EMC is clearly kicking off 2016 in a high gear. First it was its VxRail hyperconverged announcement with VMWare, and then but a month ago, the company launched VXMax All Flash, heralding a quantum leap in the industry.

The latest news is that the company has entered into a strategic alliance with audit firm EY (Ernst & Young), aimed at bringing clients “leading tools and service offerings to help accelerate return on investment and build greater confidence in their strategic initiatives and technology implementations.”

The first solution to emerge from this partnership is one that addresses a topical, and significant area of concern, that of protecting a company’s data from cyber-attacks.

The offering, called Isolated Recovery, combines cybersecurity, business impact analysis, resiliency services and technology capabilities from both EMC and EY firms to secure vital company data. The Isolated Recovery offering further provides an environment and workflows to stage data in an isolated recovery zone, along with processes for monitoring the integrity of data and procedures for recovery and remediation.

The power of partnership

It’s not the only advantage that the relationship between the duo is intended to foster. More particularly, EMC explained that the alliance provides for collaboration, co-innovation, joint offerings and various activities across relevant EMC product lines and EY practice areas.  

Additional EY/EMC offerings include:

·       Hybrid Cloud Enablement Services - The combination of management and monitoring for public, private, and legacy datacenter with cloud environments

·       Data Center Network Virtualization and Segmentation Services - Network architectures that can help enterprises transform, consolidate and simplify their data center strategies

·       Enterprise Mobility Management and End User Computing Platform – A suite of enterprise mobility technologies focused on architecture and integrated business workflows

·       Service Resiliency – Services for system and data archiving/recovery/, business continuity and crisis responses to protect against data loss

·       Analytics – Offerings to help companies extract additional value from their data and analytics investments, leveraging EMC’s Pivotal suite of tools

·       Sector-focused Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) Offerings – A portfolio of industry-focused GRC offerings supported by the RSA Archer GRC platform

·       Cybersecurity – A full spectrum of offerings including Identity Access Management Monitoring (IAM) for single sign on, role and privilege management, as well as Real Time Monitoring (RTM) of events to reduce IT Risk

Priorities and potentials

Jay Snyder, senior vice president, global alliances, EMC Corporation, explained that the EY alliance is a “top priority” for EMC.

“The skills, brand, relationships, and subject matter experience of EY, combined with EMC’s innovative portfolio of technologies and market penetration, will help enable us to continue to support our enterprise customers as they accelerate their IT transformation initiatives. Additionally, we are focused on a set of industry specific offers leveraging EY's deep knowledge and our platforms to deliver business contextual solutions for our clients and incremental revenue to both companies,” he elaborated.

Mark Weinberger, global chairman and CEO, EY added that the alliance builds on years of collaborative experience and combines its knowledge of business operations with EMC’s experience in the technical environment in which its clients operate to deliver a powerful proposition.

“Working together as an integrated team, combining advisory services and innovative products, we will be able to connect on both existing and future initiatives to help our clients maximise their technology investments and drive better business outcomes. The alliance will further expand EY’s digital capabilities and range of services offered to clients,” he enthused.

The past and the future

Adding weight to the announcement is that the two companies have a history of working together to provide sector-focused capabilities to clients across multiple industries. Previously, the duo produced EY’s Insurance Nexus, a strategic technology and services offering helping insurance carriers migrate core operations and support functions to the cloud.

Having the final word on the announcement, Francis J. Nemia, global sponsor of the EY/EMC Alliance, summed up that the partnership will allow EY to assist companies with a controlled and secure approach to accelerating the IT investments which they have made to improve their businesses.

“This is about helping companies address the challenges they face in highly competitive – and in many cases highly regulated – industries,” he concluded.