Mike Sharun, the new general manager of EMC Canada, believes that information is the most important letter in IT.
The recently appointed Sharun is touting EMC’s information infrastructure message, which is a new approach from the storage hardware vendor. “We want to put information in the right places for people,” he said.
The new approach is more of an evolution for the storage company to transition into a solutions company, said Sharun, who was responsible for managing EMC’s Western Canadian sales. EMC has been transitioning from hardware vendor into an evenly mixed hardware, software and services company, mostly through acquisitions. Today, 44 per cent of EMC’s business is hardware, while 40 per cent is software. The rest is in services.
Under Sharun, EMC Canada will have three main directions: broaden adoption of the solution set, increase subsidiary presence in the mid-market, and grow the overall business in Canada.
Sharun said that if he and his team can accomplish the first two directives then the third one gets done.
“We are not just a hardware or software company. We are a solutions company and we want to expand from storage and protect it, optimize it and then have (customers) leverage that information. The key is to assist the customer to use the information they have as a competitive advantage,” Sharun said.
More emphasis will be placed on the channel to meet Sharun’s goal in the mid-market space.
While running Western Canada for EMC, Sharun managed to boost business four-fold with the channel’s help. “We are poised to deliver that type of growth to the rest of Canada,” he added.
Today, 50 per cent of EMC’s mid-market business is partner based and Sharun’s plan is to continue that. EMC Canada will add partners, but not in shear numbers. Sharun wants to add partners that can couple their expertise in combination with EMC Clarrion, virtualization software, VMWare and other products and provide value back to the customer.
“(Together) we can provide a consolidated server approach with a decreased cost and foot print from a green and space perspective that is easier to manage,” he said.Sharun does not anticipate any dramatic changes to its Dell business in Canada now that predominantly direct vendor has embraced the channel.
“I still see the presence that Dell has at EMC as not subsiding. We are doing a tremendous about of business with Dell. They are our leading Clarrion sales (partner) with 32 per cent and in the first quarter Dell is 14 per cent of EMC’s total revenue,” he said.
Skydata was one of EMC’s key strategic distribution partners before it was acquired by Arrow Electronics in 2006. The combined entity is working out well for EMC Canada, according to Sharun. He believes that by Arrow/Skydata utilizing the same basic model as before has helped to ensure there were no changes from an EMC Canada perspective.
Sharun does not foresee the subsidiary entering into any new distribution deals. Sales coverage is currently predominantly through partners.
“Our partners represent the best opportunity to grow with value added solutions. We need to foster that. Without them we can’t cover all the different aspects we want to cover from systems, solutions and other lines of business such as RSA security, VMWare and Documentum,” he said.
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