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EMC Unity: A Win-Win for Customers…and Partners

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IT professionals need channel partners more than ever. In today’s hyper-competitive IT market, there are too many vendors making too many claims, which can make it tough for customers to decipher what is the right option for them. As a result, many businesses are looking to partners to help them with storage system selection, overall IT transformation, and a shift to new ways of doing business. By and large, partners are singlehandedly changing the storage game by becoming the trusted advisors their clients need to succeed.

With the launch of Unity, EMC is introducing a new class of simplicity and affordability in a family of all-flash arrays for small and mid-sized IT requirements within SMEs and enterprises that is tailor-made for the channel. We know that the first thing on the wish list of many of our channel partners is a solution that outpaces the competition and offers the business benefits that their customers want. The second is a package of marketing and sales support that helps them to deliver additional value to their customers.

NC State is already experiencing Unity first hand – find out more in this video:

Getting the product right

EMC Unity has been many years in the making, and it’s not just a little bit better – it’s orders of magnitude better, making it more attractive to buy – and more attractive to sell.

Unity is:

  • SIMPLE. Setup, deployment, and management has never been easier thanks to a new HTML 5 user interface.
  • MODERN. A completely new design and architecture totally modernizes EMC’s portfolio for midsized IT. Unity is built for flash, providing blazing speed and density and supporting the latest 3D TLC flash drives.
  • FLEXIBLE. Available as a virtual storage appliance, a purpose-built all-flash or hybrid system, or as converged infrastructure with one unified operating system.
  • AFFORDABLE. Optimized for the best combination of performance, density, and cost, it delivers all-flash at an incredibly low entry level price in a 2U form factor.

Getting the partner proposition right

But it’s not just the product we’ve been focused on – we wanted to make the partner proposition just as outstanding. Unity is:

  • Easy to SELL: EMC offers partners intuitive pre-sales tools that guide to the best product configurations for end-user customers to purchase. And, rather than picking from an extensive a-la-carte menu of software options, EMC offers all-inclusive software packaging, simplifying the ordering process and expediting the time to value with the end-user customer.
  • Easy to TRY: EMC helps remove barriers to sales by allowing end users to kick the tires on our products with our try-and-buy programs. And, with more virtual editions of products, testing is easier than ever.
  • Easy to MARKET: Our channel enablement teams are specialists in creating marketing campaigns that can be packaged up and easily rebranded and used by our channel partners. We provide our resellers with complete ‘campaign-in-a-box’ packages as part of our ‘Ready To Go’ initiative. Partners can download materials from the Partner Content Library for self-execution, or conduct integrated marketing programs on our free Digital Marketing Platform.
  • Easy to be in the KNOW: EMC uses tools like our Partner Portal to keep our partners close, communicating constantly to ensure that products like Unity are designed with the needs of the channel in mind and that our channel partners can hit the ground running with the training, tools, and knowledge our channel partners need to successively win with Unity.

But don’t just take my word for it, here’s what Scott Miller, Director of Data Center, at EMC channel partner, WWT, has to say:

“Our mid-market customers are looking for simple and affordable ways of modernizing their storage infrastructures to best realize the benefits of flash and virtualization technologies.  EMC Unity gives us the flexibility to meet their requirements with a product specifically designed for midsized IT needs. EMC’s outstanding partner support ensures that we are Unity experts the first day of launch, enabling us to best serve our joint customers.”

The bottom line? Unity changes the all-flash game by delivering a product that is simple, modern, flexible and affordable, while offering a unique channel value proposition that partners will love.

Jeff Boudreau

About the Author: Jeff Boudreau

As chief AI officer at Dell Technologies, Jeff Boudreau leads the company’s AI and data strategy including accelerating AI-driven outcomes and scaling generative AI initiatives across the organization. Leaning on his versatility, deep engineering and infrastructure expertise, Jeff leads Dell’s Center for AI Innovation, a team which is responsible for enterprise-wide AI strategy, education, governance, and policies. This includes prioritizing and implementing domain-specific use cases, building, defining and standardizing architectures, integrating and embedding AI across Dell's product portfolio and core business operations – as well as cultivating strategic partnerships across the AI ecosystem. Tapping into the value inherent in data to drive progress is a passion of Jeff’s that has driven him during his more than 25 years at Dell Technologies. Prior to becoming chief AI officer in September 2023, Jeff spent four years serving as president of the Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG) at Dell. In this position he led a global team of over 23,000 innovators that accelerated data insights and helped Dell Technologies become the largest infrastructure provider in the world – across the data center, cloud and at the edge. He has held executive positions spanning engineering, operations, services, and business management with a passion for inspiring team members and driving real-world outcomes for customers. Jeff completed his undergraduate studies at Wentworth Institute of Technology and received an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. He is based in Hopkinton, Massachusetts.
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