EMC insists its enterprise-only days are behind it

Storage giant pledges allegiance to the mid-market space

EMC has insisted that it has come a long way in convincing the channel of its mid-market credentials but admitted it has been a challenge in recent years.

The storage giant hosted a mid-market-focused media event yesterday in which it talked up its role in the space along with some of its partners. During the gathering, partners called on the vendor to better reward its mid-market partners, some of which feel locked out of its new Business Partner Programme.

At the event, EMC admitted that five years ago, the company was automatically associated with enterprise customers, which turned off some smaller customers.

EMC's head of mid-market Martin Brown said even he felt that way when he joined the firm five years ago.

"It definitely was an issue - when I joined five years ago, I thought EMC was only enterprise," he said. "Since then, the big move to the hard deck [limited the amount of direct customers to 100], that's had a big impact as well. We really need that coverage from the partners."

But Eamon Campbell, managing director of mid-market-focused EMC partner Norisco said there is still a perception among customers that EMC is only for big enterprise customers.

"In our space in the City - it is the clients [who struggle to see EMC as an enterprise company]," he said. "You go into an opportunity and you talk about storage and SAN and you expect them to already be engaged with EMC or an EMC partner and they're not. When you mention EMC they say ‘that's enterprise stuff, it's a waste of time, it is going to be too expensive'. We've had to convince clients to let us put a solution together and then they are pleasantly surprised. But we had to keep on convincing them we would be competitive."

But Brown insisted this perception - among partners especially - has changed a lot in recent years.

"As we bring on new partners, that has changed," he said. "We've obviously developed a lot of solutions to fit into that mid-market space. We're helping them move to the cloud. We've got different technologies for the mid-market, whether it be converged, hyper converged, the all-flash arrays - we've got them at different levels.

"I think the positive think is they are getting access to industry-best technologies in all of those different spaces. The brand of EMC allows us to win - and that's good for our channel partners."