EMC Bolsters Partner Program

In the past few months, EMC,once known as one of the least channel-friendly companies around,has been building up elements to its partner program with features like sales-lead registration, accreditation and joint solutions. In addition, it has been investing millions in a software system that helps automate business planning with partners.

"We are trying to make the environment comfortable for [partners] so they will invest in EMC," says Bill Taylor, director of EMC's Global Channel Development Group.

Among its program initiatives, one element, in particular, has the hallmark of success: joint solutions. As Taylor explains it, EMC has put together a playbook of solutions targeting specific segments so that partners can more easily go to market. Each of these joint solutions has its own playbook written in the form of a brief. And in them, EMC outlines exactly what partners need to focus on in order to make a sale.

For example, one joint solution is called the Automated Networked Storage Solutions for Health-Care Picture Archiving and Communications Systems, which is targeting a market that increasingly depends on electronic medical records. This playbook offers the software, server, storage and networking components VARs need to build a system that stores, transmits, distributes and displays digital medical images.

EMC goes on to help partners frame a strategy for these and other joint solutions. For instance, its Business Continuity playbook advises partners that, although business continuity remains a top priority, company executives now find themselves in a financial bind between choosing costly BC solutions and other products that cost less. EMC advises partners to first understand a company's practices on data protection and availability. So, EMC has constructed a framework to help partners figure out if customers can achieve their business requirements for data availability through existing data-protection tools, either remotely or locally.

But EMC also realizes building a business-continuity plan that considers a wide range of elements that could go wrong is daunting. So the brief offers a chart that outlines its business-continuity solution in six steps, and it addresses planned, unplanned and disaster-outage scenarios so that customers can choose solutions based on their risk requirements. It covers everything from basic infrastructures that connect storage, network and servers all the way to the level of RAID protection and redundancy between the server and storage-data paths, and then moves on to include backup integrity.

EMC plans to roll out many more joint solutions throughout this year, including agreements with wireless partners like Nokia and Ericsson. Taylor says the idea behind these playbooks is to educate its partners. "We want to make sure that when you are saying something, it is well thought out," he says. "As we go to market, we want to make sure we cover all the bases and gaps." The joint solutions have been slowly evolving in the past five to six months. But, so far, EMC executives see it working well. "We are seeing a lot of traction in the partner community," Taylor says.