What it takes to be a good McAfee partner

LAS VEGAS, US: Intel's acquisition has turned into a major learning experience for McAfee. As Intel channel programmes have tremendous success in the benefits they offer, McAfee is drawing the best from them and bringing more value to partners.

Asserting that India is McAfee's high growth centre in APAC region, Pedro Abreu, McAfee VP, Strategic Operations and Planning, says dynamic channels and biggest adoption around training and learning technology differentiate India from other regions.

In an interaction with CIOL at Focus 2012 in Las Vegas, Abreu explains McAfee's expectations from partners and how relevancy in both ways builds a perfect relationship with partners.

Excerpts

CIOL: What difference has Intel brought to McAfee?

Pedro: We have not been influenced by the acquisition. We have always had a lot of independence in terms of Go-To-Market and Channel strategy. What we have been working towards is taking advantage of the reach that Intel has in emerging markets and its deep connection across channels in every corner of India. Our goal is to work closely with Intel to identify their set of partners, who have capabilities around security so they can join us and be part of our ecosystem. Secondly, to take some of our technologies directly to Intel partners through their distribution channels and programmes.

CIOL: How are your partners benefitting from Intel acquisition?

Pedro: We can look at it in two ways. First is the technology. Being part of Intel is allowing us to work around technology and security. In terms of hardware security we are going to bring to our partners some amazing innovations by being able to link closer to capabilities of the chip and the innovations that we would be bringing together.

 

Secondly, the Intel channel programmes are well recorded and have tremendous success in the benefits they offer. Going forward, it will bring more value to our partners. They can continue to use the relationship they have with Intel and explore new opportunities. They can add value to what they sell. That will enable them to grow their business, grow their margin, and they can continue to have a great relationship and support.

We have a lot of expertise in channels and they are learning from us. There is a lot of learning. Whatever works well for us from Intel, we want to bring it our table.

CIOL: Do you offer any skill training for partners?

Pedro: For our partners, we have tremendous knowledge ready as we have programmes to enable them to continue to consume innovation. This year, we have a new programme called Continuing Education.

As the name implies the goal is not to predefine or repeat every year some sort of certification but allow our partners to take advantage of what their interests are. Some may want to go deep into one area in security or others may be keen on learning more. For them we have online trainings. They can also take up face-to-face trainings at multiple levels.

CIOL: What are your expectations from channel partners?

Pedro: We value different things from different partners. Some of them have wide reach. The highest value they can bring to McAfee is by identifying new opportunities. Others may not have such a reach, but they might possess excellent technology skill. They might be the partners we would engage on a small number of calls but work very tightly, leveraging their capability.

 

Then there are others good on procurement end, helping customers in licensing and other stuff.

We would like to identify what partners can bring to our table and provide them the margin and protection. What is common among all this is the relevance. Partners must essentially think how relevant they are to us. We look at how significant they can be in our growth in terms of innovation and technology. Relevancy both ways is a perfect relation.

CIOL: What are McAfee's significant programmes for channel partners?

Pedro: Our 90 pc of business across the globe goes through channels. Profitability Stack aligns benefits to different things they bring to the table. We offer deal registration to a partner bringing new deals. They get a 25 pc margin. We want to be able to get to a point where partners get us half of the business and the other half is the business we bring to the partners.

We have a programme called Teaming Plans, which provides the partner, whom we engage with closely, the protection around pricing for helping to work for McAfee-found opportunities. We provide a margin up to 10 pc.

Last week, we launched the Partner programme, which provides help to have dynamic access to sales information from McAfee. That is an effort to understand their needs and address challenges.

 

The biggest advantage is Security Connected. It is an ability to support and manage complexity.

CIOL: What would be the next big thing in terms of innovation for channels in the next 5 years?

Pedro: We are excited about the long-term hardware security. We see a whole set of innovation there. Secondly, it is about Security Connected. It is an ability to consolidate the market into an open platform where you gain a higher value. What's interesting is the ability to have local or third party knowledge brought into situational awareness. We see huge industries, critical infrastructure and financial services coming together seeking additional information that is contextual, specific to their industry.

We would provide them the ability and platform to maintain that control over information.