Aurema Looking To Add More Service Partners

With an eye on ramping up professional services, workload management technology vendor Aurema on Monday formalized its partner program.

The Aurema Certified Reseller Network boasts two partnership levels, Preferred Certified Resellers and Certified Resellers, said Michael McCabe, director of worldwide sales operations at the Cupertino, Calif., company.

Aurema's workload management solutions include the vendor's ArmTech for Citrix MetaFrame and ArmTech for VMware Server offerings. The products help customers running large numbers of Intel-based servers to load-balance their networks and consolidate and optimize server utilization, said Mark Wright, president and CEO.

Key to the formalized partner program is better delineation of who performs professional services. Preferred Certified Resellers will be for partners that sell the entire Aurema product line as well as service support, McCabe said. Certified Resellers "will typically not sell service support," he said.

One of the goals of the expanded program is to drive more professional services opportunities for partners at the Preferred level, Wright said. "We have made a cooperative decision to give more professional service revenue to our partners," he said.All partners will have certain levels of discounted pricing, marketing support and direct-sales support available to them, depending on their level of participation in the programs, Wright said.

Aurema's balance of direct vs. indirect sales currently stands at about 50/50. But the company is aiming at a target of about 75 percent indirect sales by the end of next year, Wright said.

Jack Morris, vice president of sales for Avnet, a Aurema reseller in Phoenix, said Aurema's decision to add more partners to its ranks, especially for the purpose of delivering professional services for the vendor's product line, should improve the end-user experience. "It gets resellers more into the business process, and that leads to better quality products," Morris said.