Symantec Partner Engage 2009, our annual North American partner conference, took place in early November in Orlando, Florida.  The theme of this year’s event was Unstoppable and more than 380 partners and ten media from North America joined us to hear Symantec’s leadership team discuss our focus—both from a corporate and channel perspective—and to learn about Symantec’s channel programs and opportunities for 2010. 

 

Throughout the event, Symantec discussed the Four Rs of the channel: Revenue, Readiness, Reputation and Relevance. Partners were excited to hear about new readiness tools, like SymDemo, and new programs, including the Enterprise Security Specialization and enhanced Renewals Program, designed to help them drive revenue and maintain relevance with their customers.  Finally, we announced a new partner community to help foster collaboration and communication between Symantec and our partners. All of our new programs, tools and enhancements were the result of direct feedback and input from our partner councils and general partner community. 

 

The main day of the conference included keynotes from Enrique Salem, Randy Cochran, Steven Trilling, Rich Spring and Steve Morton.  During the keynotes, Enrique, Rich and Randy discussed Symantec’s dedication to providing partners with opportunities to broaden their footprint and become even more strategic to their customers while driving profitability. 

 

Symantec also announced the 2009 Partner Awards. Congratulations to Allen Informàtica, CDW, Forsythe Solutions Group, GTSI, Ingram Micro Canada, Lanworks, Inc., Precision Computer Service and SHI!Symantec continues to recognize and invest in those who focus on Symantec. On behalf of its partners, Symantec donated $20k to Second Harvest Food Bank.

 

Randy Cochran concluded Partner Engage with the following message: “We are focused on how we can be mutually successful and how we can do that on a higher level to be more effective. We must leverage our expertise and learn how we can replicate our successes. I truly believe that in order to achieve a position of being unstoppable, we can’t do any of this without each other.” – Randy Cochran, vice president, North American channel sales, Symantec.