For small and mid-size businesses, finding an affordable, effective storage solution can be a challenge. EMC, hand-in-hand with their channel partner Ingram Micro, is working to solve this problem. Their business tactics, product offerings, and predictions were the focus of theCUBE interview with Jeff Boudreau, EMC’s SVP and General Manager of VNX Business Unit, and Bill Brandel, Ingram Micro’s VP of Data Center Software for Storage Infrastructure.

EMC’s newest tech & upcoming projects

EMC made a three big announcements at their 2014 show, introducing product offerings that they predict will have profound impacts on mid-tier businesses. In conversation with Stu Miniman, Boudreau described these three announcements:

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– VNXe 3200: “A new platform focused at the entry level, […] directly for our channel partners.”

– The evolution of MCx: “A major innovation in how we scale cores in that mid-range.”

– Data-at-rest encryption: “Is control-based for the mid range, a game-changer and truly unique […] mid-range offering.”

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Another of EMC’s newest projects, “Project Liberty,” is designed answer EMC customers’ growing demand for a virtual instance of their VNX. Boudreau explained that a customer might have “a purpose-built VNX for their enterprise applications, for other applications in the new world of software-defined, they’re asking for those same features to be brought down. So we’re separating that. It’ll be truly 100 percent virtual instance.” He added, “It helps separate the hardware and the software – it’s hybrid. It’s freedom.”

• VNXe: an enterprise-class product available to SMBs

Focusing on the VNXe product, Miniman asked Brendel to elaborate on how Ingram Micro will add value and generate revenue from a platform that “should come done.”

Brendel said that Ingram Micro embraces VNXe because it will appeal to a “a subset of customers that look at EMC as more of an enterprise player, maybe a little more on the complex side.” Attracting “the little guys” and making “enterprise-class products available to that small-to-medium enterprise space” is exactly the direction Brendel think EMC and Ingram Micro “need to get from a growth perspective.”

• Incorporating VNXe into converged infrastructure

Brendel also mentioned that Ingram Micro’s value-add with VNXe will mainly be with the configuration. Converged infrastructure is beginning to make waves, and Brendel believes “The EMC piece around the VNXe and being able to build that into a VSPEX solution is […] going to be a game-changer for us for the coming year.” Ingram Micro has been involved with VSPEX for a few years and has seen a lot of success around their converged infrastructure products. Brendel predicts that adding the VNXe product set “into this entire mix is only going to strengthen our offering.”

•  Simplifying products simplifies business 

Turning back to the manufacturing side, Miniman asked Boudreau about how EMC helps the channel “sell, support, and create whole solution benefit.” EMC takes a variety of factors into account, Boudreau said, including ensuring that products offer “enterprise-level features,” “the simplicity of the platform” and “how the product should be bundled and packaged so it’s easier for a strategic partner to sell.”

Calling out these focuses is particularly relevant when weighed against the critique that EMC has such a broad portfolio. Boudreau elaborated on how his company is working to simplify, saying that as an organization, EMC is trying to bringing their “best-of-breed” products together and to understand the use-cases and the markets they serve, so that they can enable customers through the best route possible, whether that’s IT, pricing, or packaging. These tactics, they believe, will allow them to simplify business for their partners. Boudreau added, though that at EMC, “we believe in the right tool for the right job.”

The Ingram Micro – EMC Relationship

The new VMXe product symbolizes EMC’s ability to take their distributor’s feedback into consideration when building their programs. Brandel noted that “One of the suggestions Ingram Micro discussed with EMC was the complexity of programs.” This new product set, Brandel says, addresses that need.

Of course, there’s always room for growth in any business relationship. When Miniman pressed Brandel on this subject, the Ingram Micro executive said that he was looking forward to “working collectively to make sure that operationally we are sound and that we have the products available […].” Availability is key because Ingram Micro predicts that the VMXe will be a “very fast moving market and we need to have availability and supply partners with the products that their looking for when they need them.”

Conversations are moving to the line of business, C-level

Awareness of business needs is critical to companies like EMC and Ingram Micro, and understanding who to talk to and how businesses use their products is an essential part of communicating with customers. Miniman asked how conversations are changing between manufacturers, distributors, and their customers.

Businesses are beginning to look at IT differently, says Brandel: The conversation is evolving from the IT staff to “more of the line of business and to the C-level.” Mainly, Brandel says, this is because converged infrastructure can have such an impact on the “financial aspects of the business,” so CFOs tuning in more and more.

Boudreau chimed in from a tech standpoint, saying that EMC sees, “a lot of app integration — we’ve got a lot of focus in regard to making sure we tie back to that key, critical application no matter where it is, whether it’s VMWare or Microsoft, or what have you, making sure we’re tightly integrated in that space to ease the business as well.”

• Adding cloud to the conversation 

Miniman wondered if cloud had entered into conversations with customers as well. “Absolutely,” Brandel responded. He explained that Ingram Micro has been focused on the cloud for the past five to six years — they dedicated an entire division to cloud. The goal of his department is to work “with manufacturing partners to bring their cloud solutions into one portal that resellers can then take the best-of-breed, pull it together into their own solution, add their own services, and then invoice at one point in time to the customer.”

Project Liberty, Boudreau added, is how EMC’s is working to provide customers that “don’t want the purpose-built or can’t afford the purpose-built” with flexibility to take “virtual asset and [put] that on a compute node or [deploy] that to a service provider or cloud […].”