After the merger of EMC Federation of companies with Dell, Dell Technologies has separate business units i.e. Dell, Dell EMC including RSA and Virtustream, Services and strategically aligned businesses – SecureWorks, Pivotal and VMware And, every BU is trying to do the integration quickly so that they can tap the maximum market share with right market programmes.
Towards the end of October, the island country of Macau had hosted Canalys APAC Channel Forum. This forum had not only showcased various products from sponsored companies but also had shown high-level discussion with the channel partners in the region. The newly formed company Dell Technologies also had its share of time to disseminate its strategy as far as Dell EMC is concerned among the visiting partners and media group.
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“We also make sure that we stay nimble and very agile because as you become big, you slowdown.”
John Byrne
President
Global Channels
DELL EMC
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“In the past when the partnership between Dell and EMC was not officially formalized, the competition had tried to lure them but our partners did not budge from their position reason being they were waiting for the compelling value proposition from the new entity.”
Ng Tian Beng
SVP & GM -APJ
Channel Business
DELL EMC
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As per the Think tank present in the event, Dell EMC channel business is US$35 billion dollars globally and it is by far the dominant player in this space globally. With Dell and EMC coming together there is a significant upsell potential for the partners because there will be multiple businesses for the partners.
John Byrne, President, Global Channels at DELL EMC said, “We want to be number one in every space with all the solutions available in one kitty.”
Ng Tian Beng, SVP & GM – APJ, Channel Business, DELL EMC, said “India is obviously high digit growth country in APJ. We are looking at three times opportunity and substantial cost saving.”
John maintains, “Dell’s PC business is growing for 15 quarters in a row. We are the fastest growing PC company. We are now No.1 in server market share. We are No.1 in work station category, which is for the first time since 2010. We are the fastest growing company in storage market. We are also No.1 in Converged and Hyper Converged infrastructure space and growing significantly.”
John added, “As far as India sales strategy is concerned, we have got enterprise and commercial sales motions. Rajesh Janey will lead the enterprise segment, which is for the large top accounts and any other accounts will be led by commercial team driven by Alok Ohrie. So both the teams would sell the whole portfolio of products including desktops, notebooks, servers and storage. This way we are covering the whole market. We will have different schemes there. We are very confident that there would be better coverage and good growth for the entire group.”
People see Dell Technologies as a significant overlap of companies because Dell has acquired so many companies over the years. However, as per the spokesperson of Dell EMC it is not true. The acquisition has brought in a lot of market opportunity for its partners and customers. As per John the good feedback from the partners is that the partner community is changing dramatically. Digital transformation and new era of IT is influencing them. So, Dell Technologies with all its product lines is an advantage, only thing the company needs to do is some customization.
John said, “I am there in this company for last one year and what I see is that Michael Dell, Chairman and CEO, Dell Technologies consistently listens to the voice of the customers. He is taking feedbacks from the CIOs in terms of their desires and their requirements for future. If a CIO wants to buy products from all division, I think we can offer them the full breadth of solutions which no one can. We being private it allows us significant flexibility.”
He emphasizes on building a Dell EMC channel as partners and distributors want them to create separate strategy. He added, “These people want Dell EMC’s own programme and initiatives. But ideally, we want partners and distributors selling multiple lines of products. We want them to be driving solutions from the products. We want to train them and create them an extension of our team. We do not want partners and distributors learning products, which are never going to sell in the market. Our product managers would like every single sales person, every single partner and every single distributor to learn about every single product. We do not want that.”
He added, “The products set we have in Dell and EMC are complementary with each other and the culture we have are similar too. Secondly, I can see that the market will consolidate and therefore, it gives significant scale to us, which the competition does not have. But we also have to make sure that we stay nimble and very agile because as you become big, you slowdown. This is my third job and it has been a year for me in this company but I can say that it is moving faster and is exciting.”
As per John, Dell EMC is looking at creating suite of services. The company is working on programme for services from sales and rebate point of view for the partners. He assures that the partner programme which will be tumbled out in February 2017, will have special provision for services business and its gratifications.
Ng Tian Beng added, “That is critical and we are working hard on designing the programme that allows us to sell services for the Asian customers too.”
John added, “Other feedback is that we have to improve our tools and processes. We are doing significant IT investment which is around US$ 23 million for this purpose. By February 1st 2017 we would have one portal with single sign in. Partners would not have to go to EMC or Dell separately anymore. There will be one portal and one deal registration. So the ultimate form of protection for the channel partner would be deal registration. We are also making our rebate programme very simple.”
Tian Beng maintained, “From the top 400 partners of EMC, 60% are already selling Dell solutions. So, when we bring two worlds together, our purpose gets solved. We want partners who sell multiple line of products. In the past when the partnership between Dell and EMC was not officially formalized, the competition had tried to lure them but our partners did not budge from their position reason being they were waiting for the compelling value proposition from the new entity.”
So, Dell EMC is making significant investment in centralizing all its programmes. Its financing model is also growing significantly.
The impact on India is that Rajesh Janey’s and Alok Ohrie’s teams will have one channel team from February 2017 catering to both enterprise and commercial customers.”
Similarly, the partner advisory boards will be one again during Apil 2017 and the company is also pondering on bringing in a global partner advisory for a bigger discussion.
John adds, “We are also talking about zero tolerance of any violation of deal registration.
Finally…
John concludes, “Dell EMC wants to be No.1 in every space– be it price point or even products. We have got 62 countries in the Asia Pacific and if you ask sales person of each country, everyone will say that we will like to grow the market – such is the potential! Both the teams for Dell and EMC have done tremendous progress in the smallest time in the global market, but there is a lot of work ahead of us. India is a definitely very big market for us.”
