SPs to play a key role in cloud portfolio: EMC

Manoj Chugh shares the opportunities for solution providers as well as EMC's
partners programs and schemes with DQ Channels' Senior Correspondent, Muntazir
Abbas

What are the business opportunities for Solution Providers (SPs)? What are
the key benefits that they can get from EMC's association?

According to EMC sponsored IDC study, in 2009, amidst the great recession,
the amount of digital information grew 62 percent over 2008 to 800 billion
gigabytes (0.8 Zettabytes). The amount of digital information created in 2010
was 1.2 Zettabytes. With this explosive growth, the need for managing,
protecting and storing information is dramatically increasing. This presents a
huge opportunity for channel partners with technologies like cloud computing,
virtualization, de-duplication, and unified storage taking the center stage.

EMC is committed to make sure that its partners should have the best
portfolio of offerings to solve a wide-range of customer's IT challenges, to
efficiently complete transactions, to get rewarded for selling EMC solutions,
and have services opportunities to increase partner profitability. In the past
year, we have delivered new industry-leading storage and backup, recovery and
archive software products. We have also enhanced deal registration and incentive
programs to provide financially superior rewards and streamlined training for
services delivery partners. Including all this we have provided marketing
campaigns to help partners take advantage of business continuity and
virtualization market opportunities. As partner needs evolve, EMC remains
focused on having all the elements of its Velocity Partner Program aligned to
meet market demands and opportunities.

The EMC Velocity Partner Program, which supports EMC's channel strategy, is
focused on developing a balanced portfolio of motivated, loyal and
self-sufficient partners by delivering a robust program with rich financial
rewards and providing partners with the opportunity to accelerate their
profitability with EMC.

What is the role of SPs in your cloud offering to enterprise segment?

SPs will play a key role to deliver cloud offerings to enterprises. Currently,
we are focused at educating and enabling our SPs on these offerings.

How do you perceive SPs as a key to cater to the growing SMB sector in
India?

The commercial segment in India is one of the fastest growing industry
segments today. This comprises of the emerging business segment as well as the
large but non-enterprise segment. We are betting on the market opportunity in
tier-II and tier-III cities and partners are playing a key role in tapping this
market segment. SMB information solution needs are growing rapidly. The
testimony to the fact is that Iomega is selling over 1,000 NAS boxes every
quarter.

From an EMC perspective, this 'emerging business' segment (the emerging
market segment includes the SMBs and the non-enterprise segment) will opt for
the latest information infrastructure technologies whether it is consolidation,
virtualization, de-duplication, backup, recovery and archive technology or
disaster recovery.

Some of the SPs feel that EMC is ignoring the upcountry market. What do
you think?

EMC has over 200 partners covering 80 cities across India. Going forward, we
are increasingly focusing on tapping the tier-II and tier-III markets. We
already have presence in cities like Indore, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Bhopal, Lucknow,
Ahmadabad, Goa, Nagpur, Vizag, Vellore, Cochin, Trivandrum and Coimbatore
through partners.

With Tata Elxsi as an independent third-party SP on board, will you bring
more such SPs to your fold?

We are always open for more SPs on board. However, we look for right-fit and
commitment from the SP to deliver the EMC level SLA to customers.

What is the prerequisite to become EMC's certified SP? Please name some of
your major SPs in India.

The EMC Velocity Partner Program is comprised of tiers that provide
incremental business benefits and rewards to partners based on their revenue,
training, and accreditation achievements. The tiers, with graduated benefits,
are premier, signature and distributor. Velocity Partner loyalty and performance
are directly linked to increased financial rewards for those who achieve higher
levels of proficiency and increase their revenue contribution to move up in the
tier structure.

The criteria to become an EMC certified SP is to have sales and pre-sales
accredited employees and sign an approved Goal Acknowledgment Form (GAF). Some
of our premier SPs include TCS, HCL, Datacraft and CMC. The Signature SP
includes Wipro and distributor SPs includes Redington and Ingram Micro to name a
few.

How many distributors and channel partners are your operating currently
with? What are your channel expansion plans?

Our channel partners are very important stakeholders for us. At present we
share highly valued associations with 200 partners in India. We have a
two-pronged strategy for driving EMC's channel initiatives: enhancement and
enablement. With regard to enhancement, we will look to increase the existing
number of channel partners and significantly enhance our presence in India. We
are also looking at improving our footprints in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. This
is in line with our foray into the commercial and SMB markets.

The other key element in our partner strategy is in partner enablement. EMC
believes that along with having leading edge products, it is essential to enable
the partners so that they are skilled enough to gauge the market and decide how
to sell and where to sell. Every quarter we conduct partner enablement programs
in six to seven cities, to get partner sales force accredited and certified.
What we really look at doing is to simplify our cutting edge technologies into
products which can be easily sold by our partners. Our Velocity Partner Program
has all the ingredients in terms of training our partners and providing them
incentives to help them move up the value chain. We are an information
infrastructure solutions provider and we cater not just to the large enterprises
but also to the SMBs, SOHOs and other small enterprises.

EMC earlier said that it would invest in partners to make them strong
services vendors. What is the total investment planned for similar activities in
India?

At EMC we are quite clear that we will grow the services business in India
through channels. We have been focusing on training, enablement and providing
additional opportunities to our partners in this direction. We have enabled more
than 30 partners in 2009 itself. EMC has a committed investment of USD two
billion by 2014 in India. However, as a policy, we can't share the break-up of
this investment.

What are your focus areas for the services business through existing
channel network in India?

EMC has devised a two-pronged strategy. We have a strong deal registration
and rules of engagement policy, which does not allow a services partner to pitch
into another partner's account. We also have Tata Elxsi as an independent
third-party SP (with absolutely no interest in doing product business) that's
been roped in for cases where the partner selling the product or handling the
account is not in a position to support the account. The terms with Tata Elxsi
are such that once the partner becomes certified and is in a position to support
the customer, the company's technical team will mentor partner's engineer.

What are your plans for improving business and profitability to your loyal
and dedicated partner base? How do you enable partners to identify new business
opportunities and capture services revenue?

We are an information infrastructure solutions provider and we cater not
just to the large enterprises but also to the SMBs, SOHOs and other small
enterprises. EMC is investing on building skills for our partners through
education, demand generation activities and strengthening our technical support
for them, besides improving incentives. Customers no longer are looking for box
pushers, what they want are the solution providers.

We are training and enabling our channel partners to position themselves as
an end-to-end solutions provider rather than just the box pushers. The EMC
Velocity Partner Program is designed to make the channel's partnership with EMC
as productive and profitable as possible. It provides all the tools, training,
support and resources to increase channel profitability and advancement in
partner business. The program offers a rich system of incentives that rewards
their loyalty as they continue to invest in EMC's relationship.

One of the objectives of this program is to encourage partners to do
marketing at their level. We also have separate portals for our channel
partners. The portals provide an excellent platform for communication between
EMC and its partners. Our key portals include 'Power Link', 'Channel Express'
and 'Channel incentive micro site'.

What are your partner programs and schemes that are currently underway?

We continue to run a number of schemes for our partners every quarter
including Product Bundles and incentive programs. Currently, we are running the
'Accelerate' incentive scheme which focuses on motivating representatives of
partner field sales team.

How does EMC Velocity Partner Program facilitate resellers? How do you
provide customized support and greater market reach to them?

The EMC Velocity Partner Program, supports EMC's channel strategy, is
focused on developing a balanced portfolio of motivated, loyal and
self-sufficient partners by delivering a robust program with rich financial
rewards and providing partners with the opportunity to accelerate their
profitability with EMC.

EMC has three solutions centers, 15 maintenance support and service centers,
24x7 logistic centers in nine locations, an Asia-Pacific Partner support center,
a Midrange Global Customer support center and hundreds of field engineers in
India. EMC Support provides four hours onsite response. We also have separate
portals for our channel partners. The portals provide an excellent platform for
communication between EMC and its partners. Our key portals include 'Power
Link', 'Channel Express' and 'Channel incentive micro site'. This cohesive
support network enables us to fully exemplify EMC's core promise to our partners
and eventually to our customers.

Muntazir abbas

muntazira@cybermedia.co.in