Partners: Dell Technologies Unifying Its Brands Will Help Us Make More Money
Dell Technologies World has been full of product launches and channel programs, but what's standing out most for some partners is Dell's vision and its commitment to creating a truly unified company.
"There's a lot of focus on ease of doing business – how do we make it easier for you to transact across the entire family of businesses?" said Dell Chairman and CEO Michael Dell on stage in front of thousands of partners at Dell EMC Global Partner Summit, part of Dell Technologies World, this week in Las Vegas. "We hear you loud and clear there. It's a big priority for us as well. Look, customers are demanding this."
The first initiative to better unify Dell's seven brands – Dell, Dell EMC, VMware, Pivotal, RSA, Virtustream and SecureWorks – was launched during the event: Dell Technologies Advantage framework. The initiative provides new vendor engagement, tools and incentives to help partners sell across the Dell Technologies portfolio.
"This is going to create some next-level [solutions] when you're combining EMC, VMware and all of Dell Technologies," said Emilio Trenzado, global technical solution architect for cloud and automation for World Wide Technology, a $10.4 billion solution provider powerhouse that partners with Dell EMC, VMware and Pivotal. "It looks like they're making it easier for us. It will make it easier with the SKUs to have all of those solutions vetted and all together."
A significant part of the framework is the streamlining of training and certifications across the entire Dell Technologies portfolio in a move to cut unnecessary overlap of channel training. "So if you take training around VMware capabilities one time, you don't have to take it inside the Dell EMC program as well, for example. Or if you think about Pivotal Ready Architecture or Kubernetes, you might take that inside the Pivotal program so you won't have to retake that inside the VMware program," said Joyce Mullen, Dell EMC's president of global channel, OEM and IoT solutions. "That should make it a whole lot easier to enable partners to participate across these products and categories."
Rob Steele, practice manager for RoundTower Technologies, a Cincinnati-based solution provider that partners with Dell EMC, VMware, Pivotal and RSA, said the new streamlining and simplification strategy Dell Technologies is embarking on will without a doubt enable partners to make more money.
"We're one of the most decorated partners from a certification perspective, and one of the biggest fire drills we have is trying to figure out how we plan all of our new certifications every year," said Steele. "Each vendor has their own requirements and much of the training and certification overlaps."
Steele said this new joint strategy across Dell Technologies will "allow us to spend less time on doing homework and more time in front of our customers."
Although Dell is still fine-tuning the details on howeverything will be rolled out and delivered to partners, Mullen said the company is investing heavily "to make it real" for the channel.
"Our combined capabilities across all those brands – that is something that nobody else can match," she said. "When we think about making sure we enable our partners so they can purchase our products across those technologies, that's really the [goal]. We're trying to figure out how to make it real for everybody."