EMC unveils new services for Global Services division 16 June, 2009 By Liam Lahey

PromoPipeline Exclusive Channel Promotions Find Out How You Can Make Money Today! ENROLL FREE! >> Factory Direct Should Not be Cheaper William Vanderbilt - Innovative Learning Channels Cloud Ecosystem II: A Candid Conversation with Oracle Beth Vanni - Amazon Consulting Cloud Ecosystem: A Candid Conversation with Rackspace Hosting Beth Vanni - Amazon Consulting Channel Manager Compensation William Vanderbilt - Innovative Learning Channels Financial Expertise William Vanderbilt - Innovative Learning Channels

"The new Business Continuity Services for VMware vCenter Siter Recovery Manager that we announced are targeted to our enterprise customers. These services provide new revenue opportunities for our Velocity ASN partners because they can leverage EMC's knowledge and experience around integrating EMC information infrastructure with VMware virtualized environments and offer their own value-added services," said Gregg Ambulos, vice president, Americas channel sales, EMC. "We have clear rules of engagement and programs such as deal registration in place within the Velocity Partner Program to ensure EMC doesn't compete with our ASN partner community. Furthermore, for Velocity partners who don't offer VMware services or have a limited portfolio, they can sell EMC's services to compliment and extend their own offerings."

Business continuity is a critical requirement in virtualized data centres as more mission-critical applications are virtualized. As a top-tier member of the VMware Partner Network with hundreds of VMware Certified Professionals (VCPs), and years of business continuity experience, EMC Global Services has the deep expertise to help customers address their availability and recovery challenges for virtual environments.

EMC's end-to-end solutions methodology applies best practices from both enterprise business continuity and virtualization disciplines to provide cost-effective recovery strategies for VMware environments. This approach leverages integration of EMC's portfolio of replication technology with the automation capabilities of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager to provide a robust solution that mitigates risk.

The new services are:

* EMC Consulting services for VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager automate and provide a recovery strategy for virtualized infrastructures to integrate VMware vCenter Site Recovery manager into enterprise business continuity programs.

* EMC Design and Implementation for VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager delivers a customized design and complete integration of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager with customers' existing business continuity plans.

* EMC Education Services for VMware environments offers training modules including, VMware Integration with EMC Storage and Replication Technologies training for both EMC Symmetrix and EMC CLARiiON, and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager, to be proficient in installing, configuring and operating VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager, as well as the testing of EMC disaster recovery plans.

* EMC Residency Services for VMware environments provide the infrastructure management resources and expertise to manage the day-to-day operations of the virtual infrastructure.

"Customers require a robust business continuity plan for their virtualized environments to protect their mission critical information and to reduce their business risk," said EMC's ML Krakauer, senior vice president, Global Services. "The breadth and depth of EMC's unique experience and expertise with business continuity and vi rtualization solutions helps customers accelerate their virtualization initiatives with confidence."

There are channel partners that already have the ability to deploy and sell this service and others that are being trained to do it, said Paul Myerson, senior channel analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group.

"All customers if they're not virtualizing they're looking at it or expanding a virtualized environment or looking at SaaS or cloud computing and this is only going to help them," he said. "From the perspective of the VCE (VMware, Cisco, EMC) initiative, this is another extension towards enabling that vision wrapped around cloud and virtualization for their mutual customers."

VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager, when deployed in conjunction with EMC's industry-leading portfolio of replication software including EMC SRDF (Symmetrix Remote Data Facility), EMC Celerra Replicator, EMC MirrorView and EMC RecoverPoint, enables customers to rapidly and efficiently bring their virtualized servers and mission-critical information online at a secondary site.

Customers who work with EMC Velocity²Authorized Services Network (ASN) partners will also be able to accelerate the business benefits of integrating their EMC business continuity environments with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager. Velocity² ASN partners are trained, certified and field tested to provide value-added services in VMware environments; and channel partners who are also VMware partners can further provide value to customers through their deep technical knowledge of EMC and VMware products.

Michelle Warren, principal analyst, MW Research & Consulting, said she views EMC's announcement as a positive step for the vendor, its stakeholders, and customers.

"This enables EMC to extend its reach and deliver solutions to not only existing, but also new customer markets. Utilizing its strengths within the VMWare family, it can help customers address key mission-critical concerns," she said. "There are opportunities within the disaster recovery/mission critical space that EMC should bid on. HP does the same with its EYP division."

For the channel, EMC is a channel friendly organization, she remarked, adding EMC competes with HP in this space, and thus must have a services division in order to be competitive.

"I don't see this move as a step away from its commitment to the channel, but rather, an extension of its commitment to servicing its customers. It must look for new opportunities, and this is it," Warren said. "The announcement doesn't mean that channel partners cannot work with EMC on opportunities . . . I suspect that more channel opportunities will emerge over time."