Dell Channel Leader Cheryl Cook Touts 'Outpacing' Lenovo, HP
She also weighed in on the big Synnex-Tech Data merger.
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Cook thanked partners for a record financial year in 2020. Dell’s full-year revenue was a record $94.2 billion, up 2% over the previous year. The company also generated record operating income of $5.1 billion, a 96% increase over the prior year, and non-GAAP operating income of $10.8 billion, up 6%.
Dell’s channel is worth $52 billion in orders, and is now more than half the company’s revenue, said Cook.
“Record revenue, record margin, record units shipped, the most PCs shipped ever, server growth, market share gains, just incredible results. We’re grateful, we’re humbled, we’re pleased,” said Cook.
Cook acknowledged the success of the partners helping their customers establish new remote workforces during the pandemic.
“I couldn’t be more proud of how we collectively showed up. It was just ‘focus on the customer’; they all needed help as the world pivoted. And we clearly benefited from the opportunity it created around client solutions demand. Our partners are uniquely well positioned and were there to help serve our customers. For that we’re very grateful.”
Dell’s client devices business grew 23% in the channel in the fourth quarter, and up 7% for the year. In Q4, its Client Solutions Group grew 19% faster than the rest of the market.
Cook believes the demand for devices will continue as we slowly ease out of the pandemic.
“There’s going to be this necessity to change from a desktop to a notebook, or refresh and update the device because of current software needs. I think the horizon for demand and growth [will] continue, at least to the first half of the year.”
Cook says Dell beat its rivals when it came to getting those devices into customers’ hands.
“Lenovo, HP and Dell are the three horsemen that are really running in that race. We grew materially faster than the other two competitors, but we did it with our partners,” said Cook.
“[The channel is] a meaningful, material part of our go-to-market and has been outpacing the competition for some time. We’re really pretty delighted with the overall engagement.”
Cook also believes there isn’t another competitor that has the breadth and range of capabilities and technology that Dell has.
“Partners are really … realizing the opportunity of the upsell and cross-sell opportunity across our multiple lines of business,” she said. “We find partners that sell multiple lines of business of Dell, and sell VMware, grow 130 times faster than partners that just sell one line of business.”
Dell last week announced it was expanding incentives and rebates on its midrange storage portfolio. Partners selling eligible PowerStore or PowerScale products with approved deal registration will get an increased front-end discount. It aims to provide an average 20 points in addition to standard eligible storage and acquisition back-end rebates.
Cook says its midrange storage portfolio “addresses a sweet spot in the market,” adding PowerStore is the fastest growing product in Dell’s history, outselling even VxRail.
“[It’s] locking arms and really sharing in those incentives so that [partners] can continue to lean in and grow aggressively.”
Last week VMware announced new incentives that move away from transactional rewards to focus on the entire customer life cycle. Cook said we might expect similar with Project Apex, Dell’s as-a-service model.
“When you look at the scale of both companies, we are going to see multiple business models coexist for some time. We’re at one of those pivotal transformative times in the industry where one size doesn’t fit everybody.
“We’re going to make sure partners can serve and support the customer in the best way that meets their needs.”
The channel exec talked about the importance of distribution to Dell’s go to market strategy.
“[Distributors are] vital. They’re very strategic partners of ours, and growing faster, candidly. They help us ramp and grow partners to promote through the metal tiers within our program. They help us achieve kind of these transformative solutions between what we’re doing now and as we move to as-a-service. I think they’ll continue to be an important part of our ecosystem.”
On the heels of the Synnex-Tech Data merger announcement, Cook stressed Dell’s relationship with the two distributors.
“We have a strong and robust relationship with Tech Data, [and] we have worked with Synnex in the past. So, I think this natural consolidation in the industry is going to probably continue and we’ll be delighted to continue to work with them.”
The channel exec talked about the importance of distribution to Dell’s go to market strategy.
“[Distributors are] vital. They’re very strategic partners of ours, and growing faster, candidly. They help us ramp and grow partners to promote through the metal tiers within our program. They help us achieve kind of these transformative solutions between what we’re doing now and as we move to as-a-service. I think they’ll continue to be an important part of our ecosystem.”
On the heels of the Synnex-Tech Data merger announcement, Cook stressed Dell’s relationship with the two distributors.
“We have a strong and robust relationship with Tech Data, [and] we have worked with Synnex in the past. So, I think this natural consolidation in the industry is going to probably continue and we’ll be delighted to continue to work with them.”
Channel Futures recently chatted with Cheryl Cook, SVP, global partner, embedded and edge solution marketing at Dell Technologies.
Dell’s Cheryl Cook
Here we lay out what we learned about the company’s record-breaking year and its channel incentive updates. Also, Cook’s thoughts on the Tech Data-Synnex merger and how Dell views the competition.
Read the six big takeaways from our discussion with Cook in the slideshow above.
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