AUSTIN, TEX. – A year after Dell turned private, the hardware vendor announced a $125 million investment in its channel business to accelerate its end-to-end product strategy for 2015 at its Dell World conference.
Currently, a little over 40 per cent of Dell’s global revenue goes through channel partners and 10 out of 11 regions the vendor does business in – including Canada – has grown is partner sales by double digits, according to Cheryl Cook, Dell’s channel chief.
“We want to be that stable, consistent partner with the channel and try to make changes in our programs to make them easier to navigate,” she said.
With that Dell announced a new channel program called Dell Storage Accelerator. To be rolled out in February of 2015 in Canada and the U.S., Dell Storage Accelerator offers Premier and Preferred Partners enhanced financial incentives for delivering storage solutions.
Cook also revealed a Windows Server 2003 Migration program that will feature new margin incentives for solution providers to take advantage of the end of life of Windows Server 2003 opportunity.
Stuart Crawford, president of Ulistic Inc., said the time is ripe for Dell Partners to aggressively go after opportunities with Windows Server 2003 end of life.
“At Ulistic we are strategizing with all of our managed service clients to immediately start marketing on why businesses shouldn’t wait until the last minute to migrate off Windows 2003. We are advising that they don’t make the same mistake as they did with Windows XP. There is lots of time to start educating clients and businesses about the potential pitfalls with Windows Server 2003. Having Dell in their corner going after opportunities is a huge advantage,” Crawford said.
That will not be the only rewards Dell will be offering the channel. Cook said the company paid out more than 35 per cent more rewards in fiscal 2015 than they did previously in North America. Approximately $100 million in partner rewards was given out to more than 1,300 channel partners in Cook’s first year on the job.
Under this new round of channel investment, Dell plans to accelerate rewards to channel partners who are in the Preferred an Premier tiers and are able to grow both client and enterprise products. The company also plans to double the investment they currently make with demo equipment.
Dell channel partners will also get more leads from the company. Cook added that she will double lead generation investments.
We want to help fuel the pace of growth that the channel is experiencing right now. We want to drive the online quoting experience and make it 70 per cent faster,” she said.
Dell announced to the more than 600 solution providers in attendance at the show an introductory financing plan where that will extend terms by 75 days – interest free – for the next six months through Dell financing partner GE Capital and Wells Fargo.
“We want to continue to focus on making more tools and resources available for this enablement with more demos and proof of concepts to drive a rich customer relationship for the channel,” Cook said.
“The strategy is based on end-to-end solutions from app modernization up to the virtualized data centre that can reach into private, hybrid and public clouds. Dell is absolutely focused here as lines blur in networking we will drive more converged infrastructure solutions with simplified management capability that helps the channel deliver faster solutions to market.”
Crawford said Dell is truly no longer the evil twin brother. “They were the partner at one time that everyone loved to gripe about but in secret they had a deep love affair. Partners have come out of the closet and are going to market together with Dell.”