Partner Link 2016, Las Vegas - Day One in Review

ZoeSands · ‎09-13-2016

Veritas’ second Partner Link was held at the Aria Resort in Las Vegas, Nevada. A fabulous venue to host the Americas partner event for two days. Here is a summary of what happened during day one;

First up was Rick Kramer, Vice President America Channel Sales who spoke about how Veritas is refocusing on growth in 2017. He set the scene for the two day event in saying this was Veritas’ coming out party since becoming independent from Symantec in February 2016. He said “we have had challenges this past year”, but since the separation what has struck him most was that our partners are very loyal. He concluded by saying “you our partners have made investments that will pay off. It is about growth not about the separation. Growth is everything, starting now.”

Then Matt Cain, President, Worldwide Field Operations spoke about “Finding Opportunities in an Evolving Marketplace”. He posed some questions to the audience;

Where will growth come from?
Where will our biggest opportunities come from?

He highlighted that this is the most disruptive time in IT, many changes are happening in the marketplace. A lot of organisations don’t understand the dangers of change and don’t know the risks and repercussions. Most continue to want to save money on IT spend in this disruptive age, but don’t weigh up the risks of adopting this type of strategy. He said cloud is driving growth and benefits for organisations, but it is also adding complexity to legacy IT infrastructures. He advised the audience that you need to be agile for growth.

He continued by saying opportunities are present in;

Being software driven and technology agnostic
Leading the market and
Shifting the market

Veritas is a leader in data protection and has a strong position in the marketplace.

He then handed over the stage to Brett Shirk, Executive Vice President Worldwide Sales who spoke about how Veritas and its partners can work together to accelerate growth. Brett said “we need to focus on customers and partners”. He continued to say “retaining and acquiring customers is critical for us. Leveraging our partners' expertise is critical to success."

Veritas CMO, Lynn Lucas took the stage after Brett. Her talk was themed on how partners can work with Veritas to drive demand and growth jointly. She said joint marketing can create impact across the marketing mix from awareness to demand generation. During her presentation she also reviewed Veritas’ marketing since the separation from Symantec. The “It’s time for Veritas” brand campaign was the first stage on our marketing journey as the new Veritas which included some strong thought leadership. Among the new content created was the Databerg and Data Genomics research which moved the needle in terms of helping create conversations with senior leaders on the data explosion and how this is creating challenges for businesses.

Lynn showed a preview of the new brand campaign and urged partners to watch out for that in the coming weeks. She said “we are taking a new approach of integrating awareness and demand together.” And encouraged partners to join the new VOX Community and then showcased the new veritas.com homepage and how Veritas is representing customer case studies.

She Invited partners to use the co-branded Vision content and leverage this in their own regions and cities. She closed by saying that she is very excited to be hosting the first independent Vision in over 10 years.

Next up was Mike Palmer, SVP & GM and Scott Anderson, Senior Vice President Information Protection Solutions Business Unit

Mike told partners that Veritas is a software driven company, there are lots of other companies in the marketplace that are still hardware led. Veritas is a different company; it offers better performance, open architecture and has more choices. He said “Veritas is committed to always being technology agnostic, we will never lock you into a product and we will make it work together. We are liberating customers and we are channel ready.” He continued by saying that Veritas’ mission is to enable organisations to harness the power of their information.

Then Scott talked about Veritas’ 360 Data Management approach with updates on the backup and recovery product range. During his presentation he advised the audience “you don’t put things in the cloud that puts your organisation at risk”. He mentioned there are opportunities in data storage and data visualisation. And urged partners to leverage the campaigns and provide feedback.

During the afternoon session Rick Kramer held a candid panel discussion with the Americas sales team and shared all the work they have done over the past year with the channel. Partners loved this up close panel session.

So, that’s a wrap from day one. What a fabulous day! Great presenters and wonderful content shared. I can’t wait for day two! Watch out for the second day blog update shortly.