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Submitted by atchung on 17 December 2008 - 1:36pm.

Greetings, I've received some feedback from my pilot program partners that the back end rebate percentage for MLA new business does not provide enough incentive for them to drive that revenue (renewal is good @ 2%).

Generally, partners who sustain their businesses on public sector and federal government accounts have no choice but to sell MLA licenses and maintenance, that is their business. Moreover, if our intent is to provide an incentive for our partners to independently drive incremental new license revenue in our existing MLA accounts there is a no distinction between the back end percentages on new and renewal business. So, I'm trying to determine what message we are sending to our partners but I can't quite figure it out and perhaps need some clarification.

Are there any plans to re-evaluate the back end percentages for new MLA business?

I would be happy to discuss further with other stakeholders and can be reached at achung@novell.com.

Submitted by margaretrasmussen on 29 December 2008 - 3:43pm.

Hi deltasigma,

Thank you for your comment.

The currency for deal submission at Novell is USD, however, we will pay the rebates in local currency. We are migrating our CRM/Opportunity system to a new platform over the next 30 months, as it becomes available, we will have much more flexibility in currencies that we can be input by a partner and allow conversion to other currencies based on the user's preference.

Submitted by DavidStone on 18 January 2009 - 1:38pm.

Giving a partner the option of acting as a reseller or an influencer as a blanket decision and not on a case by case basis is a major flaw here. I addressed my concerns during the webcast but Kevin lacked the sales experience to get the problem.

As a longtime Novell reseller who handles multiple millions of Novell business each year, the lack of flexibility severely restricts our ability to go out and promote your products. Most large scale purchases, especially in the government space, will be bid competitively regardless of who promotes the product. The natural result is a high probability of receiving no reward whatsoever when aggressively promoting Novell solutions in the most attractive of markets. This situation emphasizes the lack of sufficient sales insight and/or input in program design.