CRN Names EMC Company of the Year in Three ARC Award Categories

HOPKINTON, MA - August 12, 2011 -

EMC Corporation (NYSE) today announced that for the first time it was named Company of the Year in the small- and medium-sized businesses (SMB) Network Storage category and for the fifth consecutive year named Company of the Year in the Enterprise Network Storage and Backup & Recovery Software categories of the prestigious 2011 CRN Annual Report Card (ARC). The CRN Annual Report Card serves as a definitive benchmark of relationships between vendors and channel partners and maintains the industry standard for measuring excellence within the channel community. EMC accepted the awards at a ceremony on Thursday, August 11 during the XChange Americas conference in Denver, CO.

The Everything Channel ARC research team surveyed more than 3600 solution providers across 21 categories to evaluate the satisfaction they have with vendor products, support, and channel programs. The "Company of the Year" recognition is given to a vendor that scores the highest marks for each of the award sub-categories – Product Innovation, Support, and Partnership.

EMC's first-ever inclusion and recognition as Company of the Year in the SMB Network Storage category is the direct result of the strategy it executed during the past year to expand its SMB market presence. In January 2011, EMC announced an Authorized Reseller category that enables resellers of any size to easily become EMC partners. It also announced the EMC® VNXe® – the world's simplest, most efficient, and affordable unified storage system. With an entry price of under $10,000 (USD), the VNXe enables partners to address the demand for storage in the SMB market with breakthrough simplicity while allowing them to easily bundle the system into comprehensive, differentiated solutions and services. Additionally, EMC continued to dedicated resources to its SMB business group that is solely focused on supporting channel partners who sell to customers with 500 users or less. EMC maintains its commitment to offering technologies that help customers who are juggling limited budgets and IT resources in order to help them more simply, efficiently, and affordably manage and control rapid information growth.

During the past year, EMC made several enhancements to the EMC Velocity™ Solution Provider Program including new opportunities for EMC reselling partners to accelerate revenue, increase profitability, differentiate their business in the marketplace, and provide more value to customers through four new Velocity Specialties: Consolidate, Advanced Consolidate, Backup and Recovery, and Governance and Archive. It also introduced a number of new, industry-leading enterprise storage systems and backup and recovery products that enable partners to solve their customers' unique IT challenges, manage rapid data growth, and accelerate their journey to the cloud.

"This is a well deserved honor," said Donnie Downs, President & CEO of Plan B Technologies, Inc. (PBT), an EMC Velocity Partner and IT solutions and professional services provider. "The EMC VNXe has made it easier than ever for Plan B to deliver industry leading technology to our SMB customers. EMC has also provided us with more accessible product training and new ways to increase our margins. EMC listens to its partners and has made a lot of aggressive changes based on this feedback. We're definitely seeing the affects of these changes in our day to day business. In fact, I'm pleased to say that we're growing faster than ever."

"It's not surprising that EMC swept the Enterprise, SMB, and Backup & Recovery categories," said Andy Cadwell, Senior Vice President of Sales and Field Operations, INX, Inc., an EMC Velocity Partner and a leading U.S. provider of IP communications and data center solutions for enterprise, public sector and healthcare organizations. "EMC continues to offer the broadest product portfolio supporting the most cohesive data center value proposition for our customers. In the channel we've seen a lot of upside to the changes EMC has made in the last year. The company has proven themselves to be committed to investing in a strong channel program and we find it quite easy to do business with EMC."

"When it comes to the strength of relationships, quality of products, and return on partner programs, solution providers want to hear from their fellow VARs about the IT vendors that consistently exceed expectations," said Kelley Damore, vice president, editorial director, Everything Channel. "The Annual Report Card gives solution providers the opportunity to share feedback and recognize the vendors who truly demonstrate channel excellence. We congratulate EMC for being recognized for its first time inclusion and win in the SMB Network Storage category and its fifth straight win in the Enterprise Network Storage and Backup & Recovery Software categories."

"This tremendous honor from CRN is proof that the enhancements we have made to our channel program are adding real value for our partners," said Gregg Ambulos, EMC's Senior Vice President of Global Channel Sales. "We're grateful for this recognition from the partner community and will look to continue to build the programs and products our partners need to create real differentiation and value in the market."

To view a slideshow of all the organizations named to the 2011 ARC visit www.crn.com.