EMC: Time is running out to get on board with BPP

Partners must be certified on incoming partner programme by this month

EMC has given partners until the end of the month to get certified on its incoming Business Partner Programme (BPP) and urged them to hurry up or lose out.

The BPP has been almost two years in the making and finally comes into full force from 1 January, although its branding has been in play for a while.

The programme has caused controversy among the EMC channel because the revenue requirements to achieve new tiers – Platinum, Gold and Silver – are much higher than on the previous Velocity programme. To achieve the top tier, partners must shift upwards of $65m (£41m) of the vendor's kit in a year, with Gold and Silver coming with a hefty $15m and $1.25m barrier respectively.

In a Q4 channel strategy video update for partners, the firm's EMEA channel director Philippe Fosse (pictured) said partners will be in trouble if they don't get accredited on the scheme before the end of this month.

"We don't want anybody to be lagging behind," he said. "This is very important so we want to reinforce the message to partners. We've been working with them for several months to help define which tier they want to be in and what is the requirement to reach that tier. There is a key milestone, which is November – and all our partners need to be certified [then]," he said.

"I cannot insist enough on the fact that the quicker you're done with the certification, the better it is. Certification is only a tick in the box for you to meet the criteria but the way we have built BPP is to be part of your overall business. It should be very easy to achieve and the quicker our partners do this, the better it is for them and the better it is for us and we can then focus on the business.

"We need certification to be done ASAP."

Flash fever

Former UK channel director and now EMEA emerging products director Terry Beale joined Fosse in the video and said flash technology would be a key focus for the firm in the year ahead. EMC has come under increasing pressure from storage start-ups – mainly Pure Storage – which have attacked the firm for being too slow to market on the technology.

But Beale answered doubters by claiming EMC's flash business was the "fastest growing on the planet".

Fosse said the channel is getting on board with flash but admitted that not all partners were convinced yet.

"We have a very different set of partners; it goes from the partners which get it and the partners which don't get it," he said. "It is normal because not so long ago, people were told flash was reserved for certain use cases like VDI and in a couple of months it has evolved to flash everywhere. We have partners which embraced that technology and presented it to customers and some which did not.

"I would like to insist how important that market is. It is growing exponentially and in my view it will be the underlying technology for clouds – private, public and hybrid. They have to lead that transformation we are seeing in the market."