EMC goes after SMBs

EMC will enlist its Australian channel to help better address the needs of small businesses after a surey it conducted of the market revealed feelings of neglect.

The storage vendor will offer small businesses a virtualisation solution (vCOMPLETE), online information resource Knowledge Connect and the Campaign-In-A-Box marketing program while adding to its unified storage system, VNXe.

EMC regional channel and distribution manager Chris Moyle said it was its strongest push into the small-business market yet.

“All of this is underpinned by a much stronger channel program, including improvements to our incentive and education activities,” Moyle said.

“EMC has taken a holistic approach to this, from the way we listen to the market to the types of solutions and support that we deliver. This is a long-term commitment that we hope will best meet the needs of SMBs in Australia and New Zealand.”

He said the survey of 1000 small-business IT decision makers found the IT industry ignored them in favour of enterprises. And feedback EMC received led the vendor to refocus its SMB business over the next months, Moyle said.

“Importantly, this will continue to be an area of focus for EMC,” he said. “Right now, we’re setting up programs to help us better understand their needs."

He said partners were essential: “Aside from being our path to sales, they also have a much better understanding of SMBs than a vendor possibly can".

"They’re obviously working extremely closely with smaller businesses on a day-to-day basis and their insight provides us with a huge advantage for us to be able to tap into this.”