EMC wants to make consultants of partners

Mumbai: Like all other vendors EMC is also exhorting that its partners move up the value chain. And to help them in achieve this, Viswanath Ramaswamy, Director-Partners and Alliances, EMC India and SAARC is getting them to move away from just selling the hardware and don the role of a consultant instead. So ideally partners should recommend the various solutions that can be built around information rather than restrict themselves to selling storage space.

Famous last words oft replied by most vendors? True, but Ramaswamy has got a strategy to achieve this upgradation of partners up the fabled value chain. For starters, he and his team of nine people are working on identifying and enabling 250 partners in 19 cities to offers these consultancy services to customers, ranging from SMB buyers to enterprise clients.

The idea does have its merits. During a slowdown a customer is looking at more than buying storage boxes from his supplier. He wants to know if the same supplier can help him in ensuring backup of the data, archive the information, secure it or also help him adhere to the various compliance and regulatory standards.

“In good times, a customer might opt for 5 terabytes (TB) of storage and then add another 2TB as well. But during a slowdown what a partner needs to proactively do is go to the same customer and advise him that instead of buying 5TB he should go for 3TB, but go for multiple options of storage solutions like visualization, storage optimization, etc, depending on the need and speed of the customer. This is the time that partners should opt for the consultancy mode rather than just look at the transactional value of a deal. They should offer customers solutions at a lower cost but with the best of breed technology available. These are the focus of moving up the value chain,” elucidated Ramaswamy.

He also added that EMC was going beyond vanilla training programs for partners who opt to become information consultants. “We are getting these finite partners to focus on how this approach could boost their profitability because that is what most partners are gunning for right now. Within the framework of our Velocity partner program we show them how it is profitable for them to partner with EMC,” he added.

Besides this, the company is also focusing strongly on getting more partners to its side of the table, trying to popularize the concept of visualization amongst all genres of customers. Though visualization as a concept is over four years old, there are not many partners in India who have invested in gaining skillsets around it. And Ramaswamy accepts this.

“Yes, not many partners have embraced visualization till now but we see that number now growing quarter on quarter. Most of them feel that it would be best to wait and watch. I tell them that you have waited and watched enough, now is the time to take a jump into the deep end of the pool. And EMC will stand by them to ensure they do not drown,” he added.

Right now the company is working closely with these select partners to identify who amongst their existing clientele is a potential customer for visualization. The next phase will be to get these customers to adopt visualization, which Ramaswamy hopes should happen within six months.