In 2011, under Canada country manager Michael Sharun, EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) made some channel strides by launching products solely for its partner community to sell and adding incentives for partners selling to the SMB market.
To bring in more partners EMC added an Authorized level to its partner program and created new arrangements with distributors Ingram Micro, Tech Data, Synnex and others.
It wasn’t all great news, though. Most recently, after much industry speculation, Dell ended its reseller relationship with EMC in favour of touting its own storage products. But the vendor pointed out in its earnings call that same day that it grew its revenue with mid-tied products through non-Dell channels by 40 per cent in its third quarter.
Early in the year, EMC launched its unified storage family geared toward the SMB market. EMC also placed emphasis on the midmarket this year with its channel partners because that segment is growing at a faster rate than large enterprises, particularly in Canada.
It also launched its Data Domain GDA DD890 and DD860 deduplication storage systems this year, in what it called “most significant disk-based backup advancements in company history with new products, system enhancements, integration initiatives and performance gains.”
Then this fall, the company announced three new updates to its Velocity channel program, the program that placed Sharun at No. 17 on last year’s list.
This year’s additions included the VNXe “Try & Buy” program allows partners to provide VNXe products to customers at no risk for 45 days; a “Quick Ship” program for partners with preconfigured solutions that can be shipped globally within two days; and a “U Sell U Earn Training Incentive Program,” which gives partners who sell training to end customers credits toward paying for VNX readiness training for themselves.