What is Unified Storage (US)? What kind of expectations do you have from the Indian market for the same?
Unified storage (sometimes termed network unified storage or NUS) is a storage system that makes it possible to run and manage files and applications from a single device. A unified storage system simultaneously enables storage of file data and handles the block-based I/O of enterprise applications. In actual practice, unified storage is often implemented in a NAS platform that is modified to add block-mode support.

We see the product has a bright future as we feel that unified storage is the way to go. Storage has been a part of every organisation for so many years and what many customers used to do is that they used to create different islands. If for a particular requirement, they need to share files, they used to deploy those files on separate file servers. If they need to run databases, they used to run it on separate Jpod type solutions. 

But, now with time, the industry (customers) realised that this approach does not provide them the flexibility of redeployment and was a compromise on the performance as well. This led the industry to look out for a better solution where all these separate file servers were compiled and deployed as a network attached storage, that was the birth of NAS. But organisations wanting to deploy a large number of file servers rather than using file servers, were actually compiling them into a NAS device. To run on your mission-critical ERPS, your SAP environments, supply chain management solutions, core banking solutions, what customers did was that they started deploying SAN. So, the industry was choosing either NAS or SAN, both catering to different kinds of requirements, one for file serving environment and one for block level high-performance environment.

Now, with the passage of time, what has happened is that the industry and customers have realised that this is also creating two different Silos, one for file serving and one for SAN. Consolidation became a challenge and it became difficult to replicate this and the power of the ecosystem could not be well harnessed if these are treated as separate entities. This gave birth to unified storage! Almost three to four years back, EMC realised that if we have to provide solutions to our customers. The entire portfolio right from the entry-level device to the topmost device, has to be unified which means the same integrated solution would now provide you the file serving capability as well as the block level capability. This meant running of your high-performance mission-critical databases, and running of your file serving environments, all compiled in a single unified storage. This offers highest level of data availability, performance, reliability, scalability, in one word helps us to really consolidate IT landscape into one single entity.

What kind of initial investment is required from the customers end when they already have some storage infrastructure in place?
First of all, I would like to correct that it is wrong to say that unified storage is expensive. So, what we are trying to do is that we are trying to break that myth. This month has been a historic month for EMC, as for the first time in the history of EMC and Storage in India, we have launched 20 bundles at the same time, and these start from as low as INR45k for a 2 terabyte unified storage, up to US$25k–30k based on different requirements. Actually, we are catering to all types of requirements, starting from the entry-level to the very high-end, which are based on the different storage requirements of scalability, performance, availability and interoperability. What customers can do is that they can choose between this wide and deep portfolio and match the right solution to their requirements.

What about their compatibility with the non-EMC storage products already in place?
EMC as a company very strongly believes in the fact that technology has to be interoperable. If the customer has already deployed a few file servers or a few NAS devices, our solutions should actually interoperate, so that there is no issue with interoperability. We have the world’s broadest compatibility matrix in the world. We almost can talk to almost any and every environment.

What are the targeted market verticals?
If I have to look at unified storage, it is more of horizontal technology, any company which believes in securing information would require storage. So, whether it is a BFSI, or telecom, or manufacturing or IT-ITeS, storage as a technology would be required by almost any of them. So, there is no specific industry, it is a horizontal solution which cuts across verticals.

Does it cater to SMB requirements as well?
Definitely, the 2TB NAS solution which we have launched for INR45k, these prices have never been heard of in the industry. This means that we are tapping them as well.

What kind of expectations do you have from the channel community? How comfortable they are in taking these solutions and creating awareness among the customers?
Our channel community is very close to us. We have built a strong portfolio of velocity partners across India and these partners help us take these solutions to the market. Now, these partners have been there with us for a long time, and we regularly do partner enablement programmes (PEP). These PEPs are actually certification programmes, where they learn how to deploy EMC storage and learn to architect and design solutions from EMC.

For this specific launch, we have done specific one-on-one trainings with the entire teams followed by city-wise trainings for partners. Not only this, we have designed special promotion offers for them to empower and enable them to go inside the market. It is the combination of everything, right price, right distribution, right space, right promotion programmes that stitch the entire eco-system well suited for our partners.

How many cities and how many velocity partners have you covered so far?
For this particular bundle, we have trained more than 100 partner organisations across India. This has been done across 8 cities. We also did specialised trainings for some partners as they felt that they have a great understanding of the video surveillance market, so they wanted to see how unified storage can address that market, so they wanted a specific training. So based on partners requirements, we keep doing such programmes.

Would you be helping your channel partners when it comes to pitching in a customer?
Sure, we have an Inside Sales Engine (ISE) running in Bangalore. ISE is responsible for collecting leads from various events and activities that have taken place across the industry and pass on these leads to the partners. They also have a process by which they can track how these leads are getting converted into opportunities and how we are taking these opportunities into final closure. So, we have a well-developed engine which starts from the lead generation and finally to the closure.