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"Until now, we had to register our deal with EMC, VMware, Cisco, and VCE," he said. "But to get special pricing, we had to apply for relief from EMC, VMware, and Cisco. Sometimes we might see aggressive pricing from a competitor, and that meant a major amount of work for us. Now we can go to our distributor, Avnet, with our architect, and get a unified price. And for special pricing, we only have to deal with one entity."
Ironically, the ability to configure the Vblock through a single portal instead of working with the three partners was less of an issue than getting pricing and program benefits, Shepard said.
"Configuration should be the most challenging side," he said. "The pricing should have been the easiest to take care of. But it was just the opposite. Configuration was very easy because we were dealing with very smart ICI and VCE people. But pricing was much more difficult. Each company had a different model."
The new single deal registration, on the other hand, is awesome, Shepard said. "A couple of weeks ago, I'd have had to call EMC, Cisco, and VMware to register the deal separately," he said. "A VMware rep might see the registered deal and ask if we were closing it. If we said we were working with VCE, the rep might say he's not sure the customer really needs a Vblock and perhaps look for some other way to handle it."
In addition to revamping its channel program, VCE is continuing to hire personnel from its parent companies.
CRN has learned that in the last couple of weeks VCE has hired Frank Seiferth as its new senior director of channel sales and services. Seiferth was until recently EMC's director of global channels and services.
CRN has also learned that VCE just hired Russell Rosa as its new area vice resident for the Americas channel. Rosa was until recently a director at Cisco.
Seiferth's move to VCE will be a big boost to that company's partners looking for how to improve their engineering skills, Shepard said.
"Frank at EMC single-handedly built the channel enabling program for training engineers," he said. "He worked with me on determining how much EMC material should be presented in a week, and how much EMC should charge partners. He really understands the channel."
Seiferth and Rosa join several former colleagues who have recently made the move to VCE.
VCE's most high-profile addition to its executive team this year was Frank Hauck, a former EMC executive vice president and a member of the EMC executive office of the Chairman who last month was appointed president of VCE.
Koliopoulos, who joined VCE a year ago, was previously the long-term vice president of global channel marketing at EMC.
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