Bear Grylls offers survival tips to EMC channel

EMC wheels on survival specialist as it warns partners: change your ways or risk extinction

EMC has told partners they "probably won't survive" if they do not move with the times during its Global Partner Summit (GPS) event at which survival specialist Bear Grylls weighed in with his tips for tackling challenges.

Throughout the storage giant's EMC World event in Las Vegas, it has been beating the drum for third-platform technology – big data, mobile, social and cloud – and took the opportunity of its survival-themed GPS to encourage the channel to get on board with the emerging trends.

After zip wiring across the room on to the GPS stage, EMC's senior vice president for its global channel, Gregg Ambulos, told partners they risk dying out if they don't keep up with the pace of change.

"We all know it's a jungle out there," he said. "As-a-service is everywhere – platform-as-a-service; infrastructure-as-a-service; software-as-a-service. If you're not having this conversation with your customers, you're going to miss the boat and you probably won't survive.

"Everybody in this room – everybody – has to look at some kind of transformation in order to survive."

He added that there is still ample opportunity for resellers to cash in on second-platform kit such as client servers too.

"I'm not just talking about getting to the third platform," he said. "There's a huge opportunity in front of us right now in the second platform. EMC is a market-share leader in storage with 30 per cent share. There's 70 per cent out there for us all to get together. We want our fair share, and here's what that is: 100 per cent."

Getting a Grylling

After giving partners a moving account of how he conquered Mount Everest, Bear Grylls – whose own efforts to zip wire on to the stage were thwarted by a technical hitch – chipped in with advice for the channel on how to deal with challenges.

"I've been invited here to talk to you about challenges. About facing challenges; about overcoming challenges and about understanding that challenges are not obstacles," he said.

"What they really are, are opportunities. You guys are all facing big challenges with the market transformation you're going through and the emerging third platform in your IT world – they are some big challenges.

"But here's the thing: without challenge there can be no success. What challenges actually give us – as human beings – challenges give us the chance to shine."