Douse, douse
Reports emerged a couple of days ago that security software giant Symantec was planning to take its top 900 accounts in-house and service them directly rather than through channel partners.
Unsurprisingly this led to a fair bit of wailing and gnashing of teeth from the global channel so we asked Symantec UK what it had to say on the matter
“Symantec continues to be a channel-led company and we recognise the value partners play in reaching our broad set of customers,” said UK and Ireland PR manager Verity Blake. “We are not changing our strategy and taking high-end deals direct.”
According to Symantec, these top 900 companies have always been able to go direct to Symantec if they wanted to. “Symantec’s named accounts have always had the option to buy direct and we will continue to provide them that choice,” said Blake. “We also maintain a two-tier distribution strategy and like many other vendors have allowed our tier 1 partners to fulfil complex enterprise contracts directly with Symantec to streamline the process.”