MUMBAI: Novell will launch its global partner program-PartnerNet-in India in November, 2009. The revised version of this program was launched globally a year ago, to translate the company's aggressive push of its open source solutions in the indirect channel space since 2008.

This program categorizes partners on Silver, Gold and Platinum levels and there are different commercial engagements for each of these categories. Partners are graduated on these levels on the basis on technical and sales certification as well as business generated.

In return they get access to deal registration program so partners bringing deals first are rewarded. This aside, they have access to all the technical information about the company's solutions and technical support. Novell in India is now trying to engage with the right partners who can be part of its ecosystem and PartnerNet program. To do this, it engaged a consultant who mapped out the parameters and criteria on which the right profile of partners could sell Novell's solutions.

Sandeep Menon, Country Head, Novell India said, "Of the 20 names we finally picked up, most were emerging players who were clear that they want to be in the service delivery space and infrastructure software is a component of that."

To support these partners, Novell will appoint a team of channel managers, each of who will be responsible to five-odd partners. These channel managers will make their money only if his set of partner can get the business and he can't bill to any other partner outside his set.

"We want the message to go to these partners that they should take Suse Linux and build stacks on it and then go to the customer and say I have a mailing, messaging, data center management portfolio and this is built on open source. Then there is a whole bunch of services around this, for which we will spend money on training and enabling the partners," said Menon.

The company is also finalizing plans to create proof of concept centers called SMB Labs for solutions that are targeted at the SMB market, in over 10 cities. It is trying to work out models where other non-competing vendors can be aligned into this program, to make it a more economically sustainable venture. The company is also going to rollout its Novel Certified Linux Trainer program through franchisee training institutes in the country in a bit to have a better network of trained manpower.

"We will provide our training partners the curriculum, training material, facilities for online test, etc to have a wider network for trained Linux professionals. We predict that the growth for Linux will soon be so high that the demand for skilled manpower is going to outstrip the availability," Menon noted.