Database vendor launches app integration drive

Embedded database vendor InterSystems has launched a partner portal offering its Caché application partners extra developer, marketing and sales support, as part of an overall push into application integration.

InterSystems' new partner portal incorporates joint marketing opportunities, services such as free engineering resources and sales support, Caché database engine marketing tools and information about government support, business strategy and industry associations. Partners and their products will also be promoted on InterSystems' public website as part of the formal program.

Denis Tebbutt, managing director for InterSystems Australia, said the US-based vendor had signed 50 partners in the past two years, including 35 in the last 12 months, to develop and market InterSystems Caché-based applications. Caché combines SQL and an advanced object system in a post-relational database. The vendor opened its Australian office a year ago.

Tebbutt said he was serious about growing InterSystems' business via the channel. Revenues this year were expected to grow 43 percent, taking the company past US$150 million, in the year ending December 2003.

"Our go-to-market strategy is through application developers and their partners and 80 percent of our revenue comes from application developers," he said. "If our partners' business grows, then ours will as well."

InterSystems does not sell its own consulting services, so relies on partners making successful roll-outs of Caché-based applications.

Tebbutt said he hoped the partner portal would encourage Caché developer partners to target InterSystems' global customer base, partly by providing marketing and technical support. The vendor has operations in 19 countries.

The partner program had already harnessed 'a lot of creative' work done by business-partner developers in Russia on the website itself, he said.

Tebbutt added that vendors worldwide were starting to take their channel partners more seriously. "Most recently some have realised the need to change their partner strategies," he said.

While focus on end-users by specific vertical was critical, working with channel partners such as system integrators to solve end-user needs was increasingly important, he said.

"We want to grow our market-share as a result of our partners being successful," said Tebbutt.

This month the vendor also made a move into Australia's application integration market, launching a 'next generation' application integration platform dubbed Ensemble in Sydney on Monday, 3 November.

Tebbutt said the platform should also help partners strengthen opportunities available to them through InterSystems, backing up his claim with results of an InterSystems-sponsored survey of 270 Australian CIOs. Of that sample, 170 had responded, he said.

The survey's main finding was, unsurprisingly, that application integration to improve data use and knowledge availability was the way to go. "CIOs and senior management have got the message. They're looking to make more use of the data that is available to their organisations. They absolutely will be looking over the next couple of years to increase the level of integration of their applications," he said.

Tebbutt said Ensemble's strengths would stem from InterSystem's experience as a database supplier for corporations around the world, taking an 'object-centric database approach'. End-user and system integrator demonstrations of Ensemble will be held in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne mid-November, he said.

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HP resellers to offer business continuity services

Hardware vendor HP has offered selected services resellers a business continuity package to push into the Australian market.
 
HP's services channel partner manager Mike Bazely and business continuity head Steve Cartland said that eventually about six of the vendor's services channel partners could be signed to offer the package. This included access to off-site support, such as HP's own disaster recovery centres.
 
Initially, only HP services resellers Volante and Starcom would be permitted to offer the business continuity services, they said.
 
'We have had a large number of customers and resellers, because of some of the changes in the marketplace, ask for this. Channel partners are providing high-value services and customers are also responding to those services – there is growing interest,' Cartland said.
 
Cartland said work completed about a year ago by Macquarie Graduate School suggested only 12 percent of organisations had good business continuity plans. 'And the market hasn't changed that much since then,' he added.
 
He claimed resellers could earn margins '20 [percentage] points or more' from selling the package. 'And that's real margin, and we're providing them with a lot of expertise as well,' Cartland said.
 
Bazely said HP would support the partners from finding the opportunities to closing the deal in the offer, which was based on a subscription-type model. 'Subscribers can get support any time of day,' he said.
 
HP would respond within two hours to emergency callouts from customers, Bazely said.
 
The package would include assistance from 'HP business recovery experts' and 'everything you would expect' in such a service, Cartland said.
 
Bazely said his and Cartland's role included investigating services products in HP as a whole that could be profitably offered through the channel and building related infrastructure to deliver those services.
 
HP would then work to support the channel partners, who would deliver pre-sales support and manage the ongoing customer relationship in delivering those services, Cartland said.
 
'We want to be able to keep growing and bringing more services for the partners to sell, but you need to make sure they can make margin out of it,' Bazely said.
 
Cartland and Bazely confirmed that HP's channel 're-organisation' was ongoing, but said services partners weren't being prioritised over HP's more traditional hardware channel.
 
HP's services channel was growing, a phenomenon partly reflecting the broader Australian channel's increasing reliance on services to drive profits. HP expected to add more services-focused partners to the 10 in its primary services partner sales program, they said.
 
'It's not a massive channel, but a very focused channel,' Bazely said.
 
Cartland added that some of the vendor's services partners also sold HP hardware, but he did not know if any hardware partners would be dropped as a result of an increasing emphasis on services.
 
'[However] sales from our hardware channel are growing,' Cartland said.
 

 

 

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