Symantec certifies master service partners

Symantec has added “master specialisations” to its partner program refresh that comes into effect next April to allow resellers to provide "deep" services around chosen competencies.

The new overarching category certifies partners with advanced consulting, technical and service capabilities in a specialised area.

From today master specialisations are available in the areas of enterprise security, data loss prevention, IT compliance, data protection, archiving and eDiscovery.

It’s part of Symantec’s new partner program that encourages resellers to specialise in a core competency. Specialisations are a requirement for attaining silver, gold or platinum partner status.

David Dzienciol (pictured), Symantec’s vice president for SMB and channel in the region said master specialisations are now the formal term to reference services.

“When it comes to specialisations they’ll be able to promote that tag line by using a specific logo along with a core specialisation.

“It’s designed to recruit partners that will promote their capable as a services delivery partner and that they’ll get a set of benefits including access to exclusive IP and technical access and support,” he said.

Since April, Symantec has released a number of specilisation categories for resellers. These include: archiving and eDiscovery; endpoint management; small and medium business; data loss prevention; enterprise security; and IT compliance.

The information security vendor today introduced three additional specialisations -- data protection, high availability and storage management -- bringing a total of nine specialisations available to partners in the Asia Pacific and Japan.

Dzienciol said all specilisations, all the material and material sales accreditation to become specialised was available today.

Acquisitions

Dzienciol said Symantec's partner program was set up to factor in new business lines from potential acquisitions. 

"As we make acquisitions and look at new lines of business we’ve set ourselves up to roll out more specialisations," he said. 

An encryption specialisation was planned for the next calender year following Symantec’s acquisiton of PGP, he said.

Take up

Dzienciol said Symantec gave partners 12 months to become specialialised before making the program official.

"We’re at the halfway mark and in Australia, we’ve had great conversations with our partners," he said.

Jeff Arndt, director for enterprise channels at Symantec Pacific region said partners wanted time and “we’ve given them as much time as we possibly could".

“Our partners are coming on and we have a roadmap," he said. "We’ve been running many different training courses for those partners that have been identified on current capability or have the current desire to be the master specialist.

"We’ve had a great attendance in the Australia region," Arndt said.