Dell EMC announced an enhanced focus and investment in the varied service provider industry that includes communications service providers, cable multiple system operators, hosting and co-location providers, public cloud providers, vertical market cloud specialists, and consumer webtech providers. The effort includes an expanded service provider track in the Dell EMC Partner Programme and a new solution engineering practice.
As traditional enterprises shift investments to enable their digital transformation and cloud delivery models, they increasingly rely on modernised, flexible and agile service providers. Adapting to this shift, service providers increasingly turn to common infrastructure building blocks of compute, storage and networking for multi-cloud services to increase their operational agility, speed time-to-service delivery, raise customer satisfaction and build differentiation into how they manage and operate cloud services.
These building blocks, whether from systems integrators, network equipment providers or infrastructure providers, must meet the industry’s rigorous requirements and specifications.
Enhanced Cloud Service Provider track
The Cloud Service Provider track in the 2017 Dell EMC Partner Programme features an expanded go-to-market engine, anticipating significant scaling of the Dell EMC partner ecosystem. Participating partners can leverage the programme to create differentiated cloud services, shorten time-to-market and accelerate time-to-revenue.
Key investments include:
- Strengthened partner compensation benefits including predictable revenue-based rebates and access to both earned- and proposal-based business development funds
- Enhanced rewards for cloud resale partnering between participants in the Dell EMC Partner Programme Cloud Service Provider and Solution Provider tracks
- Increased Dell EMC sales and marketing investments that expand the available sell-with and sell-out resources on behalf of service provider partners globally and regionally
Solutions Engineering Practice
To complement the partner programme, Dell EMC is also investing in global solutions engineering practice to produce a wide range of tested and validated systems for various service provider use cases.
The practice leverages Dell EMC’s industry-leading compute, storage and open networking solutions, providing industry-standard building blocks for deployment at any scale from the customer edge to hyperscale datacentres. Customers can take advantage of Dell EMC Extreme Scale Infrastructure for tailored offerings, cloud-native architectural expertise and modular datacentre designs.
The solutions integrate state-of-the-art, software-defined storage and software-defined networking from Dell EMC including ScaleIO and OS10 respectively, as well as SDS and SDN capabilities with partners. Dell EMC OEM customisation capabilities and extensive partner ecosystem provide additional sourcing options to speed time to market.
This flexible infrastructure base is combined with virtualisation, automation and orchestration software from various ecosystem partners and the Dell EMC Service Assurance Suite, yielding highly scalable and extensible cloud infrastructure. Service providers and their partners can leverage this infrastructure to host a wide range of workloads to modernise service delivery or support new service creation.
The service provider solutions engineering practice will focus initially on network functions virtualisation solutions principally for communications service providers.
- For mobile operators, Dell EMC plans to introduce validated systems for virtual evolved packet core vEPC with Affirmed Networks and virtual IP multimedia subsystem vIMS with MetaSwitch Networks
- Dell EMC also expects to introduce validated vCPE, SD-WAN systems with Versa Networks for modernising enterprise network connectivity and virtual private networks
To complement these offerings, Dell EMC Services accommodates virtually any set of requirements at any scale. Service providers have the opportunity to partner with Dell EMC Services and build relationships that go beyond typical off-premise services. Using automated tools and its extensive knowledge of applications and the architectures on which they run, Dell EMC is uniquely suited to provide strategic recommendations for cloud solutions. This helps drive partner cross-sell opportunities and maximises the return on investment of the Dell EMC technology being used to deliver public cloud services.
- The Cloud Service Provider track in the 2017 Dell EMC Partner Programme is currently active, and is expected to grow to well over 300 participating partners around the world
- The enhanced Dell EMC Partner Portal is live now, providing a single point of access to all partner-related assets, benefits and services
- The Dell EMC validated systems for service providers are expected to be available in the spring of 2017
Jay Snyder, Senior Vice President, Global Alliances, Service Providers and Industries, Dell EMC said, “The service provider industry is at a turning point in how services are created and consumed – they need flexibility and speed at a low cost. With the Dell EMC Partner Programme, service providers can get the best technology and go-to-market support to quickly scale and stand up differentiated services to meet the needs of their customers, be more competitive and grow their businesses.”
Tom Burns, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Networking, Enterprise Infrastructure and Service Provider Solutions, Dell EMC said, “Our goal is helping service providers digitally transform their operations and delivery models with modern internal infrastructures using common, scalable and flexible building blocks. With our deep knowledge of the service providers’ environments, business requirements and partners, we can deliver best-in-class solutions – from hardware to platforms to fully validated systems.”