Sorry about not updating this blog more frequently. Plenty to talk about, just a scarcity of time when I can gather my thoughts and write them down. I suppose being so busy is a high-class problem to have.
I thought I'd reflect a bit on the journey I and EMC have been on with regards to this important new category of industry players.
And I think we're beginning to reach a new plateau.
Where Did It All Begin?
For me, the real revelation happened towards the end of 2009. I was meeting a new class of partner, now described as "IT service provider".
They didn't neatly fit into established categories. They had a very different agenda from traditional enterprise IT folks and other channel partners. And they were doing some amazing things. And I was meeting more every day.
Why? Part of my role at EMC is that I'll wade into territory that isn't fully understood by the organization. Put differently, if the customer or partner discussion is a bit out of the norm, I frequently get the call. As a result, I was meeting many partners who weren't fitting into the established taxonomy.
In its purest sense: these people wanted products that were built, priced and supported differently. They wanted a business relationship as well as great technology. And they wanted someone who shared their entrepreneurial spirit.
So I and a few other people set about coordinating various functions within EMC to start to meet the needs of this important audience. We fell into a cycle of presenting what we had, getting pointed feedback, and looping back to make improvements.
I call this a fast-learning process. I've used it repeatedly to attack entirely new challenges for which there isn't an obvious approach. The goal is to gather enough context to formulate a more formal approach. The more context, the better your plan will be.
And the only way you can really figure out what's going on is to talk to people -- as many as possible, from as broad a cross-section as possible.
I've met outsourcers, hosters, pure cloud players, telcos, cablecos, vertical players, integrators, resellers and probably a few more categories I've forgotten. I've done a good job at getting decent geographical diversity as well. And we've been consistently applying our learnings to continually improve our approach.
Crawl, Walk, Run
Early in 2010, we assembled our current product portfolio in such a way that we could make it more relevant to this new category of service providers. We found the expected technology gaps (well understood now) as well as what I call "business terms" -- pricing, support, etc.
We found that -- given a decent shot -- we could position our product portfolio favorably in front of the majority of SPs. But there's more to do.
We quickly realized -- like our channel partners -- SPs wanted a business development relationship, targeted at growing and expanding their businesses. We realized we had many aspects we could bring to bear to help in this regard, and we've been experimenting with a few different approaches during the last few quarters.
Not only a variety of go-to-market propositions, but more creative things like investing in joint solution engineering to create unique differentiation.
This, in turn, will lead to a more formal SP partner program from EMC (and VCE!) before too long.
But we're finding out there's even more that we can do for some of our SP partners.
Consulting For Our SP Partners
I suppose it's obvious in retrospect. We, as EMC, invest very heavily to understand how enterprise IT people think. Many SPs, in turn, want to target services to this very market.
We pore over just about every industry survey we can get our hands on. We pay analyst and consulting firms to conduct primary research on topics we're especially interested in. We do our own survey and panel work using a variety of formal and informal methods.
And we've got a multi-thousand person customer-facing organization who speaks directly with enterprise IT people each and every day, and have done so for two decades. We may not have all the answers, but we have a lot of data that's rather proprietary and certainly unique.
You want context on the enterprise IT market? You've come to the right place :-)
On the other hand, we have a business consulting organization -- EMC Consulting -- that can go toe-t0-toe with the usual big-name business consultants on selected topics. They have proven methodologies and engagement models that can produce spectacular results.
Combine the two, and we now have the nascent capability to do very customized business consulting engagements around market assessments, offer formulation and targeting, pricing strategies, go-to-market plans, ecosystem alignment, organizational readiness, value-add propositions, etc. -- a rather comprehensive and breathtaking set of consulting services that answer one question: how might a specific SP best go about making money from the emerging opportunity?
I have seen the work product from a few of these engagements, and it is insightful stuff indeed. It speaks with an honesty and clarity that is directly actionable by SP management teams. There is no hand-waving or double-speak.
And, like all consulting engagements, it is offered independently regardless of whether an SP decides to do business with EMC, or someone else.
Even without a formal consulting engagement, many of our discussions with SPs have gotten far more consultative.
Indeed, when I spend quality time with an SP partner, it's become a lot less about products and technologies, and much more about sharing our respective views on the emerging market opportunities, and the best ways to reach them.
Although Vblocks are a very popular topic indeed these days :-)
Vendors As Consultants?
I'll forgive you if you're somewhat skeptical. I know I was at one time.
But I've seen so much valuable work come from EMC Consulting (not only on this topic, but other ones as well) that I'm becoming a big fan -- in their sweet spot, they have nothing to apologize for.
When it comes to the emerging SP opportunity, there are some big bets going down: capital, people, etc. Not a lot of opportunity to make a lot of mistakes -- you pretty much have to get it right the first time, and then build off that for the next opportunity, and the next one, and so on.
Right now, I'm not aware of any other consulting organization that's doing this level of consulting *and* has direct knowledge of the market many SPs are attempting to target.
That alone should make for an interesting discussion.
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