EMC announces changes to its Velocity partner program in order to boost midrange business-- with increased backend rebates and the removal of a number of certification requirements.
The result of a partner survey and two channel advisory board meetings, the revamped program does not require partners to have an implementation specialist in order to join the top Premier and Signature tiers. This allows partners to focus on sales, not implementation services.
Top partners can also deliver own EMC-backed support contracts, just like how Cisco gold partners deliver SmartNet. EMC EMEA channels VP Philippe Fossé says this as “a channel play… they need to earn the margin, so they need to deliver the service themselves.”
EMEA accounts for 59% of EMC channel business, and is a "growth engine" according to Fossé.
The company also wants partners to focus on smaller deals (rather than just large enterprise), offering rebates of 3-8% (depending on specialties and tier levels) across a range of products under the sub-$100000 market with the new S100 program.
The program targets VNX and VNXe unified storage, Avamar and Data Domain products.
EMC also puts more cash into marketing development funds (MDFs) while simplifying MDF usage guidelines (from 27 to just 10 pages), tripling the amount of MDF-eligible activities and increasing claims staff.
