Customers today need to develop a deeper understanding of a vendor’s ecosystem, including their alliance partners and channel partners, to fully evaluate the vendor’s product set and potential value for the business. This is especially true in a period of consolidation among the largest IT companies, when IBM, HP, Cisco, Oracle and others are rapidly acquiring the intellectual property and skill sets that they need to compete as more vertically integrated “one-stop shops.” As customers evaluate cloud computing more seriously, they also need to understand the role that service providers will play as cloud services become more widely adopted. To add to the complexity, the large IT vendors are still sorting out which of them also want to take the role of cloud service provider as well as “arms dealer” – HP, Dell and IBM are currently on record with plans to do both.

In the case of EMC and SAP, the companies maintain a global strategic alliance and have had a strong relationship for almost 18 years, noted Blake Yule, EMC’s SAP Sales/Alliance Manager, who was interviewed by Wikibon.org’s Dave Vellante at SAP’s Sapphire 2011 event this week. At the same time, EMC is a large customer of SAP’s, so the relationship exists at multiple levels. At last year’s Sapphire, EMC and SAP announced a reseller relationship, deeper technology integrations, and joint sales and marketing activities geared towards financial services customers. The relationship has taken on more dimensions as EMC over the years has moved into new areas beyond core storage, including document capture (Captiva) and document management (Documentum), which SAP resells as part of its solution set for financial services customers.

Today’s enterprise customers don’t have the time or the budget to embark on expensive integration projects to make their IT investments work together. As Yule said, customers clearly want EMC’s products integrated with SAP’s and vice-versa, as they face challenges around database management, performance management and change management, among others. He noted that SAP has been providing more clarity in terms of their strategic direction, especially in regards to the Sybase acquisition as well as SAP’s increased emphasis on mobility.

In a different dynamic, SAP has designated service provider Secure-24 among its first partners certified to deliver SAP applications in private and hybrid cloud models. The Michigan-based company services mid-market and enterprise customers. “We are seeing a lot of demand for hybrid cloud,” said Volker Straub, chief operations officer (COO) at Secure-24 who was also interviewed by Vellante at Sapphire. “Also, a lot of our business comes from system integrators like Deloitte – they are our channel for selling private cloud services.”

Secure-24, which uses VCE Vblock technology in its infrastructure, was also one of the initial service providers named as a participant in EMC’s Velocity Service Provider Partner program, announced last week at EMC World 2011. The program commits EMC resources to service providers who build their cloud offerings on EMC technology. Straub noted that the typical IT budget sees over 70% going to “just keeping the lights on” while less than 30% goes to innovation that will help drive the business. “With Vblock and cloud services we can reduce that to less than 50% (for maintenance)” for Secure-24 customers, he said.