“Only possibilities.”

That’s the personal mantra of Australian athlete John Maclean, who became a paraplegic following a near-fatal accident in 1988. John has spent the better part of three decades proving that his disabilities do not define who he is.

He was the first wheelchair-bound athlete to swim the English Channel and the first to compete in the Hawaii Ironman Triathlon and the invitation-only Ultraman World Championships.

He’s redefined himself over and over—to the point of learning to walk again, even after 25 years in a wheelchair.

Inspirational? No doubt.

But, what does this have to do with EMC?

As the EMC Global Partner Summit 2015 general session speaker, John Maclean brought the partner audience—solution providers, outsourcers, system integrators, cloud service providers, OEMs—to their feet … and some of us to tears.

Yet, John’s life story—and he admits it’s extreme—is not his message.

Instead, he says it’s about possibilities, about “learning to see challenges, or adversity if you like, and welcoming it as a fuel to feed off… All of us can do that, we simply have to make that choice.” During the session, John shared that he had help along the way—partners to expand his thinking and support him as he pushed the limits of possibility.

Following John on stage, Gregg Ambulos, senior vice president, EMC Global Channel Sales, explained in his keynote that we are facing a “once-in-a-generation transformation; a technological revolution.” We too, as an industry and as businesses must redefine ourselves to move forward and find new ways to collaborate with and leverage one another.

We, too, have choices to make.

Gregg implored the audience to push the limits of possibility and Redefine Next, together with EMC. We’re working to stay ahead of shifting market dynamics and address customer needs, and we are helping partners grow with us. The new Business Partner Program announced last year is one example of how we’re doing that.

Here are four ways (as shared by Gregg) that EMC will Redefine Next for Solution Providers in 2015.

1. Unleashing the power of the Federation: EMC took steps in 2014 to align the Federation to benefit our partner community and, “this year we’re putting more muscle behind it,” Gregg explained.

Some of this new heft includes:

• For those who sell Federated solutions, this year we’re creating a Deal Registration program and establishing Federation Rules of Engagement to protect partners on all your deals.
• When you complete the sales, technical, and service requirements around Federated solutions, you will earn the distinction of being “Federation Ready.” This comes with new resources and benefits, such as getting connected with a single point of contact to lead all of your federation GTM activities—streamlining and accelerating your business.
• Additional Federation solutions, powered by EMC, VMware, Pivotal, RSA, and VCE are coming, including Data Lakes and Security Analytics.
• VCE will join the Business Partner Program this July.
• A new executive, Jeff Casale, is now on board to ensure a more seamless Federation experience for partners and customers.

  
   

2. Offering certification with EMC Ready: EMC Ready is a certification program we introduced in 2014 to ensure EMC sales teams understand the full breadth of our portfolio, and understand how to position all of our offerings. Now, we’re making the EMC Ready program available to partners.

3. Rolling out EMC True: A loyalty program piloting in North America, EMC True provides more benefits for those partners who are exclusive—or loyal—and whose storage or backup revenue is 80% or more EMC. Benefits include a revenue uplift that will count towards tier compliance, additional rebates, more marketing funds, free training and certification, and more. Over 10% of Silver, Gold, and Platinum partners in North America have signed up in the first few months. We’ll be rolling it out to other geographies over the next year.

4. Expanding the portfolio with VSPEX BLUE: The recently announced VSPEX BLUE is available exclusively through our partner community and procured through our authorized distributors. EMC is the market share leader in converged infrastructure with our Vblock and VSPEX solutions. Now, with VSPEX BLUE, EMC has the most comprehensive converged infrastructure portfolio in the industry.

Thinking across the entire EMC partner ecosystem

You’ve likely experienced it yourself—the convergence in the marketplace, as the lines between partners blur. For example, we see SIs that are now reselling, and resellers that are now in the managed services game.

In the next installment of our Global Partner Summit recap, you’ll hear from Jay Snyder, senior vice president, EMC Global Alliances and Chris Riley, senior vice president, EMC Americas Enterprise Sales about the broader EMC partner ecosystem.

“Disruption can be seen as a challenge to traditional business models, or it can be seen as an opportunity for transformation.”-- Jay Snyder

Or as John Maclean might say, “Only possibilities.”