With the launch of its Insignia division for small and medium business, EMC Corp. is turning a page in its history.
For the first time the data management and storage vendor, which has sold its products predominantly direct, will exclusively use the channel for several of its product lines.
It also unveiled this week an SMB Velocity partner program specifically for resellers and direct market resellers.
According to Don Chouinard, director of Insignia products for EMC, while the SMB segment is growing at twice the rate of enterprise and the company isn’t doing a lot of business today in that area.
So it created the Insignia brand, which comprises hardware and software products storage, data manage and protection. The products, specifically created for the SMB market, will also enable users to share data and have been tested to ensure they work individually, together and with third-party software and hardware.
“It is an appetizing target,” said Chouinard of this market segment. “Do we have what people want? We looked at our products and said, ‘Yes, we do.’ Now, not all our products do because some are overwhelming for SMB, but we are bringing them together with a focused channel strategy,” he said.
Initially included under the Insignia umbrella are EMC’s Clariion AX Series disk arrays, Storage Administrator for Exchange, Retrospect, RepliStor, VisualSRM, and eRoom.
Clariion, Storage Administrator for Exchange and Retrospect are available through both broadline and specialty distributors along with authorized EMC resellers and those in the new SMB Velocity program. The other products will be released by the end of the first quarter of this year.
Pricing for Clariion AX100/I begins at US$5,500, while Storage Administrator for Exchange is just under CDN$2,000. All the other products will be priced under CDN$1,000.
EMC does not release margins on its products publicly, but Chouinard said they would be competitive.
New Velocity program
The new Velocity partner program for Insignia comes in two parts: an SMB version and one for direct marketing resellers.
The SMB partner plan has two tiers. The first can be achieved with only $124,000 in hardware and $30,000 in software. The VAR must also have four marketing activities during the year and four staffers go through sales or technical training. In Tier 2, the VAR must earn just $63,000 in hardware sales or $15,000 in software sales plus have two marketing activities and two staffers trained to qualify.
“The channel is the way to go,” said Chouinard. “You can’t go direct with SMB. We are looking toward solution providers (whose customer base are) doctors, dentists, lawyers and those who own 7-11 stores,” he said.
Chouinard recalled seeing an ad recently in an American post office stating there are 23 million SMBs in the U.S.. “That’s a lot of targets and opportunity. They need storage and protection software. They need to share data and manage their data. This market has a lot of upside potential.”
In the direct marketing reseller Velocity plan, a first tier partner must attain $3.1 million in hardware or $1.25 million in software sales, produce 12 marketing activities, five technical trainings and get at least 30 per cent of its sales force trained. A Tier 2 partner qualifies with $310,000 in hardware or $125,000 in software sales. It is also required to create eight marketing activities and have 20 per cent of its sales force trained.
Direct marketing resellers are companies that resell product via the Web or catalogue. EMC is looking to add between five and 10 of these partners.
However, Chouinard said that the vast majority of the Velocity partner base will be made up of SMB VARs. He said the company is looking to add about 10 new SMB VARs in each state and province in North America.
“I was talking to a VAR in Salt Lake City and he services 30 SMBs and that’s it. And, that is all he is going to do. We need a lot of those guys to cover the world,” Chouinard said.
