Channel Buzz

For EMC, Partners are the doors to Success

by VARINDIA 2010-04-16

Today, India has become one of the most strategic markets for all the vendors. The factors that are making India as a remarkable country are its rapidly growing infrastructure, business environment and the government’s intensive focus on IT and e-governance. All these elements together are creating exquisite business ambience and generating a huge market opportunities, especially in the B- and C-class cities.

Eyeing on these emerging opportunities in India, in the month of June 2006, EMC, the world leader in information management and storage, had announced its third phase of investment in the Indian market. At that time, it had committed to double its existing investments in India by 2010 from US$250 million announced in February 2005, to over US$500 million. EMC also announced it will set up a Centre of Excellence in e-Governance (CoEE) to assist the Central and State Governments with their e-Governance information management and storage needs. And, this entire announcement was made by Mr. Joe Tucci, Chairman, President & CEO, EMC Corporation, in New Delhi.

Working along the lines of its announcement made in the month of June 2006, EMC has recently announced significant developments to strengthen its India go-to-market strategy. The key developments include: Launch of an enhanced EMC Velocity Partner Program, EMC Velocity SMB Partner Program to resell its newly introduced EMC Insignia line of SMB products, and the appointment of Select Technologies as a distributor for EMC Insignia products in India. Redington has also expanded its EMC portfolio to include the EMC Insignia products.

Enhanced Velocity Partner Program

This enhanced program includes increased rebates and partner margins, additional training opportunities to facilitate increased services revenue for the partners, and commitment to strengthen EMC’s regional Partner Support Centre and streamlines internal systems and processes. These enhancements to the Velocity Partner Program will make it is easier for partners to work with EMC which translates into accelerated profitability for the existing 50 EMC partners spread across 30 cities.

EMC has also announced the launch of the complementary EMC Velocity SMB Partner Program for solution providers serving small and medium businesses (SMBs). Designed so that partners of all types can succeed by working within their preferred business models, the addition of EMC Velocity SMB to the overarching EMC Velocity Partner Program ensures that partners carrying the EMC Insignia line are rewarded for their commitment and investment. The recently launched EMC Insignia line of software and hardware products enable SMBs store, manage, protect and share their vital business information. Products includes: EMC CLARiiON AX150, EMC Retrospect, EMC RepliStor SMB Edition, EMC VisualSRM SMB Edition and EMC eRoom SMB Edition. Additionally, EMC announced the appointment of Select Technologies as a distributor for EMC Insignia products.

Speaking about this announcement, Ron Goh, Vice-President, Partners/Alliance and Commercial/SME Business Asia-Pacific/Japan, EMC Corporation, says, “EMC has experienced tremendous growth in the Indian market over the last three years. The recent announcement to increase Indian investment to US$500 million to grow the information management market and expand the sales and marketing infrastructure, was a significant step to accelerate this growth. The launch of the enhanced Velocity Partner Program and the new Velocity SMB Partner Program to support the EMC Insignia products are significant milestone towards strengthening and expanding our presence in the Indian market.”

Engagement with the Partners

EMC has grown considerably in a couple of years and all this can be attributed to its strategic approach towards its channel partners. According to Ron Goh, 70 per cent of the EMC businesses are done through its partners. Thus, it can be assumed that the partner community holds a vital position in the business process of the company. EMC believes that the partners are the only means to acquire more market share and that is why the company is heavily focussing on its partners’ programs. Speaking on this front, Ron Goh says, “Recruiting more and more partner is the main focus for us. Partners are extremely critical to our business success. So, a lot of our programs are designed and dedicated for the success of the partners.”

Currently, EMC has got three categories of partners – distributors, tier-2 partners and tier-3 partners. Tier-3 categories of partners are basically SIs (System Integrators), VARs (Value-added Resellers) and resellers. The SIs include both global and local partners. For example, Accenture and EDA are global partners, and HCL and Wipro are its local partners. The fourth categories of partners of EMC are called as strategic partners. EMC has got five categories of strategic partners – Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, Cisco and Intel.

Before launching the velocity program, EMC largely focussed on promoting its core products. But till now over a couple of year time, the company has acquired 25 companies and after that the company decided to go for partner program so that the existing partner can get more access to its newly inducted capabilities. Speaking on this front, Ron Goh says, “Velocity is the umbrella program and underneath all the EMC products are available. All the benefits that we are talking about through the velocity program will be enjoyed by the partners of the acquired entities.”

Apart from running partners program, EMC is also going to provide financial rewards to the partners and the requisite for getting those rewards is that the partners have to attain certain targets assigned by EMC.

In order to strengthen its presence in the Indian market, EMC has recently announced the opening of its office and a customer support and logistics centre in Chennai. EMC identified Tamil Nadu as a key market in South India and outlined a three-pronged strategy to tap this market. The three pillars of EMC’s business strategy in Tamil Nadu include generating market awareness for the need to implement information management and storage solutions, strengthening of marketing, sales and support infrastructure and launching the industry’s broadest portfolio of solutions and services, to serve the information management and storage needs of the customers in the market. Currently, EMC’s regional distributor for India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka is headquartered in Chennai.

In the end…

In order to deliver a total customer experience to its existing and potential customers, EMC continues to add new products and programs for the channel community to offer the broadest suite of information management solutions in the industry. Additionally, it is equally focussed on adding infrastructure both in terms of offices and customer support and logistics centre to cater to the growing demand. Today, with the industry’s most powerful range of storage solutions and a geographically spread channel partner network, EMC is well poised to deliver on the information management and storage needs of its customers in India.