Up for the challenge

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Taking over the reins of a regional organisation in the current uncertain climate is not an easy task for anybody. But that's the challenge facing Johnny Karam, recently-installed regional director for the Middle East and North Africa at security software giant Symantec. In his first interview with Channel Middle East, he reveals the company's plans for its channel this year.

You recently held your annual MENA Partner Summit. What were the main channel messages you delivered to partners?

Symantec has always been partner-centric and I wanted to emphasise that message. We do 100% of our licence sales through our business partner community and that will continue. Another key message in my keynote was around the enablement of our partners.

Last year we enabled those business partners - be it from a sales or technical accreditation perspective - and the growth that we did in terms of the number of accreditations was phenomenal. One of the things that we would like to do now that we have the skillset in the market is work closer with the business partners to understand the specific leverage we can create with them because we believe there is no such thing as one-size-fits-all.

Does that mean you will try and drive specialisation in the channel? That's certainly an area that Symantec has talked about before.

Yes, if we are smarter about working closer with each other and can see where the advantage of that partner is in the market or a specific segment based on the specialisation they did we can put a plan around that to leverage those resources. That creates a competitive advantage for the partner and for us, and we can create more value for the customer. We are also continuing to invest internally in our channel team by hiring additional channel people in order to wok closer with business partners.

Would it be fair to say you will reduce the number of partners you work with?

There is no formula for it. Say there are two Platinum partners, for example. Symantec is so large and has so many solutions that we would want to work with each one based on its specialty.

We would help it to leverage its portfolio, relationship and customer base in order for it to become the specialist in certain technologies. So it is not necessarily about having fewer partners, it is about helping them to become more specialised around technology and differentiate themselves. We are not looking to reduce the partners; we are looking for committed partners that believe in Symantec.

What is your strategy for the wider region in terms of building out local presence and addressing the market?

We have been investing more and more in the countries. Recently we opened an office in Cairo and we have clear plans on how we are going to invest. While we plan to reach the thresholds and open other offices in the region, we have a strategy and focus for specific countries in order to support the partners with channel account managers and sales teams on the ground. We are addressing those markets in a fully-fledged way whereby internally we even have virtual country managers that will watch over each and every country to ensure that nothing falls between the cracks.

From your conversations with channel partners, what do you think matters to them most at the moment?

In the first 60 days in the job the main item on my agenda was to take the car or jump on a plane and visit the channel managers of our business partners. The message then - and it was emphasised at our Partner Summit - was that they all want to work in a strategic mode and get closer. They realise that Symantec has a great chance right now and we believe it is our year to make a difference.

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