Bangalore: EMC announced the appointment of Praveen Sahai as Vice President of Channels for EMC India and SAARC region. In this role, Praveen will be responsible for growing and driving EMC’s partner strategy in the region. He will also spearhead EMC’s distribution and systems integrators strategy, deepening current partnerships and creating new ones to increase EMC’s footprint in the market. The company has identified 2012 as the year of the channel and this appointment reinforces EMC’s commitment to the channel community.

An EMC veteran, Praveen brings over 15 years of leadership experience at EMC to the role, having held various positions in sales, marketing, pre sales and corporate affairs. Prior to this role, Praveen was Director of Sales for India and SAARC at EMC’s Iomega business division. Before joining EMC, he spent time at Sun Microsystems, and Citrix. He is a regular speaker at industry forums, and currently serves on the board of directors at the SNIA (Storage Networking Industry Association) India.

Executive Quotes:

Joergen Jakobsen, Vice President, Channel Operations, Asia Pacific and Japan, EMC

“The Indian sub-continent is an extremely important market for EMC’s overall strategy in the channel segment. The channel has worked as a prime growth engine in this market and we continue to have a determined focus on channel development. Praveen’s appointment will strengthen our commitment to the channel community as we plan for further growth in the year ahead.”

Rajesh Janey, President, EMC India and SAARC

“We are pleased to have Praveen to drive our channel strategy, which is extremely critical in ensuring our success in India. With new growth areas in Big Data analytics and cloud computing, it is essential that we continue to strengthen our partner engagement and management in India. Praveen’s deep industry expertise and business acumen will be important in continuing EMC’s market leadership and momentum in the industry.”

EMC has over 200 partners in India spread across over 40 cities. The company has three ‘channel only’ products – the award-winning EMC® VNXe™ unified storage solutions, EMC Data Domain® DD160 deduplication storage system and the recently launched EMC VSPEX Proven Infrastructure through which EMC is giving channel partners the tools to address the fast growing market in virtual infrastructure and private cloud computing. Along with having a ‘partner only’ portfolio, EMC also focuses on ‘partner enablement’ through education and certification activities, demand generation activities along with strengthening EMC technical support for the channel community.