Cyberoam channel incentives part of top 3 bid

Offers rewards to SnapperNet resellers

By Hamish Barwick, Auckland | Tuesday, 10 August 2010
US-based unified threat management (UTM) vendor Cyberoam is offering a number of incentives to SnapperNet’s resellers as part of a bid to break into the top-three vendor rankings in its market.

The company, a division of Elitecore Technologies, signed a sole distribution agreement with SnapperNet last month.

Asia Pacific business development manager Alkesh Soneji says the first benefit for partners is a two-day certification programme to be run in September, which will also provide an evaluation kit.

Soneji says Cyberoam expects between 15 and 20 partners will attend.

After the training, it will launch the Partner Advantage Programme that doesn’t have levels, but rewards partners with points that can be redeemed for rewards at the end of each quarter.

“If you achieve 1000 points you get an overseas trip,” says Soneji.

Partners gain points by buying product and achieving training goals such as presentations. Resellers who commit to the programme will also get sales leads.

The programme has two levels of certification for engineering staff. These are Cyberoam Certified Networking and Security Professional and Certified Networking and Security Expert.

From this month onward, local Cyberoam partners will get 24 hour support from the vendor’s support centre in India.

“We’re establishing an 0800 number so resellers can call that number and get access to the pre-sales team. If the partner is doing an installation they will get assistance,” says Soneji.

Cyberoam aims to be among the top-three UTM vendors locally within three years, he says.

It entered the market here after launching in Australia three years ago. Soneji chose SnapperNet after looking into local distributors.

“They were looking for a firewall/UTM product and we were looking for a value add distributor, so the timing was perfect.”