EMC to cough up rebates from dollar one

EMC has announced that from next year it will hand out rebates to resellers starting from the first dollar of sales they make as it talked up its new Business Partner Programme (BPP).

The vendor unveiled details of the new-look programme at its Global Partner Summit (GPS) during its EMC World event in Las Vegas, which has attracted thousands of global customers and partners.

At last year's event it announced it was scrapping its old Velocity programme in favour of the BPP, which will come into force fully next January, although its branding took effect from the start of 2014.

Under the BPP umbrella, partners can pick from a number of "tracks" which best suit them, for example: EMC resell, distribution, cloud service provider, system integrator or outsourcer.

As part of the rebate overhaul, partners will be paid low-level rebates from the first dollar of sales, with the reward rate gradually increasing as higher thresholds are surpassed. The vendor claims the move is in line with its plans to make life simpler, more profitable and more predictable for partners.

EMC's senior vice president for its global channel Gregg Ambulos said the move was a first for the vendor.

"When you sell EMC solutions, you're going to get credit from dollar one now for everything you sell within our programme – dollar one – that's a first," he said on the GPS stage, which prompted cheering from partners. "You sell something and you're going to get something for it."

The new BPP will also recognise partners' investments in other areas of the EMC ‘federation' – the collection of EMC Information Infrastructure, VMware, Pivotal and RSA.

Resellers that complete training and accreditations for one branch of the federation will not have to complete the same exams for another arm, EMC announced, claiming it was trying to save its partners from parting with cash unnecessarily.

"You told my team ‘this is crazy, please don't make me take the same training three different times for three different programmes – this is just lunacy'," Ambulos said. "We heard you loud and clear. We're going to honour all your training and certification across tracks."

EMC said its partner programme overhaul – the first big change in a decade – reflects that partners now need to offer "solutions" to customers instead of just separate products.

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