Joe Tucci's Triumph

With the launch of the VNXe and VNX family powered by Unisphere, EMC has a simple and affordable product set that partners can take to any and all businesses. The biggest story is that EMC has taken its channel strategy to a broader partner base with VNXe—a 100 percent channel product. At the same time, EMC is determined to maintain robust margins, a hallmark of the EMC Velocity channel program.

Tucci’s insistence that EMC build strong, long-lasting partnerships backed up by world-class products and healthy margins for partners is the foundation for the company’s channel success. That steadfast philosophy has taken EMC from a no-show channel vendor to a company that has won the prestigious CRN Annual Report Card award for storage and data protection for four consecutive years.

Jamie Shepard, executive vice president of technology solutions for International Computerware Inc. (ICI), EMC’s global services partner of the year, sees Tucci as a “genius of the IT world” who has delivered through high-stakes acquisitions and big technology bets the best products to deliver on the promise of cloud computing. What’s more, Shepard says, those big technology bets have allowed partners like ICI to build thriving businesses.

“I’m living proof of that,” he said. “We are coming off our best year ever in a down economy.” ICI finished 2010 with its EMC business up 14 percent and total revenue soaring to $35 million. And Shepard expects to close 2011 with $50 million in sales with as much as 15 percent of that coming from the SMB market as a result of EMC’s SMB assault.

Shepard says he has never been more optimistic about the prospects for the business or felt better about putting all his eggs in one basket with EMC.

“I am very proud to represent EMC because of all the moves Tucci has made bringing EMC VMware, Data Domain, Avamar,” he said. “These are all best-ofbreed technologies. Talk about cloud computing—EMC is making cloud computing easy. They are helping to define the cloud. I have bet my business on it and they have made it very profitable for us.”

BACKTALK: What do you think of Joe Tucci's EMC transformation? Contact Steven Burke at [email protected].