Partnership With M7 Global Partners on VSPEX

M7 Global Partners announced a strategic initiative with EMC Corp. to collaborate on the development, delivery and deployment of desktop virtualization infrastructures that integrate technologies from EMC and Citrix Systems, Inc.

An example of this collaboration will focus on EMC’s recently announced VSPEX, a new offering for channel partners based upon pre-configured and tested architectures. It gives partners easy to deploy solutions that offer customers choice while accelerating their journey to the cloud.

The two companies plan to develop and execute dedicated programs centered on the development of proof-of-concept deployments for customers, joint customer engagement and education, as well as the development of field-tested and reference architectures for desktop virtualization infrastructures. This enhanced relationship underscores a joint commitment to meet customer needs and requirements with robust, streamlined, and timely deployments.

The collaboration is grounded upon a set of tested and validated EMC solutions for the Citrix suite of products and includes support for key hypervisors and protocols as well as both methods of desktop creation (PVS and MCS). The partnership will extend these solutions by enabling accelerated deployments of both proof-of-concepts and full-scale customer implementations.

Implementing a complete virtual desktop infrastructure requires expertise in desktop deployment and migrations, application virtualization, security, system management and storage design. M7 Global Partners and EMC are delivering desktop virtualization deployments to a range of customers across a range of industries. To accomplish this, the partners are enabling customers through education and professional services including detailed assessments, deployment services and proven solutions.

Charles Rosse, system administrator II, Baptist Memorial Health Care, said: "To be able to manage multiple servers and their updates through virtualization represents an enormous time savings which directly translates to reduced costs in our IT organization. With the dedicated VNX, we are able to capture all the IOPS that we need and we can present critical applications to end users in a fast, reliable environment that is easily managed and migrated as needed. By engaging with EMC and LPS integration, a member of the M7 Global Partners, we are able to smoothly assess our needs, design the best configuration, and deploy very quickly. We were insured of fast and effective support in meeting our needs and overcoming any obstacles."

Mark Bowker, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group, said: "The alliance between the M7 Global Partners and EMC for desktop virtualization with Citrix addresses many key barriers to entry for a customer. This relationship marks an opportunity for customers seeking to leverage partners that are well versed and experienced in desktop virtualization with a leader in storage. By uniting the partners expertise and validated EMC solutions, the partnership is tackling key desktop virtualization implementation challenges and making a mark in this rapidly growing segment of the market."

Cynthia Gallant, VP, Channel Strategy and Development at Citrix, said: "Our customers will benefit from the closer alignment between the M7 Global Partners and EMC. Through M7’s expertise in consulting and implementation, customers can accelerate their deployments of desktop virtualization. Industry-leading technology from EMC combined with Citrix XenDesktop gives these businesses the ability to enable mobile workstyles for their users with anywhere, anytime access to desktops, applications and data."

David Linzy, CTO, M7 Global Partners, president and managing partner, LPS Integration, said: "The M7 partners and EMC are not starting from scratch, but rather we are building on our collective efforts and experience to advance our optimized solutions. We are leveraging our position as leading partners for both EMC and Citrix by aligning to ultimately help customers realize the benefits associated with deploying a virtual desktop environment."

Adam Bari, CMO, M7 Global Partners, MD, IPM, said: "M7’s ability to perform end-to-end deployments allows us to build out a complete solution without having to obtain expertise from anywhere else, and extensive customer service and support is available to restore systems saving time and money for our customers."

Kennith Rindt, VP of Strategic Alliances, M7 Global Partners, SVP of Sales and Strategic Alliances, AEC Group, Inc., said: "M7 is very excited about strengthening our relationship with EMC in regard to the design and delivery of Citrix based solutions. We have been leveraging EMC as a key component of our virtual desktop reference architectures from the start, and believe our alignment will be hugely beneficial for customers."

Parmeet Chaddha, VP, Solutions Group, EMC, said: "EMC is laser focused on accelerating the journey to cloud computing. Our recent announcement of the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure is a perfect example of how EMC, in conjunction with key resellers like the M7 Global Partners, is taking a concrete base of new solutions that are available today and partnering to assist customers in transforming their IT environment. We feel that through tighter technical, go-to-market and services alignment we can help customers more rapidly respond to key factors driving their decision to migrating to desktop virtualization."