Amid the increasing blare of the pandemic and the spectre of omicron casting its long shadows over the tech landscape, we have ushered into 2022. Channel success which has always been the holy-grail for any business is all set to get a makeover in the new year.
As part of our effort to get the channel community better informed and get an earful of what the who’s who of Indian IT are thinking, expecting, and planning for the channel community in 2022, we have started this new section to record the channel predictions of the most prominent players of the IT industry.
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“We are raising the bar on partner experience, offering new digital enhancements like incentive centre, new quoting tool in OSC and APEX.”
Anil Sethi,
VP & GM – Channels
Dell Technologies India
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Here, as part of this special series of Tech Forecasts, Dell Technologies registers its predictions for 2022.
Among the world’s leading technology companies, Dell Technologies has helped to transform businesses and people’s lives all around. From hybrid cloud solutions to high-performance computing, the company has left its imprint everywhere in every segment it’s in.
Dell has built up a thriving channel ecosystem in the country which has yielded rich dividends for it. Under the dynamic leadership of Anil Sethi, VP & GM – Channels, Dell Technologies India, the company has been able to consolidate and expand its business footprints across the country.
In an exclusive interaction with SME Channels, Anil Sethi, VP & GM – Channels, Dell Technologies India, shares his company’s Channel Predictions for the year 2022. Edited excerpts
What are the major technology trends you are forecasting for 2022?
We are living in a do-anything-from-anywhere economy, enabled by an exponentially expanding data ecosystem. We will see both near-term and long-term technology predictions that address the way the IT industry will deliver the platforms and capabilities to harness this data to transform our experiences at work, home and in the classroom.
In 2022, we will see:
- The opening of the private mobility ecosystem will accelerate with more cloud and IT industries involved on the path to 5G
- Edge will become the new battleground for data management as data management becomes a new class of workload – demanding specific solutions and skills. This, in-turn, will generate huge demand for storage management, data storage, optimization, protection and analytics for all enterprises – small or large
- The security industry will move from discussion of emerging security concerns towards concrete action
How is Dell Technologies enabling its partners to improve their quality of engagement, so they are ready for the challenges and expectations of near to long-term future?
The Channel ecosystem has played a pivotal role in expanding the footprint of Dell Technologies. We are committed to grow this further by enhancing partner experience levels and building services led go-to-market strategies, aided by new incentives and distribution support. We are raising the bar on partner experience, offering new digital enhancements like incentive centre, new quoting tool in OSC and APEX. Our brand-new Incentives Center gives our partners an increased visibility and insight across all their program incentives in one centralized location – for Rebates, MDF (Marketing Development Funds), and MyRewards (incentive for partner sales specialists). We have also invested in configuration, pricing and quoting through the Online Solutions Configurator (OSC) tool – to reduce turn-around time, and to deliver greater pricing transparency for our partners while quoting and it will also enhance their online self-service capability.
We are committed to investing in our partner’s end-to-end experience with us and are excited for the opportunities that will allow Dell Technologies and its partners to create together, partnering for the future.
What major trends are you forecasting in the channel market?
We are looking for new ways of working, learning, and living with technology as the enabler. In 2022 we will see; Hybrid cloud for the hybrid workforce, Edge opportunities will come into focus; Edge innovations will create urgency for Telcos to accelerate 5G and Intelligent PCs will adapt to hybrid, hyper-connected users. Dell is focused on key six strategic technologies such as Multi-cloud, Edge, 5G, AI/ML, Data Management and Cybersecurity to enable end-to-end, modern IT systems for future. Our focus on sectors like healthcare, online collaboration, education, tele-communication, and digital cities will be more now than ever. These apart, the various consumption models mentioned earlier – Flex-On-Demand, and Project APEX – will help us (and our partners) to meet customers’ expectations and address their demands in the new “as a service” world.
Are you planning any new product addition for the channel market?
Dell Technologies is investing heavily in customer and market research for not just additional technology and features that customers want, but also identifying new and emerging ways that are used to consume technology. As-a-service is an emerging trend across the board, in fact the analysts expects technology consumption as-a-service model to grow significantly faster, and we’ve launched APEX services to address the same.
APEX is a new offering on the block. We already have APEX Custom Flex-on-demand that offers custom solutions for the partners to position with their customers. We will also be launching various offerings under the APEX umbrella – APEX Cloud Services, APEX Data Storage Services, APEX Compute Services, APEX Backup Services and more. Our partners have both, a significant role to play in rollout of APEX, and an opportunity to build significantly higher profitability in doing business. We are seeing a lot of our partners already showing interest in APEX solutions and are eager to include it in their portfolio of offerings to their customers.
Is there any channel expansion plan in terms of numbers in 2022?
In technology business, change is a constant and so is expansion. With the technology adoption growing in India, our business has also grown significantly faster than the market. This has resulted in continuous growth with more partners and customers engaging with Dell Technologies.
Apart from this, we are also focusing on the new cloud-age partners. These are not the legacy brick-and-mortar partners but relatively newer, hyper-growth cloud-age partners; they are experts at understanding and delivering cloud and as-as-service offerings to the customers. We have already started engaging with some of the large partners in this segment, and we are working on big plans to replicate our success on this dimension as well. We are confident that these new-age cloud partners will help bring the next growth phase for Dell Technologies.
