EMC Names Channel Chief For Unified Partner Program

Pete Koliopoulos, vice president of global channel marketing, is now responsible for running EMC's channel programs, a job he most recently shared with John Koury, who was vice president of worldwide channel marketing before leaving the company a few weeks ago.

Koliopoulos had been running EMC's channel programs on the software side, and Koury had been doing so on the legacy hardware side, until this spring, when EMC, Hopkinton, Mass., unified all of its channel programs from various acquisitions into one program.

"It's a pretty natural evolution," Koliopoulos said. "We're asking our partners to sell hardware and software solutions. Having one partner organization to talk to solution providers makes it easier for them. From a practical sense, we now have one group of people talking holistically to partners."

Since the unification, partner revenue related to incremental deals that were registered under EMC's deal registration program rose about 30 percent in 2006 compared with 2005, Koliopoulos said. EMC solution providers who used incentives to combine software and hardware sales under the vendor's Journey to the Top program saw their sales grow about 35 percent in the first half of the year vs. 2005, he said.

Koliopoulos said not to expect any major changes in EMC's channel program going forward. "Partners told us, 'Please don't make any big changes,' " he said. "We'll be looking to tweak programs and make it easier to do business with EMC."

The one place solution providers will see the most changes is in how they deal with companies that EMC acquired this year, according to Koliopoulos.

For instance, he said, EMC is now just starting to roll out training to solution providers for the data protection software that EMC obtained via its May acquisition of Kashya. EMC also is looking at how to make the application discovery and mapping technology of nLayers, acquired in June, and the network management technology of Smarts, acquired in December 2004, available to its channel partners.

In addition, EMC has developed a schedule for bringing the de-duplication technology it attained through its acquisition last month of Avamar to the channel, Koliopoulos said. However, the channels for EMC and RSA Security, which EMC acquired in June, will remain separate, he added.

"For the time being, the VMware model is a good way to describe it," he said. "There will be a separate Velocity program for EMC and an RSA program."