Guest Blog: Mario Duckett
The EMC Enterprise Content Division (ECD) DACH office in Munich, Germany, recently hosted their EMC Partner Day/Tech Refresh event. MetaSource was invited to participate in this year’s conference. This is part of MetaSource’s continued efforts to expand sales of ApplicationXtender outside of the North American market where we currently have 150 resellers in our distribution network.
I have attended many Partner roadshows and events like this in North America, and I can say this particular event was extremely productive and beneficial for both EMC partners and customers alike. 70+ people including EMC customers, partners and ECD team members were in attendance and the agenda was chock full of great content with presentations on Captiva, XCP, InfoArchive and other ECD offerings. It was very exciting to see EMC’s current position and future vision as highlighted by the Project Horizon presentation given by Chris McLaughlin, Chief Marketing Officer, EMC ECD.
As you might imagine, my favorite part of the Tech Refresh was the presentation given by Ryan Davidsen, VP Worldwide Presales, EMC ECD, where he highlighted all of the ECD solutions including the new release of ApplicationXtender 8.0. In fact, Ryan asked me to give a real live demonstration of AX 8.0 to the entire audience (and you know how I hate being in front of a crowd – not!). The demo of the new version of ApplicationXtender was very well received and you could feel the excitement about new opportunities that AX will bring to this European market.
The brainstorming and idea sharing was another highlight for me. I was able to have multiple conversations with EMEA partners (and a customer) about Captiva, AX and InfoArchive and everyone I spoke with thought this event provided great value and gave them more ideas on how to increase ECD revenue. As we finalize the details with our first reseller in EMEA(Europe, the Middle East and Africa), inovoo, we are excited to see ApplicationXtender’s reach begin to move outside of the traditional North American market.
Back home in the US, after each Tech Refresh / Roadshow, we usually get together for a “beverage” and networking opportunities. This event in Germany was at an entirely different level as EMC took the entire group to Oktoberfest. Yes, THE Oktoberfest. Here we ate, drank, sang and bonded. There were people from Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Serbia, Spain, France and few other countries in our group inside the Löwenbräu tent (which by the way holds 8000 people) – but for that day everyone was German. It especially rewarding for me, since my mother was born and raised in Germany. I must say that holding the networking event in Munich on Sunday before the actual day of presentations provided a great opportunity for partners to build relationships with the EMC ECD team and with other EMC partners. More importantly, it was very fun!
The real measure of the success of this event will be increased opportunities and revenue for the EMC EMEA ECD partners and MetaSource is looking forward to assisting with that goal.