EMC makes aggressive SMB move

EMC HAS DECLARED its intent to aggressively target the SMB market a week after Dell, its long term SMB partner, launched its first Equallogic acquired products.

EMC says its move into the UK SMB space, which has been extended through the recruitment of 40 sales people, nine reseller account managers and a channel recruitment drive which saw it recently sign up 40 resellers including four last week, has been a long time coming.

One channel player who requested anonymity said: “Has there been a falling out with Dell over the Equallogic acquisition? What is happening is that there is a big push into the SMB volume market.”

Claus Egge, storage research director at analyst IDC, said: “It all depends on what Dell is going to do next. The idea that EMC wouldn’t be hurt if Dell is going to start pushing Equallogic into those accounts where it traditionally sold Clariion doesn’t wash. It is just a matter of time before we see how it pans out in terms of portfolio. If the scenario is that Dell is going to swap Clariion with Equallogic then EMC would be right to do something in that market. What is clear is that Dell is going to push iscsi as the interconnect.”

Chris Gould, head of channel operations for EMC UK and Ireland, said: “Obviously moving from being an enterprise player to the SMB market takes time. We are aggressively going out to win market share in the part of the market where our market share is lowest. Our business with Dell is still growing.

Dell bought Equallogic and we’re not sure how that will play out for us. Our intention is to grow our business with Dell across the full range of products and we don’t see it as a big issue for us right now. Dell made some significant changes and decided to do it all at once but right now we are still building growth with them.”
Gould said that the obvious market leader in the SMB storage space was HP but that EMC saw it as a market that was big enough for both. “HP clearly have a very strong market share in this space and we are going to come up against them but the market is growing and is big enough for both of us.”

Last month EMC launched the AX4, a sub £5,000 array specifically targeted at SMBs. Last week saw HP upgrade its MSA range for the same market. Also last week Dell brought out mid range storage boxes just days after completing its acquisition of Equallogic.

In 2006 EMC and Dell extended their then five year partnership until 2011. At the time EMC CEO Joe Tucci, EMC CEO said: "The EMC Dell relationship is the most successful of its kind in the industry." And then Dell CEO Kevin Rollins said: "Alliances in name only are all too common.

The Dell-EMC relationship is that rare exception that truly delivers excellent value and performance to customers. Together we have been able to provide the benefits of networked storage systems and services to customers of all sizes throughout the world." µ