its umbrella and
will enhance them for each geography. 

Talking about the elements that will comprise the One partner program, Piti informs that there will be technology pieces to
better CA's interaction with the channel. "We will use it to train our partners electronically through an
e-learning system," he adds. Another aspect of the program will be lead generation from CA to the partner and vice versa. 

The new program offers a set of tools, extensive training and sales and marketing support services. It will also incorporate
existing alliance, channel, technology, service and education affiliations in an integrated
framework. It builds on CA's 'Partner for Profitability' global channel partner program launched recently and partners can cross-pollinate between
various programs as their business model moves from supplying solutions to managing it.

Meanwhile, CA is also looking at the SMB segment, which is one of its fastest growing business segment. And to facilitate
infrastructure deployment among these customers, CA is offering them the FlexSelect payment
model. Under this initiative, customers can pay for the software on a monthly basis or even on the product matrix that they have. 

CA has been promoting the idea of FlexSelect among partners, but will promote it more aggressive in coming months. Says
Ninad Karpe, MD, India and SAARC, CA, "If a person can offer a software on monthly basis it reflects
the confidence we have in our product." 

CA has also taken the product upgradation cycles into consideration while creating the FlexSelect program. As long as the
enterprise customer is on maintenance for the software, they don't have to pay for any upgrades that
can happen during that time frame. 

Vinita Bhatia