What tech trends do you foresee for 2019 that are going to influence the channel market?
Multi-cloud and hybrid cloud could definitely be in the top trends, as we see organizations not adhering just to AWS, but rather moving away and trying for new opportunities.
Mutli-cloud, as in not holding on to one open cloud supplier, but rather moving between various ones. A hybrid cloud, as in just not putting it on open but rather moving between open cloud and on commence. We would need clients to utilize VMWare as the control to move the remaining workload between various clouds and furthermore among open and private too.
People have been for long opposing this change but there have recently been multiple announcements and affirmation to this big trend. In the hope of bigger and prevalent world of hybrid cloud, Dell, for many years has been predicting this to accelerate further and provide relevant services to its clients.
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“As per Dell’s 2019 predictions, the industry will experience a wave of new start-ups to make AI a reality and the launch of 5G enabled devices with next-generation network capabilities.”
Anil Sethi
Vice President
Channels at Dell EMC
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What are the predicted business climate for Indian enterprises this year which will enable to growth of technology adoption?
As per Dell’s 2019 prediction, the coming year will be a lot more about data driving a number of technology trends and turning the emerging technologies into more mainstream experiences for everyday life. Data gold mine will spark the next “Gold Rush” in tech investments with insights driving new innovations and more efficient business processes. New start-ups will emerge to tackle the bigger challenges that make AI a reality. The year will also experience the launch of 5G devices with more data game in terms of speed and accessibility. With new innovations and trends coming up, the Data forecast will call for more cloud based technology such as multi-cloud and hybrid clouds. Multi-cloud environments will drive automation, AI and Machine Learning processing into high gear because they give organizations the ability to manage, move and process data as and when they need to.
What specific opportunities exist in the India market for Dell EMC and its channel partners?
Dell EMC has observed that India’s rate of adoption in emerging technologies is increasing rapidly, with the entire region playing a significant role in driving much of the digital adoption. There is a real push for businesses to accelerate their digital transformation plans with emerging technologies such as AI, IoT, robotics, virtual reality, augmented reality, and cloud computing, in order to remain competitive. As per Dell’s 2019 predictions, the industry will experience a wave of new start-ups to make AI a reality and the launch of 5G enabled devices with next-generation network capabilities. The digital transformation is set to change the face of Indian industry and business have already taken a step towards the transformation. In a study by Dell, 91% of Indian business leaders believe that digital transformation should be more widespread throughout the organization and 61% of Indian business are developing in-house expertise and security into all the devices.
In one of our recent report, ‘Realising 2030: A Divided Vision of the Future’, the company has also found out that a majority of businesses in the region are working towards transforming their businesses with technology at its core. Sensing this, Dell EMC is well ahead in preparing its India partners as well as those from other markets in this region, so that they can solve their customers’ complex digital challenges. The channel partners can use emerging technologies like sing AI to pre-empt customer demands; delivering hyper-connected customer experiences through VR; using R&D to drive their entire organisation forward; completing their transition to a software-defined business and delivering their product offering as a service.
How is Dell EMC enabling channels to accelerate their business over 2019?
It is important for a partner to participate in the emerging government led projects — be it digital India or smart cities. Learning the new ways with a strong capital will be the two ‘must-have’ eligibility for partners to be part of this drive. Training and building capabilities of partners will be the core focus of Dell EMC India. The objective is to ensure three things simplicity, predictability and profitability on which our programs are based. For reducing the go-to-market time for customers, it has specialized resources that can help partners to configure faster.
We have specialized teams in all the core areas, be it storage, compute, network followed by Smart Pricing concept. We have an Insight Engine that does a great job. Through our MDF (Market Development Fund), partners are now involved in the demand generation exercise. Instead of passing leads to them, we provide them with funds and want them to provide returns on investment here. It’s all about execution now after having put in place the strategy along with our channel partners. We really want our partners to make the transformation from just being a hardware reseller to reselling solutions that meet business objectives. They may not be able to move 100 percent in quick time but they can at least start the journey.
What is Dell EMC’s strategy for non-hardware partners inclined towards software and services for technologies like HCI, cloud and virtualization?
Honestly, there will be a convergence in the new world. There will be some new partners who have started their business from the native clouds and they are converging down, while obviously, there is another spectrum where partners who started out in hardware, are now moving into the clouds.
In emerging countries like India, many channels tend to be more infrastructure focused. Hence, there is a dire need for partners to move from being a pure infra selling company to transform themselves to address new trends of multi-cloud, hybrid cloud and consumption model.
Tell us about some of the forthcoming Dell EMC innovation for 2019 which would influence the market?
The biggest trend that Dell EMC sees is the cloud getting mature as a technology and becoming a stable revenue stream for customers. I believe organizations are now moving towards technologies like multi-cloud and hybrid clouds and that’s where Dell EMC’s business focus would be for 2019. Companies are beginning to move their workload both across the different public clouds and from public to private which is one of the biggest trend happening now. The other big trend happening in terms of technology is hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) which continues to grow very rapidly. In fact, recently when Dell announced its Q3 earning results, we shared that we shipped over a billion-dollars’ worth of VXrail since we launched and it has grown triple digit last year. The message to partners is how they can add great value at the customer end as new models and changed buying methods evolve faster. We believe around 50 per cent of the traditional way of buying IT infra will change and channels need to shift gears to fulfil these needs.
How DELL EMC channel programme would look like this year?
Channel partners, system integrators and distributors have played a critical role in empowering Dell EMC’s customers on their path towards digital transformation. The Dell EMC Partner Program has been instrumental in ensuring profitability and scale for all our partners in India and across the globe. We believe that the partner program will further catalyse our go-to-market strategy and business growth. We are committed to become the industry’s most trusted advisor to our customers. Our portfolio is well equipped on both sides of infrastructure with desktops, notebooks, server, storage and other assets within Dell Technologies family like VMWare, Pivotal. This comprehensive portfolio helps in meeting the business outcome when we sell to a line of business.
Will there be any specific technologies that the channel partners should invest in terms of certification, resources and capacity building of any kind?
Dell has continuously focused on emerging technologies and innovations to bring in the maximum growth for its channel partners. Some of the top technologies that will be in the focus for 2019 are multi-cloud, hybrid cloud where companies are considering both for a rather robust data storage. Apart from the obvious technologies like artificial intelligence and virtual reality, software defined everything (SDx) and hyper converged infrastructure (HCI) also will be amongst the focused technologies.
