The program also opens up specialized partners options when it comes to how the company’s SMB solutions are delivered – recognizing sales of software licenses as well as hardware appliances and the company’s “.Cloud” hosted products.

To qualify for the new program, partners must be somewhere in the Symantec Partner Program strata from Registered to Corporate Platinum, and must go through specialist training, including the Symantec Sales Expert Training Plus accreditation in the area or areas they’re applying.

In return for that, member partners get additional upfront discounts unique to SMB Specialized partners, and access to the company’s new Symantec Technical Support Centre for pre- and post-sales support.

Although Patterson declined to discuss the number of SMB specialized partners the company currently has in Canada, he did describe the specialization as “very broadly available and widely-populated,” and the number is expected to grow as a result of allowing partners in with a focus on just one of the two core focus areas for Symantec. The community of partners was growing under the existing program, Patterson said, and he said he sees that accelerating.

“Our strategy is to broaden this specialization as much as possible and we’re getting very positive feedback on the changes,” Patterson said.

Meanwhile, existing SMB specialized partners will “largely self-sort” into focus one or the other program tracks, or keep the expertise in both that have been heretofore required for program entry.