Wow. EMC is up to a lot these days.
I try to stay ahead of all the different offers and permutations as part of my role here, but I still get occasionally surprised.
Just today, I chanced across an interesing EMC customer deck that seemed to illustrate an important dynamic in the emerging SP opportunity: the importance of multiple delivery options to enhance your overall value proposition.
A Bit Of Context
The topic is enterprise-class unified messaging, communication and collaboration.
The partnership is between EMC and Ceryx -- a fast-growing focused solution provider who provides a strong mix of managed services as well a service provider back end.
When you think about unified communication and collaboration, it's a growing challenge for many IT organizations. The landscape is getting bigger, more demanding and more complex. And usually consuming a growing amount of scarce internal IT resource in the process.
The whole topic is one where most IT organizations are now willing to consider a new approach rather than trying to do everything themselves.
But what's the "right" approach?
Giving The Customer New Choices
Certainly, EMC brings a lot to the table in terms of relevant product technology: storage, security, compliance, archiving -- even the application itself if you're aware of Zimbra, now owned by VMware. And tons of EMC Proven Solutions that show our customers how to accelerate time-to-value using pre-tested and proven approaches.
But no matter how good the technology (and its associated solutions) might be, it still usually implies a traditional consumption model -- and that means investment in people and resources for the IT organization. How best to deliver the service the business wants?
EMC Consulting, working with Ceryx, have created three somewhat newer choices for customers to consider.
The first option is to create a private-cloud type solution entirely within the confines of the data center. Essentially, the customer is buying a scaled-down and highly customized version of what usually operates in the service provider world.
This can be attractive in situations where, for example, there are strong reasons to keep information entirely within the confines of the organization. Or extensive integration is required with other key IT systems: ERP, CRM etc. Or perhaps the IT organization wants to retain internal proficiency in this particular environment, but needs a better way of doing things.
The second option is to assist the customer in migrating to a "public cloud" style service -- in this case, it's Microsoft Online Services. This can make sense if the customer can live within the constraints of what the service provides, doesn't need any customization or integration, and is comfortable with information being outside of traditional boundaries. It also turns out to be the most cost-effective approach, which can be appealing.
The third option is the most interesting, from my perspective.
Ceryx and EMC Consulting work together to create an external "private cloud" service using Ceryx's infrastructure that is essentially under the control of the IT organization as an external service. This approach enables extensive customization and integration with other key business functions if needed. Ceryx provides the policy-based controls that IT needs to pass audit and remain compliant.
The IT organization gets the dramatic reductions in capex and opex that it's looking for -- but can still deliver the unique service that the business demands. And they get access to Ceryx's unique domain expertise on the topic -- it's not just a cost-arbitrage play.
Why This Is So Interesting To Me
We're at an interesting junction point in the IT industry where -- on one hand -- IT organizations are more willing than ever to consider external services, yet aren't finding exactly what they like in the generic external service offerings.
Being able to customize an external service to unique requirements -- and still get most of the leverage associated with external service provider solutions -- strikes me as an attractive option to many, based on my customer interactions.
The wisdom of tackling a very specific application domain -- vs. everything and everyone -- strikes me as insightful. Further specialization for specific industries with shared-yet-unique requirements would probably be a further refinement on the model.
And engaging with the customer by saying "hey, you've got a problem, and there are different ways to tackle it" -- well, that's sheer marketing genius IMHO.
It's Harder Than It Looks
In order to approach the market in this fashion, you've got to line up a lot of pieces -- all at the same time.
You've got to have the technology bases well covered, as well as solutions and associated operational models if the customer wants to do this entirely using an internal approach. Thankfully, EMC's core disciplines cover this pretty well.
You also have to be able to offer a pathway to a popular off-the-shelf public cloud service, as well as the migration assistance to help people get there. EMC Consulting has extensive Microsoft expertise, and Microsoft has the service most people want.
And when it comes to the customized private cloud service provider option, you not only need a focused and competent service provider (Ceryx) but an on-premises consulting organization that can propose, implement and manage the changes within the customer environment, again through EMC Consulting.
No one company can do all of this by themselves, hence the growing need for a variety of partnerships and alliances around specific market opportunities, like this one between EMC and Ceryx.
Choice Sells
Historically, we as IT vendors tend to argue incessantly around the technology -- who's got the best, etc. I don't think that's going away anytime soon :-)
But the battleground has now shifted to a new discussion point -- how do you want to consume the solution? And putting those sorts of consumption choices in front of a customer clearly differentiates the proposition in a way that's relatively new to the industry.
I think we'll be seeing a lot more of this going forward ...
It's going to be end of mine day, except before end I am reading this fantastic article to increase my experience.
Posted by: Source | 12/18/2013 at 03:58 PM