EMC: Partners Will Sell CloudLink, Preferably As Part Of Enterprise Hybrid Cloud

EMC says newly acquired CloudLink will continue to be available for sale by partners when it is rolled into the release of its Enterprise Hybrid Cloud 3.0, which is expected soon.

CloudLink encryption is currently available for sale through EMC channel partners. That won’t change after the integration, as EMC plans to continue offering the technology as a stand-alone offering, said Chad Sakac, EMC president of Global Systems Engineering. However, the integrated offering will be top of mind for EMC, Sakac said.

[Related: EMC Acquires Hybrid Cloud Encryption Company]

Sakac said EMC's aim is to make CloudLink a fully integrated part of the Enterprise Hybrid Cloud, and it will ask partners to emphasize that integration. "That's the primary way customers want it," Sakac said. When customers buy Enterprise Hybrid Cloud, they'll get CloudLink, he said.

Michael Thomaschewski, director of infrastructure at EMC partner Long View Systems, Calgary, Alberta, said EMC seems to be getting better at communicating with partners, but the company hasn't told partners how it will ultimately position CloudLink.

"I'm interested in learning where this will fit into the EMC ecosystem," Thomaschewski said by email. "EMC is getting better when it comes to communicating new product offerings to the partner community. In the past, it seemed that we would not get the information for six months and then be expected to turn on a dime."

The CloudLink acquisition is a good move for EMC, Thomaschewski said, but "the one thing that is still not clear to me and was not communicated by my contacts at EMC is where the product will sit. Will it be in the RSA, Pivotal or VMware portfolios? We know it will work with the key management from RSA, but it is a cloud product, and cloud spans the EMC portfolio."

CloudLink will be sold side by side with HyTrust, which is one of its main competitors but is also an EMC encryption partner. Depending on the customer, partners will have the opportunity to sell CloudLink, HyTrust or both, Sakac said.

Both have "relative pros and cons," Sakac said. What CloudLink brings to the table is a "particular strength in the enforceability of encryption policy," he said. HyTrust's strength is its key management system.

Ottawa, Ontario-based CloudLink has been an EMC Select technology partner since 2013. It encrypts workloads across multiple cloud platforms including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, IBM SoftLayer and EMC subsidiary VMware's vCloud Air and other vCloud-powered clouds.

Last September, CloudLink collaborated with EMC to integrate its CloudLink Secure VSA encryption technology with EMC RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines, EMC's Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service offering. Formerly a solution provider called Afore Solutions, CloudLink changed its name in the middle of last year.

PUBLISHED APRIL 23, 2015