Executives for Hewlett-Packard and Synnex were just added to the CompTIA board of directors for 2010. The two new individuals are:

Mike Parrotino, vice president of Personal Systems Group Sales and Management, Solution Providers Organization, Americas, for Hewlett-Packard

Bob Stegner, senior vice president of marketing, North America, for Synnex

The incumbent members include:

Mariano Dy-Liacco, director of client solutions for Insight Enterprises
Bob Godgart, founder and CEO of Autotask
Lester Keizer, CEO of Connecting Point Technology Center
Charles Lennon, president of TeamLogic IT
Kerry McDonough, director of Cisco Small Business Sales, Cisco Systems
Mike Menegay, CEO and president, Mobile Armor
John Noha, channel director, West, for McAfee
Dennis Obial, president and CEO, Government Acquisitions
Dan Shapero, senior vice president for Kaseya
Annette Taber, vice president of business development for Network Dynamics
Vijay Thadani, CEO, NIIT
Oli Thordarson, CEO, Alvaka Networks.

Deal registration used to be one of those very novel concepts, but any high-tech company that is relatively new to the channel or that is selling a product with a long evangelization cycle really can’t get away without one. Now Akorri, one of the emerging players in the virtual infrastructure space, has raised the bar on deal registration: if a VAR legitimately registers a deal, it gets that extra margin if the sale is made — even if doesn’t actually handle the transaction.

Here’s how it works, according to Bill Simpson, Akorri’s vice president of worldwide sales. (Notice the word channel isn’t in his title, but it is assumed, which is another thing I really like.)

As part of its PartnerPoint program, Simpson says Akorri will pay up to 30 points of margin for the influencing reseller. Period. That means that if a VAR spends time developing an account and STILL losing the deal because some other clown gives away products in order to drive storage hardware and services into an account, the original partner will get that margin. Essentially they will receive an influence fee.

Simpson says he can afford to do this by assuming that every deal that Akorri does with the channel right now will be registered and planning his financial model accordingly.

Of course, the partner won’t really win the crown jewel of the account, which is the long-term services that it was hoping to win. But, actually, chances are they WILL win those services eventually if the other partner can’t live up to its promises.

There may be other technology vendors out there that do this, but I sure haven’t talked to anyone about it. It sure makes a show of good faith.

Another policy that is bound to win Akorri fans in the channel: It would rather focus its efforts on fewer VARs than artificially sign up partners just for the sake of having them. Which is saying a lot when you’re just building a channel program. Right now, the company has about 75 to 100 partners signed up, but Simpson says it doesn’t really have any goals other than to develop “revenue-producing” VARs and their sales representations.

I have always followed the channel programs of Autodesk pretty closely, partly because in my mind the company has led the software industry for many years in figuring out the best way to work with REAL VARs. That is, companies that sold solutions specifically focused on the CAD and design markets for which they had a unique business differentiation. Right now, the Autodesk channel includes about 1,900 such companies.

Plus, honestly, it’s pretty impressive that this is a company that is able to award silver anniversary honors to some of its channel members, not just employees. For the second year in a row, mind you. (More on that in a moment.)

I caught up last month with Steve Blum, senior vice president of the Americas for Autodesk, about how the company’s channel organization is helping partner principals manager their businesses right now. Blum hopes that by keeping close to key resellers now, they’ll be better-positioned to ride the up-turn more successfully. Incidently, that means Autodesk is recruiting partners, even though both they and these new resellers know that it might take longer to get up and running with a practice in the current economy.

This also includes, by the way, a lot of training for the Autodesk channel managers so that they can understand the concerns of a smaller business. “We should not be in the position of telling a partner what they have to do,” Blum says. “We merely share ideas that we’ve seen work in the past.”

Here are a couple of specific programs, though, that might be of interest to the partners that Autodesk is wooing, as well as any existing partners that might want to deepen their relationship. These might seem like very common sense ideas, but you’d be surprised at how few vendors support ideas like these in practice:

• The Path-to-Volume program: Autodesk has a very disciplined approach for figuring out when to take a product to the channel, and how. Every new application and acquisition is running through this lifecycle assessment to figure out how it should be layered into the program.
• Autodesk is also one of the few vendors to reward its partners with Solutions Incentives, meaning they get certain considerations for vertical and industry sales. Partners also can get Loyalty Incentives for driving long-term customer engagement and loyalty. (Which, in turn, drives long-term partner engagement and loyalty.) And they can earn Key Incentives for driving business in new products and technologies OR for getting an account to start thinking vertical. Last year, partners were able to grow their 3D sales by 25 percent using a combination of these incentives.
• Autodesk’s deal registration program (called the Autodesk Customer Engagement process) has helped some partners increase their margins by 20 percent.
• Over the past year, Autodesk has given out more than $10 million in “growth funds,” based on business plan submissions. (This is in addition to more traditional things like cooperative marketing funds.)
• The vendor also is pushing additional financing options, especially those that help resellers avoid having to carry product sales in a time when credit is hard to find for small businesses.
• And, harkening back to a long-time policy, Autodesk earlier this month introduced something called the Autodesk Assistance Program. The company has long seeded universities with its software, which has helped position its applications as critical business applications for professionals in the architecture and engineering professions after they enter the workforce. Under the new program, the company is free software and certification seminars to both students as well as unemployed architects, engineers and designers. Here’s a YouTube video with more information about the program.

Now, back to those Autodesk Silver Anniversary awards. Last month, at its annual One Team Conference, Autodesk recognized four resellers that have been representing the company’s software for 25 years. They include:

CAD MicroSolutions (A design automation solution provider in Toronto)

Hagerman & Co. (A consulting company based out of Fort Wayne, Idaho, that handles not just CAD/CAM but also sells 3D printers)

Industrial Technology (A Riviera Beach, Fla., reseller that focuses on manufacturing solutions.)

Le Groupe BusCom (A Montreal-based architecture and engineering expert.)

In case you are wondering what makes these relationships work, there are some slidecasts that Autodesk created with several of these partners. Here are those links, too:

Hagerman & Co.

Le Groupe BusCom

CADMicroSolutions