EMC in channel program blitz

David Henderson, general manager of channels at EMC, boasted that the Velocity program is as good as it gets. He said that it gives channel partners similar opportunities that they had in the early 90s to get healthy margins, get trained in storage technology and “control the customer”.

“There's not one customer in Australia that we do not encourage the partners to sell to,” Henderson said.

While EMC has 50 direct accounts which it deals with direct, Henderson said the vendor wouldn't stop a partner working on another “solution” inside one of those named accounts. “[We] will still encourage partners to play there. Partners deliver a broader range of solutions that we [EMC] do. When they're in there, we want them to work with EMC. At least we let them in the door,” he claimed.

Under the program, partners will be classified as Velocity Reseller, Velocity Partner and Premier Velocity Partner, depending on the number of EMC certified personnel on staff and revenue performance.

Henderson said that under the program resellers could garner rebates of between three and five percent, provided they complete online training, get certified and meet pre-set sales targets. These sales revenue targets would vary for each channel partner, he said.

Each sales target would be “individually discussed” with every partner and under the program rebates aren't only restricted to resellers that buy direct from EMC, he said.

The training would involve reseller sales engineers completing an online accreditation course and nine days of instructor-led classroom-based training, according to Henderson.

He claimed that EMC is investing in its channel at a time when competing vendors are pulling money out. Henderson declined, however, to reveal the financial investment in the program. EMC in the US earlier this month indicated it had increased its channel support budget by more than $US20 million.

Henderson added that its CLARiiON business--acquired from Data General--had opened up “a new slab of marketplace for EMC.”

The company launched a new range of CLARiiON systems in August last year and Henderson claimed over the last nine months, CLARiiON sales had gone from zero to 56 percent of EMC's revenue in Australia.