EMC and Dimension Data have joined forces to form an alliance aimed at speeding adoption of hybrid cloud for the mid-size enterprise.

Catalyst Alliance is a strategic market development initiative between the two companies and will see EMC and Dimension Data developing and jointly marketing and selling solutions ‘that allow clients to realise value from business strategies based on hybrid cloud and enable them to adopt new technology while managing risk'.

The proposed ‘comprehensive' solutions will span private cloud on and off premises, public and hybrid cloud, including advanced managed services for storage.

The solutions will feature flexible consumption based pricing models on storage, cloud and managed services, the two companies say, and a Catalyst Alliance will have a dedicated team of sales, technical and marketing specialists to ‘align client workloads and applications to the best solutions'.

Jay Snyder, EMC senior vice president for global alliances, says customers are being challenged with changing business models and more technology choices than ever before.

“This disruption is creating transformational opportunity,” Snyder says. “Businesses across all industries are swiftly moving to reinvent themselves for a new digital age, where technology is used to grow, innovate, enhance customer relationships and make employees more productive.

Synder says the Catalyst Alliance will enable those transformations ‘both through scale and speed'.

Steve Nola, Dimension Data's group executive for IT-as-a-service, says the alliance will help clients realise the benefits of hybrid cloud that will be used to serve core business applications anywhere in the world.

“By combining EMC's technology leadership with Dimension Data's extensive services portfolio and global reach, clients are able to accelerate their growth, creating value for their customers and financial returns for their shareholders,” Nola says.

Rick Villars, IDC vice president of data center and cloud research, says for many organiations ‘hybrid cloud' is a consequence of uncoordinated cloud investments, rather than a strategy for getting more from their cloud investments.

“Partnerships like Dimension Data and EMC's Catalyst Alliance that facilitate companies' cloud time-to-value while reducing the risk of disruption in IT operations will help companies move beyond simply having a hybrid set of clouds to enacting a sound, diversified cloud strategy,” Villars says.

The alliance is being seen by some as a chance for EMC to compete alongside Amazon and Microsoft in the cloud.