EMC unifies Velocity scheme
Firm unites products from acquisitions under one channel programme
Storage giant EMC is combining the hardware and software offerings from its acquisitions last year under one channel scheme.
The vendor plans to relaunch its Velocity Channel Programme on 1 April, to include partners and products inherited from Legato, Dantz, Documentum and Smarts - but not VMWare.
The new scheme is designed to give resellers the chance to sell EMC's whole range of products, a strategy that coincides with the vendor's information lifecycle management push.
Colm O'Neill, channel manager UK and Ireland at EMC, told CRN that details about Velocity are still to be decided for each region.
"After making all the acquisitions, one frustration that resellers told us about was that dealing with EMC has become like dealing with five different companies. We are now putting a stake in the ground to say we are trying to integrate all of them," he said.
O'Neill added that the firm has tried to design the scheme so no partner is disadvantaged. He said previous schemes have been related just to revenue, but this is an inaccurate way of tiering VARs because software revenues can often be lower than hardware ones.
"Our system will be based around points. We won't just give points for revenue targets but for investment in skills as well," O'Neill said.
Tony Ruane, sales and marketing director at Legato and EMC VAR RedStor, said: "This scheme should be much fairer. Under the previous schemes Legato had its own criteria, EMC had its own criteria, and I'm sure the other vendors had criteria, too.
"Becoming accredited is quite a bit of work for a reseller so the clearer a programme is, the better."
EMC made the announcement last week during its first software conference in Las Vegas, which attracted more than 600 attendees from 325 organisations, including resellers and integrators.