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Selling EMC kit? What you need to know about 2014 programme refresh

Farewell 'Velocity', hello 'EMC Business Partner'

Canalys Channels Forum EMC is about to make big changes to its partner programmes, according to Bill Scannell, the company's president for global sales and customer operations.

Speaking yesterday at the Canalys Channels Forum in Bangkok, Scannell said that as of January 1st 2014, the storage giant's “Velocity” programme will start to go by the rather less exciting name of “EMC Business Partner”.

Details are scarce, but Scannell said the company will unify channel operations across its product line.

“It used to be that every acquisition we made had its own channel,” he said, going on to promise “one simple channel and one common strategy and go to market”.

Cross-pollination between EMC's subsidiaries VMware, Pivotal and RSA is also on the cards, with Scannell adding “you'll see us bring in more members of the federation”.

“Thousands” of accounts currently held by EMC will also be migrated to channel partners, as has already started happening, and the company will also create new products for the channel.

“More and more” products will be offered through the channel and strict “rules of engagement” have been penned and distributed to EMC's sales force, he said.

Partners who observe EMC staff breaking those rules are encouraged to point out infractions to the company. “We don't have any tolerance for a second infringement of the rules of engagement,” Scannell said.

Scannell did not offer details of which products or how the channel will be compensated, saying only that the new programme will offer channel partners rebates “from dollar one” instead of setting thresholds at which cash starts to flow.

This is something HP itself initiated this May, in a bid to give partners more visibility and predictability of the back-end rebates they are going to make.

Full details will be revealed at EMC World and the EMC Partner Summit, both scheduled for May 2014. ®

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