Midrange Storage – Products, Programs and a Brand New Campaign

It’s been a busy time for us in midrange storage. We’ve enhanced the product portfolio, we’ve introduced an outstanding loyalty program featuring customer guarantees unique to the industry, and we’ll soon be launching a terrific new Partner campaign.

It’s all very exciting—and for me, what’s best about it is the range of great business opportunities it creates for you, our Partners.

Here. I’ll break it down a little:

Product enhancements

New SC Series All-Flash arrays

These new and intelligent storage systems feature: self-optimizing performance, including best-in-class data reduction; federated data mobility is also automatic; and all-inclusive software value means every SC feature is included, which makes purchasing and maintaining even easier. These arrays represent a premium performance offering, with enhanced pricing, program and software licensing advantages. Customers get huge performance, up to 399,000 IOPS per array, and 3.9 million aggregate IOPS per multi-array federated cluster, all in an easy-to-use package.

All of which is great news for Partners, because you’ll be providing a solution that delivers on performance and reduces hassle at the same time.

Dell EMC Unity Gets More Efficient

The $1 billion market-leading Dell EMC Unity All-Flash is further extending both its performance and its efficiency. The latest Dell EMC Unity 4.3 software upgrade provides existing customers with more All-Flash storage capability, seamless controller scalability, and enhanced NAS availability.

Building on top of this, deduplication and synchronous file replication are new included features, giving your customers business continuity and zero data loss remote protection for their users’ critical file-based data. Customers can combine file replication with block level cloud tiering and swap in new more powerful controllers while data and operations remain in place – helping to eliminate downtime.

Loyalty Program

We’ve also just announced an outstanding Storage Loyalty Program. It comprises six industry-leading offers. Your customers are looking for reassurance on performance, on scalability, on future-proof innovation, on the comprehensiveness of their midrange storage solutions and on the protection of their investment—and they’ll find it here:

  • Three-Year Satisfaction Guarantee – unmatched in the industry. This is a great sales argument. Can your customers find anyone offering anything remotely similar? No, they can’t.
  • 4:1 Storage Efficiency Guarantee – if your customers follow our recommended best practices, they’ll reduce their capacity needs by 75% – and save on cost. We’ll make this offer without complex pre-assessments and restrictions as other vendors often do.
  • Never-Worry Data Migrations – we’re offering seamless upgrades and built-in on-line data migration technology. For other vendors, this path often requires downtime or third party products to facilitate data movement. Not with us: we help remove some of the risks and worry, so it’s always easy for your customers to move up.
  • Hardware Investment Protection – we’re providing flexible credits that can be used by your customers to trade in or trade up – for instance, by continuing with midrange storage products, or by using their credits for Hyperconverged Infrastructure products. This choice is something that CTOs won’t receive from other suppliers.
  • All-Inclusive Software – storage companies have traditionally required customers either to buy their storage software system up front, or to follow complex line item pricing. But your customers want simplicity. They want everything to be included with the initial storage purchase. With Dell EMC, (Unity today, SC All Flash in December) most of what they need to store, manage and protect data is included with their purchase.
  • Built-in Virtustream Storage Cloud – the most cost-effective option for fast, granular recovery intervals is the cloud, and now with the Built-in Cloud Storage Guarantee, your customers can benefit from free Virtustream storage with their purchases of Dell EMC Unity that can automatically tier files and snapshots to the cloud. Storing more snapshots to the cloud gives more recovery points, and free cloud storage makes this happen.

Going BIG

I’m pumped to announce we are going above and beyond in Q4!

The #GetModern Acceleration and Simple is Smart incentives have merged into one profitable promotion, called #GetModern with All Flash or Hyperconverged. In this new exciting incentive, your Sales Reps and SEs each have the potential to earn:

  • 1.5% of the deal size (HW + SW + Support) up to $15K for a Modernize IT (MIT) Proposal PLUS a closed All Flash or Hyper Converged sale resulting in a competitive swap … A total potential sales team pay-out of $30K per deal!
  • 1% of the deal size (HW + SW + Support) up to $10K for a MIT Proposal PLUS a closed All Flash or Hyper Converged sale … A total potential sales team pay-out of $20K per deal!

Additionally, your Sales Reps and SEs can earn an incremental $500 for just completing a MIT Proposal with a valid Deal Registration, even if the deal doesn’t close. This offer is not stackable. There is no cap on these incentives, as the offer is valid through Q4 or until funds expire, whichever comes first.

Partner Campaign

Some big campaign news will be coming your way on November 20th. That’s when we’ll be increasing the momentum in midrange storage for you, our Partners, with a wealth of support, services, training, rewards and incentives. We want to help you succeed – and to help you deepen your relationships with your customers, by offering them the best possible solutions portfolio at competitive prices, with guarantees no other provider can match, and with services that will help you grow in profitability.

So—in the short term, watch out for our future communications on the campaign, and going forward, on midrange storage in general. We’re committed to this market and to the customers who buy and use our solutions—and we’re committed to you, our Partners.

For more information, visit the Dell EMC Midrange Storage Launch Page.

About the Author: Scott Millard

Scott Millard is the Senior Vice President of Global Channel Data Center Sales at Dell EMC. He is responsible for the global channel strategy, go-to-market, transformation and execution for Dell EMC’s market leading Storage, Converged Infrastructure and Data Protection portfolio. An $8+ billion business, Scott‘s team engages with Solution Provider and Distributor Partners to enable essential IT and digital transformation for clients across the globe. A 20+ year veteran of the technology industry and a recognized Sales leader, Scott’s sales strategy and execution acumen spans all routes to market for companies both large and small. His drive and passion for winning is evident by his experience. Prior to his current role, Scott served as Vice President of Global Channels and Alliances for Virtustream, Dell’s hyper-growth enterprise class cloud business, where he launched the company’s first-ever partner program which grew over ten times in the first year. Prior to Virtustream, Scott was Vice President, Americas Channel Sales, a $4B+ business inclusive of Solution Provider and Distribution Partners in North America and Latin America. Scott has held various sale leadership and strategy roles during a successful 17-year career at EMC. Scott holds a Masters of Business Administration and a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Bryant University. He is based at Dell EMC’s ISG headquarters in Hopkinton, Massachusetts.