2016 will see massive focused growth for Partners

“Globally, if the shareholders approve of Dell acquisition, it will be massive, one of the biggest IT orgs in the world. As a result, while everybody is taking a left turn, EMC and dell is taking a right turn. While the whole world is disintegrating, we are consolidating. This is a very bold and strong move which will be very useful for both organisations. Both brands are extremely strong in India. So we are on a very positive note,” Praveen Sahai, ‎Vice President – Channels, EMC India & SAARC, talks about EMC’s channel plans for 2016.

1. Tell us something about EMC’s channel business and how it will work in 2016?

In India, our channel model runs on three basic tenets:

1. Profitability
2. Pipeline
3. Performance

We had started these tenets three years back and they are still doing well for our partners. Recently, we broke our business in 3 parts-

Tier 1 that caters to larger enterprises like Wipro, TCS and TechM, to name a few. Essentially, the distribution business was consolidated and from five in 2012 we had two tier 1 partners in 2013. This was following our tenets- Performance and profitability can only happen when you have enough volume for business.

Tier 2 was in two parts- one was focus partners and the second was growth partners. The focus partners were large businesses- we have 22 partners with businesses in EMC worth a million plus, and also doing technology partnerships. Growth partners were not so large but still keep growing, and we now we have about 100 of them. Between these two, they had 80-90 % of our business.

That’s the background. We will double the number of channel business that we had over the last 3 years. That will be our growth engine, since today channel represents over 93-94% of our business.

2. With new technologies on offer and rapidly changing business paradigms, how do you see the role of channel partners transitioning?

In Jan 2015 we launched the Business Partner Program. Earlier, the channel partner program we had was called EMC velocity. It ran for 11 years with no change, because we realised partners want consistency. After 11 years, we reached out to the partners, took their feedback, and then launched the BPP, that essentially brings bring platform 2 and 3 partners together.

This change was because we realised the earlier program belonged to EMC that was a hardware company. It had no consideration of software alignment or solutioning, it was completely static. But since we are growing organically, we needed that change.

As we grew, we had a very strong portfolio of companies and products, and we needed an integrated platform to get all these together – to providea third platform of solutions. This year we took baby steps to build a program around these five or sixmajor brands that we have, creating a platform 3 over it. This programaligns allour products and a consulting platform together, and builds a service on it. The software defined aspect becomes very interesting, and the business partner program has delivered it well for our partners. We are focused on giving them the right portfolio, strengthening the partners’ business. We are getting a very good response by this. This will be our focus for 2016, with some positive changes added to it.

Regarding technology, they way our products are being built, is very different. We are embracing open source a lot. Secondly, when we talk about a monolithic hardware enterprise with a strong sales business, we are launching products like ScaleIO, a product for integrating virtual storage solution, then, Viper, then we are launching a new avatar of a product in the hyper conversion space.

Today storage technologies have reached another level, 20-25 terabytes are easily available on flash now…earlier it was used only in the server to make some engines start fast. Everyone wants everything in a split second. Enterprise, even net banking, needs much faster speeds. That’s an interesting space.Product changes are coming up there. That is the play EMC is bringing in these changes. We need to create euphoria around how to be consistent; we need to give a direction to our partners. No one has the time or money to invest in the future, the large systems integrators need directions form OEMs to reach the next point. We give them training for software defined networking, data center etc. if we train and tell them how to take it forward, and the engagement becomes that must faster.

3. Digitization is the next delivery model for almost all apps. What role will channel partners play in this diminishing footprint era?

Like I said, our whole engagement with partners is around helping them migrate from tier II to tierIII, that’s the biggest challenge we have. We need to train them to be engaged with a customer on his terms. You need to be able to tell him, we will deliver what you want, it has consulting, products portfolio. You need to be able to ask him, do you want it through cloud, we will give a complete solution. That’s the training we are giving to our partners- to deliver what the customer wants instead of saying…I will give you this.

4. Technology has entered even the remotest playing field of enterprise. Various governance initiatives are also loaded for IT. How will that impact channel partnerships?

It has a very big impact. We are engaged in these common projects in a big way. While smart cities is the most popular one today, we had an Adhar, Passport Seva, and a UID earlier so many projects, you need to engage across the portfolio with the govt. It’s a very large buyer in the country as well as for us. Almost 30% of our business is represented through government sector. EMC has been a part of most of the major government projects. That is our foundation.

Irrespective of that, we are also very strong in what government calls rate contracts that enable govt agencies to buy without going through a tender every time. It is done once in two years, and covers smaller projects. Smart Cities projects will be through state agencies.

What we have seen is, while some state governments and central government bodies have large companies’ participation, there are many who have engaged mid tier companies. For instance, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, UP, many are all being built and managed by both tier 1 and tier 2 partners. It increases the market potential, reach and size of business. But, for these, you need very high capital investment, so you need to have metal to get into government business. This is why slightly larger partners get into it, complete the tender requirements and have the ability to execute large Bank guarantees. So it’s a restrictive business, but growing very fast in size.

The sizes of business that we are doing today are probably as big as anywhere else in the world. It used to be very small in India, but now it has become so large it can compete with anywhere in Australia, Singapore or anywhere.

5. Customer data is fast becoming a bankable commodity, and base for strategy. How do channels fit into this new design of planning and market strategy?

There is a shift that has happened in the last 4-5 years. In fact there was a time when people became very hardware driven…all purchases were done on servers and these defined everything else on purchase planning of data centres. Today CIOs and IT heads have started building the strategy internally on how they want to look at data which is now the premise of everything. The growth of data is also fuelling investment growth in that market. Today the focus is on how you utilise that database and churn it to derive revenue.

6. New technologies like SDN, analytics and IoT driven M2M solutions will need a much deeper involvement of technology vendors and channel partners. Do you think the Indian enterprise is ready for this new reality?

The vendor and buyer relationship will change dramatically. A lot of what you were used to will cease to exist, brands, technology…everything. People were used to specific brands, either it is in the change of consolidation or changing big time.This wherea new age alignment will happenbetweensellers and buyers. Everyone is realising now that the more aligned you are to your vendor and vice versa, there is higher chances of increased business opportunity and increased business growth. You get better pricing, better solutions and build more profitable relationships – it is a symbiotic growth.

7. In IoT technologies M2M or analytics, you need much better channel partners?

I see this as a massive opportunity for partners. We are trying to educate partners;there are many who are learning on how to leverage the analytics platform and how to deliver services on it.
While there will be very large organisations, people who are using Pivotal platforms for instance, for working on massive amounts of datacan befrom any enterprise. They can usually afford a fleet of people who can just do scenario analysis. They can also have a team of channel partners who can help do it, and also define a strategy. That’s a very big consulting platform we are planning to bring in, eventually creating a consulting and services portfolio through partners.

8. What challenges do you envisage for the channel market in India in 2016?

The biggest will be challenge set by ourselves. How wide and how deep do we want to go?
For instance, while we have wherewithal to increase the depth and penetration, I am of the opinion that we should bite as much as we can chew. We have limited room to expand because I want to do justice to people who are with us for a focused growth strategy. So, saying NO to people is going to be a big challenge.

Second challenge we see is resistance to change. Many channel partners are not willing to change. They are not willing to go beyond their competence. That resistance is creating a lot of friction and problems, because we have a limited set of partners, and they need to meet the market requirements.

The third thing is competing with the unknown. We don’t know where we are headed, we don’t know how a cloud company, for instances, will fare tomorrow. We compete with the Amazon today…but the fear of what next, will always hound us.