By Rachel Chalmers
Sendmail Inc, the Emeryville, California-based open source mail server company, has announced a new channel program designed to expand its worldwide reach. New partners include Japan’s ASCII Network Technology Inc, HP Australia, ProTronics Technologies, Systemec Datacom in the Benelux countries, Harker Systems and Iperia. Sendmail also announced an expanded relationship with Merisel Inc in the USA and Canada. CEO Greg Olsen told ComputerWire that Sendmail will seek to offer more support and value to its network of VARs. It is essential for us to reach our very, very large base of customers, he explained.
Sendmail is in the unusual position of having had a gigantic installed base before it ever incorporated as a company. The majority of mail servers on the internet run some version of the open source mail server written by Sendmail founder Eric Allman more than twenty years ago. The company’s twin challenges, then, are to scale quickly enough to support customers that are already using the open source version of its product, and to develop and market closed-source, professional packages.
The channel is central to achieving both goals. Sendmail is unusual in that it’s an open source hybrid business, Olsen observed. We are not trying to change our customers’ religion to open source. We think we should bring the benefits of open source software to our commercial customers, but in a form they’re used to buying; that means from the channels they’re used to buying from.
The trick will be to scale the tiny company to meet the worldwide demand for its services. Olsen says the way to do this is through programs. You’ve got to have such packaged sales and technical training programs that you can deploy them anywhere and everywhere, he explained. Training is really, really important when you’re trying to make things happen on a broad scale or far away. For other aspects of channel management, including lead sharing, fulfillment and co-ordination, Olsen said the company is leveraging the web very heavily. All our systems are internet- based, he said, …as you’d expect.
