Xceedium moves to 100% channel model 23 September, 2009 By Mark Cox

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It has been a fairly fast transition from a direct sales model to a channel-only model for Xceedium. Prior to the appointment of Dave Angradi as senior director of Worldwide Channel Sales in April 2008, Xceedium was primarily a direct sales company. Angradi established a formal channel program with very clear rules of engagement.

"We found over the course of time that most of our net-new opportunities were from the channel, and we soon moved to 75% channel business," Angradi said. They now have a channel of more than 40 commercial and federal sector resellers.

The decision by Xceedium to bow out of the remainder of its direct sales business and go to an all-channel model was motivated in part by the tough economy.

"From a timing perspective with the economy, it's good to make an announcement like this," Angradi said. "Resellers are struggling right now. Many resellers are looking for something new to get out there and sell. And by embracing a 100 percent indirect model, we can focus exclusively on making our partners more successful than ever in reaching new and existing customers."

Xceedium's GateKeeper protects critical infrastructure against insider and external threats by delivering an all-in-one solution for compartmentalizing, containing and auditing users, balancing strong security controls and accountability with the ability to improve operational efficiency.

"It makes sense to partner with us, because this is not a rip-and-replace technology," Angradi said. "It gives the reseller an opportunity to go in and talk about other things. It's also a good lead-in, because customers often haven't heard about us."

We are looking for partners with very broad security offerings, that we can fit our product into nicely," Angradi said. "All our partners have a very well defined security practice and we fill in a gap." Their existing partners are a combination of smaller regional pure-security players, and national partners who have a security practice. And in expanding the program, they are focusing on regions where they do not have a partner.

Angradi also emphasized their channel program gives resellers real benefits rather than nominal ones.

"For instance, the way we set up our opportunity registration, partners get a minimum of 20 points margin advantage when they register an opportunity, not a small advantage like 5 per cent. There is a real good business benefit to working with us."