Dell UK&I Channel Update: Top IT Talking Points
Among them: Seize opportunities with Apex. And supply challenges are affecting the channel.
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Dell Technologies announced Apex, it’s “as-a-service” offering in May, enabling customers to procure infrastructure like cloud services.
“Over the last few years, channel partners’ customers have been navigating towards public cloud,” said Rob Tomlin, VP of channels for Dell UK&I. “They’ve liked its ability to flex and to transition workloads quickly. However, once customers have had an initial positive experience, they then see the unpredictability of public cloud bills and the requirements for SLAs.”
Meanwhile, Dayne Turbitt, general manager at Dell UK, maintained that Apex seeks to resolve the problems traditionally associated with moving to the cloud.
“I think the biggest barrier is applications being run cost-effectively in the cloud,” he said. “We’re seeing a lot of environments where the board has said, ‘Right, let’s go to cloud.’ But once you look at all the interdependencies in an organisation, it’s not that easy to lift and shift and put it somewhere else. So, that latency slows things down.
“[That] has really opened an opportunity for organisations like us to look at bringing cloud to you, rather than bring you to the cloud.”
Turbitt said Apex is Dell “taking the best of public cloud and combining it with what is reality today in your datacenter.”
Tomlin said the opportunity for partners around Apex is to give customers the hybrid experience they are asking for.
“It’s to take them on a journey where their customers can still have public cloud. But to give them the predictability and security of a hybrid approach.
“And from the partners’ perspective, that gives a great services opportunity. [They] can wrap all the services around enabling the customer to move to public, but actually give them that predictability and security. Of course as they go forward, they can help customers navigate all the challenges they’ve got.”
Tomlin said Dell is now working with MSPs and resellers on a resale consumption model.
“The partner is able to resell the consumption model to the customer while wrapping all of their services around it. And let’s be let’s be realistic. If the partner is selling public cloud, they really don’t make a lot of money on the actual infrastructure as a service (IaaS). The money they make is in the services. We think we’ve got a nice blend of partners able to give their customers a great solution and make a good return on investment, on the margin they make. And also limit their risk and make themselves asset-light to a degree, as they go forward.”
Following the launch of Apex, Michael Dell said that everything as a service opens a new chapter for the company. However, there has still been no slowdown in demand for hardware, which surged during the pandemic.
“I’ve been waiting for the market to slow down. But if I look at this year, it hasn’t,” said Turbitt. “We continue to see record growth in the PC space.”
Turbitt attributed that to several things.
“Last year there was a call for ‘get me a laptop or get me anything that’s mobile so I can work from home.’” However, now, he said, “We’ve now moved from the ‘do it quick’ to ‘do it right.’” This is continuing to create demand for laptops and PCs from partners.
Similarly, Turbitt said Dell was seeing a surge in demand for peripherals. He said some people have spent 15 months “staring at a 13-inch monitor hunched over their desk.” They likely now need a proper monitor, webcam or other peripherals.
He also said as COVID-19 restrictions lift, employees “will be coming back to kit that’s now two years old. Most corporations run their assets between a three- and a five-year lifespan. Some of those assets will now be seven years old. So there will probably be a wave of refresh, based on how we work, but also the age of the equipment.”
Reflecting some partners’ opinions, Turbitt believes “the pandemic masks Brexit.”
“We were so busy focused on ‘how do we survive?’ we weren’t really that worried about trade with Europe,” he said.
“From a UK economy perspective, we have seen some clients divert their requirements to European locations. I wouldn’t say that’s been material in our business. But there’s definitely this concept of building back better. There [are fewer] conversations around, ‘do I outsource?’ now to ‘what capabilities do I need onshore?’ ‘What technology am I going to adopt to enable those capabilities? Because I don’t have the access to low-cost resources that I might have outsourced to.’
“It’s forming an interesting conversation which presents both opportunities and threats,” he added.
Turbitt said he is optimistic the UK will find its way through Brexit.
“You will get an economic levelling. [In the UK] we have the best in the world when it comes to startup innovation data science. That will come to the fore, as you’ve seen with the genome sequencing and the AstraZeneca Oxford partnership. I think that will definitely be accelerated.”
Similarly, Turbitt addressed the current supply challenges hitting the tech industry, and its impact on the channel.
He said Dell was fortunate to have “one of the best supplier relationships in the IT industry, given our size.” He added that given its broad portfolio, Dell was “doing our best to leverage that supply chain for the benefit of our clients.”
However, there is no avoiding the shortages.
“Those shortages right now are down to the micro component level. Literally down to the raw materials to make the micro components.
“And this is very acute for us, because we’re doing a lot of work with the [UK] government around providing laptops to kids for education. Literally, they need to enable 1.4 million kids to work from home. You can’t get 1.4 million laptops if you tried.
“We’re actively working through that. But I think we’re going to suffer supply challenges, as an industry for at least the next six months.”
Despite this, Turbitt said again he was optimistic.
“It’s not a question of ‘what problems will the tech industry have?’ It’s more around, ‘how do we bring the tech industry to bear to solve some more societal or business problems?’ So I’m quite optimistic about that.
“The feedback I get from our partners during this period is that Dell has been a consistent and reliable partner. [We] leverage a world-class supply chain to keep our distributors stocked. And we continue to do that, even though we know we’re going to have supply challenges to the end of the year. We strategically work to ensure that Dell has products on the shelf to satisfy its customers,” added Tomlin.
Similarly, Turbitt addressed the current supply challenges hitting the tech industry, and its impact on the channel.
He said Dell was fortunate to have “one of the best supplier relationships in the IT industry, given our size.” He added that given its broad portfolio, Dell was “doing our best to leverage that supply chain for the benefit of our clients.”
However, there is no avoiding the shortages.
“Those shortages right now are down to the micro component level. Literally down to the raw materials to make the micro components.
“And this is very acute for us, because we’re doing a lot of work with the [UK] government around providing laptops to kids for education. Literally, they need to enable 1.4 million kids to work from home. You can’t get 1.4 million laptops if you tried.
“We’re actively working through that. But I think we’re going to suffer supply challenges, as an industry for at least the next six months.”
Despite this, Turbitt said again he was optimistic.
“It’s not a question of ‘what problems will the tech industry have?’ It’s more around, ‘how do we bring the tech industry to bear to solve some more societal or business problems?’ So I’m quite optimistic about that.
“The feedback I get from our partners during this period is that Dell has been a consistent and reliable partner. [We] leverage a world-class supply chain to keep our distributors stocked. And we continue to do that, even though we know we’re going to have supply challenges to the end of the year. We strategically work to ensure that Dell has products on the shelf to satisfy its customers,” added Tomlin.
Dell’s Rob Tomlin
Dell Technologies’ worldwide channel business is now worth more than $54 billion. As Rob Tomlin, VP of channels for Dell UK&I puts it, “Our channel business continues at pace.”
“Through the pandemic,” Tomlin said, “the way we work together continues to be fantastic. Our channel partners have been really resilient and enabled Dell to deliver to our joint customers.”
Dell’s Dayne Turbitt
In the slideshow above, Tomlin and Dayne Turbitt, general manager at Dell UK, explain the challenges and opportunities facing the channel. They also reveal the partner opportunity around Dell’s new as-a-service offering, Apex, which goes head-to-head with the public cloud.
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