McAfee's new North American channel head outlines strategy 21 September, 2006 By Vanessa Ho

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Dickison, who has been with McAfee for nine years in a variety of roles, was recently named the North American channel head this past July.

"When I joined, a framework was in place for our Security Alliance program, which defines what being a McAfee partners entails, how you become a partner and what you get in return for being a partner," he said.

Since the channel is important to the security company's success, with 90 per cent of revenue coming through partners, Dickison outlined McAfee's channel strategy that helps its partners become more profitable and customers more secure at the same time.

The McAfee executive said that while for the past 18 months, the company was focused on recruiting more partners; the transition now is enabling those partners to become fluent in the value proposition of McAfee by delivering to them education materials and programs for them to be successful. And, in turn, execute that to its customers.

One of the things McAfee is doing to help its partner become more profitable is its opportunity registration. Dickison said this registry will help McAfee reach customers it may not know about through its partners, who then bring in these opportunities through this registration process.

"If partners register [those opportunities] through the system, we will give them additional margins," he added.

Another area that McAfee's channel partner program has introduced is a solution services component. Dickison stated that McAfee isn't interested in delivering services to end-users. Instead, it wants to rely on partners to deliver those.

"We need to bring our value proposition to partners first and that helps them establish a relationship with customers and makes them a more trusted security advisor."

As well, McAfee is also aggressively pursuing a managed service solution to help small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) that have no dedicated IT staff with security.

Other new areas of the program include portal access that allows partners to register these types of opportunities. The portal is also a way for McAfee to distribute leads to its partners, see customer renewals and recurring revenue.

Also, this October, McAfee is launching an automatic online renewal component, which is a way for partners to automatically renew contracts for SMBs that dramatically lower partners' cost and still gives them profitability.

He added that McAfee will also continue to expand the breadth of its security portfolio either through acquisitions or internal development to see what upcoming technologies the company needs to be on the lookout for.

Another area that Dickison is working on is bringing in partners early in the development process prior to a product being available.

"Our intention is to engage the channel at the same time as the development team and treat them as an extension of the organization," he said.

Michelle Warren, senior IT industry analyst with Evans Research Group, said engaging partners early-on helps build trust and strengthens McAfee's relationship with its partners.

As well, she added that she views McAfee's channel strategy as solid, empowering both partner and McAfee --- if they stick to it.

"But, it's all in the execution," Warren said. "It sounds good but they have to continue to execute it at very high level because it is a very competitive landscape."