EMC Corporation announced enhancements to the EMC Velocity Partner Program that provide partners with new opportunities to increase their profitability selling EMC's broad and industry-leading solutions portfolio. The new Velocity Pre-sales Readiness Program helps partners more competitively position themselves with their customers as the 'trusted advisor' for EMC solutions with improved technical proficiency and the selection of a specialty designation within the EMC Velocity Authorized Services Network (ASN) Specialty Program enables partners to develop deeper knowledge and expertise in a specific solution area.

"Partners position themselves as a trusted advisor to their customers. To support them the EMC Velocity Partner Program now has additional rewards and incentives to enhance our partners' technical proficiency and their ability to have deeper conversations to recommend appropriate EMC solutions that solve real information challenges," said EMC's Pete Koliopoulos, Vice President, Global Channel Marketing. "The new ASN Specialty designations will help partners further differentiate themselves in the market, build their business around one or more core competencies and enhance their ROI with new revenue opportunities by delivering complete end-to-end EMC solutions combining hardware, software and their own service skills."

The Velocity Pre-sales Readiness Program has new rewards in the form of co-op and rebate accelerators for the EMC Proven Professional certification requirements to support partners improving technical proficiency. Partners who successfully complete the new EMC Proven Technology Architect certification tracks: EMC Storage and Information Infrastructure, are now able to have more productive and deeper conversations with their customers about core EMC technologies and products and recommend correct and optimal product choices that meet a set of specific technical requirements.

The new Velocity ASN Specialty Program is intended to enhance a partner's ROI by leveraging their investment and support of EMC products and services to enable partners to differentiate themselves in the marketplace. There are three new Velocity ASN Specialty designations, Consolidate, Backup and Archive, which address customer's information management challenges and business objectives. Eligible partners who choose one or more specialties receive advanced technical training from EMC and have access to the EMC Proven Solutions services methodologies and tools that are also used by EMC Global Services. In addition, all partners have the opportunity to participate in the Advanced Sales Accreditation program that is aligned to the specialties. The Advanced program is designed to enhance a partners' knowledge of EMC technology and provide them with new pre-sales conversations to have with existing customers or prospects resulting in opportunities for incremental revenue.

Other benefits of the enhanced Velocity Program include an invitation to join the EMC Champions Program that gives partners access to exclusive webcasts, product roadmaps and best practices sharing, and free access to the EMC Education Services V-Lab (ESVL). The ESVL is a 24x7 remote based learning support tool exclusively available to Velocity ASN Specialty Partners to help them accelerate technical skills by gaining practical experiences using the same virtual lab environment as EMC's Global Services professionals.

The EMC Velocity Partner Program enhancements are for US and Canadian partners and are effective immediately.