If you happen to have a pond in your garden, or a stream running past it, you will certainly have noticed how different species exist together there. Not only do they live peacefully side by side, each organism has its function and its place. And if you observe them closely, you will notice that these creatures help each other and ensure that every member of the community thrives. That is what an ecosystem is all about. And that is also what the Dell EMC Alliance ecosystem is all about.
The business and technology landscape has become very complex over the last few years. As compute power grows exponentially, new trends pop up constantly and it’s difficult to keep track of all the emerging technologies that populate analyst’s hype cycles. For a decision-maker inside an enterprise, it’s virtually impossible to keep up with everything that’s on offer, let alone find the personnel that has the specialized skills to evaluate all the latest technologies. Likewise, service providers and vendors can no longer afford to invest in all the novelties that come along. Specialization and collaboration are now the order of the day. Specialization allows customers to pick a specific service they are looking for, while collaboration assures the enterprise that all these services will combine into a powerful, seamless solution.
Bundling expertise
If we zoom in on the market for cloud computing, it is safe to say that customers no longer want to settle on a single cloud model. As IDC stated in its ‘IDC Worldwide Cloud 2017 Predictions’, «over 85% of enterprises will commit to multi-cloud architectures.” They will pick those things from the cloud menu that best meet their needs, and will ask the cloud provider to come up with more than just specific products and make the link between hardware, software and service offerings. By specializing, cloud providers can differentiate themselves from the Hyperscalers or GAFAs (Google, Amazon, Facebook and Azure). On the other hand, cloud vendors will also need to build new, competitively unique services in order to respond to cost-optimized, on-demand service delivery approaches.
The best way to achieve this is to participate in an ecosystem for a given endeavor, where solutions can be co-created with partners who have the expertise and experience that others lack. According to Gartner, 79% of top performers are already participating in digital ecosystems. This was the primary motivation why Dell EMC Global Alliances set up its Dell EMC Ecosystem. This ecosystem works with companies that specialize in a small set of key solutions but, at the same time, are leaders in their field of play. This is how we are able to bring something different to the market and to our existing customers.
Dell EMC Global Alliance partners include Systems Integrators (SI), Advisory Groups, Strategic Outsourcers (SO) and Cloud Service Providers (CSP). Thanks to their deep expertise in a particular topic or industry, Global Alliances deliver enhanced value to organizations as they progress through their transformational journey. With our Global Alliance partners, we offer our customers best-of-breed solutions, combining insights, experiences and capabilities to help them modernize datacenters or making their cloud infrastructure future-proof. Within the ecosystem, we share knowledge and resources with each other and build joint, go-to-market offerings.
As-a-Service going for gold
One of the best examples of how this worked, is the way Atos’ Canopy cloud integration service combined the strengths of Atos, Dell EMC, VMware, VCE, Cisco and Intel to introduce the concept of Sports Software-as-a-Service (SSaaS) at the 2018 Winter Olympics. This service offered the IOC, volunteers, viewers, media and athletes the highest level of security available and ran all the IT applications in order to share the athlete’s results with the rest of the world.
Every vendor has a partner program and boasts an ecosystem. However, not all ecosystems are created equal. What differentiates the Dell EMC Ecosystem from other vendor’s programs is that we don’t steal business from our partners. Our brand may front the ecosystem, but it is as much the property of our partners as it is our own. We don’t compete, we complete!
When ecosystems thrive, each member of the ecosystem improves its living conditions. When an ecosystem like the Dell EMC Ecosystem thrives, this is beneficial both to all partners in the ecosystem, but also to the enterprises that are being served by the collaboration. And then everyone can relax and find time to enjoy their garden, marveling at the wonder of the pond ecosystem…
