EMC, CA, IBM To Court Partners At XChange

CMP Media&'s Xchange 2005, which runs from Aug. 21 to 24, will also feature presentations from top channel executives including Hewlett-Packard&'s John Thompson, Microsoft&'s Margo Day and Intel&'s Steve Dallman.

EMC Vice President of Worldwide Channel Marketing John Koury said EMC will be recruiting new partners to sell its software and hardware portfolio—from Dantz backup for small businesses to Legato data protection software as well as the Centera compliance appliance and Clariion SAN array.

Koury said EMC wants to appeal to a wide range of partners. “The new EMC has a much richer product portfolio,” he said. “We&'re not just a storage hardware company. We think we have a wide enough portfolio of products for many types of partners from software-only partners to SMB partners and enterprise partners going to market selling solutions and services as opposed to point hardware and software products.”

EMC also plans to tout the availability of an update to its EMC Dantz Retrospect 7 for Windows software that extends backup to the estimated 4 million servers running Novell NetWare.

CA Senior Vice President of Worldwide Partner Sales James Hanley said he aims to emphasize CA&'s channel commitment and the services opportunity for partners. And Nancy Toda, director of worldwide channel marketing at IBM, said IBM will launch a program aimed at helping VARs generate demand and cut their marketing costs by piggybacking on IBM&'s discounted advertising rates in local markets.

Also at XChange, Safend will launch its first official channel program with a commitment to push all of its business through the channel, said Ari Fruchter, channel manager. The company&'s products are handled through Centreville, Va., distributor e-Convergence Solutions.

LARRY HOOPER, CRAIG ZARLEY and DAN NEEL contributed to this story.