Blue Coat recruits a partner every month

Unregistered partners get with the program.

Security vendor Blue Coat Systems claims to be adding three to four "unregistered" resellers to its formal partner program a quarter.

The vendor, which makes secure web gateways and WAN accelerators, had "in excess of 50" partners in Australia and New Zealand.

"About 38 of those are really active partners who are transacting with us on a weekly basis," Blue Coat's channel director for A/NZ Peter Owen said.

Owen said the company also had "unregistered" partners that sold its products.

These partners bought Blue Coat products from one of its distributors - Express Data, Distribution Central and Computerlinks (Australia) - and the Westcon Group (New Zealand).

"We probably see about 10 to 15 new ones pop up on a quarterly basis," Owen said.

"We see about 20 percent who get it and see Blue Coat as a good revenue stream for their businesses. They tend to become the next targets to bring into the partner program."

Owen also said one of the most popular initiatives it was offering its partners was around lead generation.

Rather than funding a partner's own lead generation campaigns, Owen said Blue Coat would conduct targeted lead generation activities on the partner's behalf using the vendor's own resources, before passing the leads back.

"We've found it works well," Owen said.

"We'll be doing a lot more of that over the next 12 months."