Symantec retains ACA Pacific, ED and TechPac

After a four-month channel review, ACA Pacific, Express Data and Tech Pacific will stay on as Symantec's three official Australian distributors, the security vendor said.

Danielle Errera, Asia-Pacific distribution director at Symantec, said its three current distributors were still believed to be the best for the job following a review of its local channel that concluded last week.

"[The review] took a good three or four months from start to finish," Errera said. "We haven't reviewed [distribution] for quite some time and our business over the last 18 months or so has evolved substantially."

Six possible distributors were considered, but incumbents ACA Pacific, Express Data and Tech Pacific "still have the right skill sets" despite Symantec's various acquisitions in the last 18-24 months, she said.

The three distributors' roles as Symantec partners would change little. But Express Data would also get the right to sell PowerQuest software -- a deal exclusively the province of ACA Pacific, which of Symantec's range only sells PowerQuest, she said.

Symantec valued ACA Pacific for its strength in and focus on the storage market, whereas Express Data had specific strengths -- especially technically -- in the broader security space, she said.

"Tech Pacific has especially strong skill sets in the retail market and broad-based enterprise, corporate-type solutions as well," she said.

Errera said the Ingram Micro buyout of TechPac would add to Symantec's sales if anything, so hadn't really affected the decision to retain Tech Pacific.

Symantec would re-focus its resourcing on the three partners, paying attention to their specific strengths in relation to enterprise, SMB and consumer market segments.

"They've worked through very extensive documents, as any one of our partners will tell you," Errera said. "It was good to go out there and see who else there was ... This allowed us to re-focus and re-define distribution."

Symantec reported enterprise sales growth of 25 to 30 percent and a whopping 60 percent rise in consumer sales in the Asia-Pacific quarter on quarter. Strong growth was tipped to continue around that level, she said.

Symantec wanted to work more closely with its partners in future. Distribution accounted for 95 percent of its sales locally, she said.

The vendor was also reviewing its distribution in three other countries, Errera said.