CRN Exclusive: Dell Global Channels President Byrne Moves To Top North America Sales Job; Dell Veteran Taking Global Channel Chief Post
Dell EMC President of Global Channels John Byrne, the hard-charging channel advocate that drove robust partner sales growth during his tenure as channel chief, is taking a new job running Dell's North America commercial sales.
Joyce Mullen, an 18-year Dell veteran who is currently senior vice president of OEM and Internet of Things solutions, is taking on the global channel chief job running Dell's $43 billion global channels business, effective immediately. Her new title is president of global channels, OEM and IoT Solutions.
Byrne, who took the global channel job in July, 2016, is credited by partners with playing a crucial role in integrating Dell's and EMC's partner programs in the wake of Round Rock, Texas-based Dell's $58 billion merger with EMC, the largest tech merger in history. Americas sales accounts for about 50 percent of Dell's annual sales.
Dell President and Chief Commercial Officer Marius Haas, who oversees both the global channel organization and North America sales, said he and Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell made the decision to put Byrne into the sales job to "drive a transformation" in what is the largest and most intensely competitive region for the company. "With the results that John has driven in conjunction with the channel team, this was a slam-dunk, easy decision to make," he said. "This was a no brainer."
As for Mullen, who will now run a combined OEM, IoT and Global Channels organization, Haas called her one of the brightest and talented executives in the company. He said she is an "action-oriented individual" who is a go-to person in the company to get things done.
"She is on it like a pit bull," said Haas. "We are excited that we have this talent in-house, and we are excited about the next phase of the journey we are embarking on."
Byrne said one of his top priorities will be aggressively driving partners to grow Dell storage sales, which experienced a mid-single digit decline in orders in the most recent quarter. "We will aggressively attack the market, gain share, drive improvements and attack services like crazy across all routes to markets. We're going to attack the living daylights out of all things storage from hyper-converged to arrays," said Byrne. "Expect all those foundational things we built in the channel organizations to be a 'rinse and repeat' into the North America organization. It is the biggest region within our partner community. It's the biggest opportunity around the globe."
Mullen, who has played key roles overseeing global strategy, planning and software alliances, said she is looking forward to the "great opportunity" to lead partners into the future. "We have a great foundation. We're going to keep building on that," she told CRN. "There should be no expectation for a change of priorities or a change in how we're thinking about the channel or any of that. We're going to continue to build on the great foundation that John and his team have built."
Under Byrne's leadership, Dell's percentage of sales through partners has increased dramatically to about 55 percent of an anticipated $78.5 billion in sales this year. Before the acquisition of EMC, Dell's channel sales amounted to about 33 percent of its commercial business. What's more, 80 percent of Dell partners are now selling multiple products lines, up considerably since the merger.
Dell CEO Michael Dell told CRN during his appearance at the Best of Breed conference earlier this year that 70 percent of Dell Technologies partners earned higher payouts this year than they did last year.
Mullen has been with Dell since 1999 in various executive positions and has lead the OEM channel partner program that supports thousands of OEM customers since its conception in 2012. She leads a team of sales, operations, engineering, marketing and operational professionals for the multi-billion-dollar division, according to her bio on Dell's website.
"The whole plan for the next several weeks is to just listen to partners and to understand from our team members and our partner community the good, the bad and the ugly," she told CRN. "What do we need to do better? What are we doing well? What is really not working? I am starting with huge ears listening, trying to figure out where we should put our energies and our focus."