It’s a question worth asking given the sudden death of Sage’s largest software partner, MIS Group of Dallas, and Microsoft’s recent partner moves that are taking center stage this week at Microsoft’s annual Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans.
David Siegel, a Microsoft and Sage business consultant based in New Orleans, takes on that very question in a blog post in our ChannelWeb Connect Community.
“We have seen recent indications from both Microsoft and Sage that they want to concentrate their channel business with larger VARs,” said Siegel. “In Microsoft’s case, this means firms with at least 50 employees. Perhaps the fate of one of the country’s largest midmarket VARs will lead the channel management leadership at both companies to rethink the ‘bigger is better’ mind-set.
“There is a role in the marketplace for both the large VAR with broad product/service offerings and geographic coverage as well as for the small VAR who successfully serves customers with five or fewer consultants and deep expertise in one or two solutions (Wayne Schulz, who too modestly calls his firm a ‘small nobody VAR,’ is an excellent example),” said Siegel.
Siegel’s right. Vendors like Microsoft and Sage are trying to focus on fewer midmarket partners. Don’t let anyone fool you. That’s what Microsoft’s much-ballyhooed decision to overhaul its channel partner program -- including doing away with the current "Gold," "Certified" and "General Register" designations in favor of ranking partners according to their competencies -- is all about.
It’s no mistake that at the same time Microsoft announced the partner overhaul it has eliminated telephone support for thousands of its partners. The changes come after Microsoft laid off an undisclosed number of Telephone Partner Account Managers (TPAMs) who provided sales assistance aimed at helping partners close deals and navigate the Microsoft bureaucracy, sources said.
Some Microsoft partners say the move is a precursor to decreasing its partner base as it moves to a cloud computing model. Microsoft, meanwhile, insists that it has some 640,000 channel partners and wants to grow its partner base to more than 1 million during the next two to three years. Who’s kidding who? One million! Microsoft may be interested in 1 million consultants around the world. But it definitely isn’t interested in 1 million partner companies.
The fact is both Microsoft, Sage and a number of big players are moving to the bigger-is-better mind-set. That mind-set, however, is code words for cutting partner costs in the midst of the current economic downturn. The MIS Group’s death is a sign of the times. Bigger doesn’t mean you can’t fail. It just means that more people feel it when the giant falls.
What MIS Group’s failure shows is that the bigger is better channel strategy is a foolish play. And for my money, you’d be wise to make sure you have the right mix of big partners and smaller partners. Smaller partners like Siegel and Schulz are more often than not smarter and have more talented technical help than some of the larger midmarket VARs. This is not an indictment of any midmarket partner, just a plain fact that often smaller partners will do a better job than a larger, more scattered and distracted partner.
What do you think of the bigger-is-better channel partner strategies from the likes of Sage and Microsoft?
Great writeup. Bigger is not better and Microsoft will not eliminate it's evangelists, who are the small VARs. When the big firms fall, they fall very hard and it affects a lot of people. The economic downtoun affects Microsoft too, thats why all those people were laid off. The small VARs are the ones that support most Microsoft Office users and Microsoft knows this, so the vendor will not eliminate it's small VARs.