Channel Tree : Back On The Channel Track

CA is trying to re-entrench itself with the software resellers and
solution providers as a holistic security player, with equal focus on mid-level
to enterprise-class solutions

Trying to gain lost ground in the security space, Computer Associates (CA)
India is banking on the channel, especially the volume sellers, to help it do
so.

There was a time when CA was one of the most well-known security vendors in
the country. Over time, people started associating it more with enterprise
security and the company did little to dissuade the channel of this notion.

Now, it is trying to re-entrench itself with the software resellers and
solution providers as a holistic security player, with equal focus on mid-level
to enterprise-class solutions.

This is probably why India is the only country where the vendor has appointed
a chairman-Saurabh Shrivastava-at the helm of national affairs, in addition to a
country manager-Amit Chatterjee. One of the reasons behind this is the strategic
importance that the country has as a high-growth region for CA's overall
business plan.

Secondly, CA also has a R&D center in India, which carries out a lot of
development work, underlining the country's importance in CA's global service
delivery plans as well.

Broad Channel Lines

CA has two broad streams of products-one is the volume products business
headed by Vijayant Rai, Director Channels-India and SAARC and the other is the
value or the enterprise product line which is managed by Lata Singh, Director,
Partners and Alliances.

The enterprise section has products like Unicenter, which are typically
products used by larger enterprise customers and have longer lead time in terms
of selling and deployment. The enterprise products also need a whole host of
consultancy services, which is why CA works with tier-1 solution providers to
deliver these solutions.

Volume products by definition are those sold by resellers to the enterprise
as well, but which does not take so long for selling or implementation. Some
examples of the volume products are arcServe, XO Soft and anti-virus products
where the period for implementation is no longer than a few days.

Both streams work through partners, as CA's go to market process is 100
percent through partners. The value partners are tier-1 systems integrators (SI)
in the likes of HCL Infosystems, Wipro, Datamatics, etc.

The volume partner model has a national distributor which then caters to the
local partners. In India CA's national distributors are Ingram Micro India and
Redington India. This aside, it has a set of over 200 partners nationally who
sell a gamut of CA's products from recovery management to anti-virus solutions.

Service business

The entire services in terms of consultation, pre-sales support,
implementation etc for volume products is also done entirely through the channel
partners. The dogma followed by CA is that services is where the margins are
better in the software business and therefore partners must be afforded the
opportunity to make money in services as well.

In the value business, the services amount is much higher, because the
customer engagement is very high as well.

CA's Hyderabad R&D center also doubles up as its global support center. This
center also offers the bulk of support for most products like ArcServe. The
global R&D work also comes from Hyderabad which has over 2,000 people.

Channel tree

In the volume business, Rai has a team of managers and pre-sales teams in
the four regions of the country. The pre-sales team is in charge of ensuring
that calendar training happen in every region and that partners have the
requisite sales kits to close any prospective deals. The channel managers are
responsible for their individual sales teams.

In the value business, there are certain major accounts where CA works
closely with partners like HCL or Wipro in closing the sales deal. For big
ticket projects it also has a large team of pre-sales people who are there to
construct the solution and work with the partner team to handhold them into the
implementation part.

As it stands, the ecosystem is pretty well-oiled since it has been in place
for a very long time. CA claims to provide the air cover to its partners in
terms of all the pre-sales support required, including the budget planning. In
recent times, there have been some changes in the company's top senior
manage­ment in India. Now it is looking at ways to augment the structure in the
volume business to get more business.

This does not necessarily mean that the company will add more distributors.
Instead it will probably increase its channel partner network by 20 percent this
year. The company is in talks with some of the newly emerged value-added
distributors, though there are no immediate plans on the anvil to add them as
national distributors.

As told to Vinita Bhatia