EMC centralises Asia-Pacific partner support

Storage vendor EMC has centralised Asia-Pacific partner support, opening seven reseller help centres in what it sees as key markets.

David Henderson, GM for channels and alliances at EMC Australia, said the US vendor had found localised partner support difficult to coordinate effectively as its product line grew.

"As our product line is expanding to serve a broader range of customers, our partners need information quickly. Doing that at a local level created logistical problems," he said.

Henderson said that partner support would be managed from Singapore. Some 14 staff had been deployed at the new Singapore partner support centre to cope with the different time zones and strategies in specific Asia-Pacific markets.

The other six sites were Sydney, Tokyo, Beijing, Seoul, Bangkok and Bangalore.

However, EMC would keep channel managers on the ground in each specific country, including Australia. Those staff would now have more time to take a more proactive approach and generate demand, he said.
 
"They can work on developing business as opposed to doing back office processing," Henderson said.

EMC had been expanding its channel presence in the Asia-Pacific over the last year and now had a lot of partners across the region. That move would increase in importance as EMC moved more strongly into the SMB market, he said.

"Each country has its own infrastructure and service level agreements (SLAs)," he said.

Missed SLAs would be routed automatically to senior management. The new support centres would allow EMC to respond more quickly to channel queries and needs, Henderson said. Each centre would each have access to multilingual online partner support facilities and enhanced contact management.