Within the halls of EMC World 2016, the storage giant also is hosting EMC Global Partner Summit 2016. Channel Chief Gregg Ambulos is on stage now. Here's a recap.
Ambulos described how the pending Dell-EMC merger will have the broadest portfolio in the industry -- a one-stop shop of best-of-breed solutions. "When it comes to modernizing the data center, there's no better bet than Dell-EMC," he asserted.
"We both began as direct selling companies," Ambulos conceded. "Direct selling worked when we were pretty much one-product companies." Both companies realized they had to work with partners as markets shifted and product lines diversified.
"Moving from direct to a partner model had its bumps," he concedes. "And with respect to Dell, there was skepticism about their ability to change. Today, the channel isn't just important. It's critical and essential to our success."
Roughly 60 percent of EMC's sales are now channel, and 40 percent of Dell revenues are channel, he says. "We're 'all in' and we hope you are as well," he said.
Dell-EMC Channel Partner Programs: 2016 & 2017
Ambulos pointed to key milestones partners can expect when the Dell-EMC deal is official (expected confirmation date: October 2016 or sooner).
On 'Day One' partners will see...
- Minimal changes and minimal disruption.
- Two separate partner programs and two separate deal registration programs will continue. "We will cross-check registrations to ensure integrity," he added.
Then by 2017, Dell and EMC will have:
- One partner program
- One deal registration system
- Centralized global channel structure
"We know we have more work to do but this gives you a sense of what's to come," said Ambulos.
EMC's Scott Millard, VP, Americas Channel Sales
He believes the EMC data center portfolio has never been strong, even ahead of the Dell deal.
A larger percentage of EMC's data center business will flow through channel vs the traditional EMC business. And Dell's compute layer will make the data center story even stronger, he say.
On the cloud front, he points to Virtustream for mission-critical applications. Everything else is about hybrid that extends out to all the major third-party clouds -- Amazon, Microsoft, Google, etc.
His big priorities for the next few months involve executing on the EMC partner program updates that rolled out earlier this year.
Enterprise Content Management
Separately, ChannelE2E met with Patrick McGrath, product marketing manager for EMC's Enterprise Content Management.
Beyond Documentum, the company also offers InfoArchive -- for structured and unstructured content management. "We put a compliance layer above it and manage that content so that it can be reused. It's a new type of repository."
Purposes include:
- Decommissioning use cases.
- Data sources for mobile apps and more.
- And Hadoop-enablement for big data analytics.
The partner play is InfoArchive Managed Services, building third-party applications atop it and more.
A new offering involves Leap. "A lot of the Documentum software is used mainly for internal content and processes," he says. "With leap we're looking at a brand new multi-tenant SaaS opportunity." It's offered in multiple applications:
- Snap: Effectively an intelligent document capture tool. Take information from printers, cameras and move it into Snap, then recognize the document and extract information -- like data from drivers' license images, or maybe a utility bill.
- Currier: When you want to really understand submitted documents -- pushing far beyond basic file and sync document sharing services.
- Express: A "consumable interface" to other offerings.
- Concert: Collaborative authoring -- a very roles-aware approach to collaboration. Similar to a more regulated Google Apps.
- Focus: Like a Kindle reader for mobile enterprise content.
Keep an eye out for a Leap market place and a Leap platform for ISVs. Partners are in a multi-faceted roles here, either by creating their own offerings and putting it in the market place. Or, if the partner is consulting with an end-customer, the partner can leverage Leap for micro-services to get started, McGrath said. He also sees managed services wrapped around Leap, and digital migration opportunities for partners.
When it comes to EMC Content Management Platforms, partners can navigate EMC select to find the most appropriate offerings. He sees partner synergies with Pivotal as well.
Leap solutions will roll out in the US and Europe concurrently, with further expansion potentially thereafter. There are vertical solutions around life sciences as well as energy and engineering.
