|
Ramaswamy Viswanath has his hands full with trying to induct new partners
to EMC's network. He wants partners to focus more on the solutions aspect of the
business rather than the transactional value of a deal
How does EMC define the value chain for its partners and how is it getting
its partners to invest in upskilling themselves during a downturn when most of
them would rather not invest their funds for not very critical activities?
In good times, there is always enough business on a partner's plate and he
can put off upgrading his skillsets. But, the other school of thought is that in
storage business upgrading oneself means moving away from merely offering
customers the hardware or the box. It is more about how do you manage the
information around it.
In good times, a customer might opt for five terabytes (TB) of storage and
then add another two TB as well. But during a slowdown what a partner needs to
proactively do is go to the same customer and advise him that instead of buying
five TB he should go for three TB, but go for multiple options of storage
solutions like virtualisation, storage optimization, etc, depending on the need
and speed of the customer. This is the time that partners should opt for the
consultancy mode rather than just look at the transactional value of a deal.
They should offer customers solutions at a more lower cost but with the best of
breed technology available. These are the focus of moving up the value chain.
In the past few years, EMC has undergone a lot of transformation. It is
now a software vendor, a security vendor, a vendor focused on virtualization, a
document management vendor, etc. How do you take your channel along and get them
to adopt these multiple roles as well?
EMC is the one stop shop that caters to all their storage needs. Every
customer, be it an SMB with Rs 1 crore turnover or an enterprise needs some
space to store their data. The customers require a very process-driven solution
for storage, which revolves around document management, where the data is
originally present in hard copies for either audit or archival purposes.
So if information is the atom, then document management, virtualization,
security and archival are the molecules around it. So a customer might have
fantastic document management, but without tiered storage it would not be very
efficient
A partner would have to interface with different vendors for each technology.
But since EMC offers all these solutions under one roof, he can put all these
pieces together. This is precisely how we take our partners along with up in
offering multiple solutions at the same time.
Virtualization is what most market analysts hope will be the big player
this year. But very few partners in India are geared up to offer it. How are you
getting more partners involved in virtualization, which is a key focus area for
EMC as well?
Virtualization started as a trend four to five years ago. We are working
with select partners who are very keen on virtualization to help take this
technology to more customers.We are first working with our select partners to
identify who amongst their existing clientele is a potential customer for
virtualization. The next phase will be to get these customers to adopt
virtualization, which I hope should begin happening within six months. EMC will
stand by them to ensure the partners do not drown when virtualization becomes
big.
Vinita Bhatia
vinitavs@cybermedia.co.in
Page(s) 1
| 
