Dell EMC Focused On Helping Partners with Clients' Digital Transformation

(Pictured above: Dell EMC’s Jeff Clarke on stage at Dell Technologies World, May 1.)

DELL TECHNOLOGIES WORLD — Dell EMC Tuesday unveiled its latest offerings designed to power what it calls the modern data center, and to help customers achieve their IT, security and workforce transformations.

The company made the announcements during this week’s Dell Technologies World in Las Vegas. More than 14,000 partners and customers are attending the conference, as well as the adjacent Global Partner Summit 2018.

Jeff Clarke, Dell EMC’s vice chairman of products and operations, said it all comes down to helping customers deal with the massive increase in data they will be receiving in the coming years, including managing, analyzing, storing and protecting it.

“It’s all about your data, and certainly more is on the way,” he said. “How do you turn that data into information to drive better outcomes?”

A number of the technology trends powering digital transformation include immersive and collaborative computing, new ways to work, a modern PC experience for the modern workforce; the internet of things (IoT), software-defined “everything,” and artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, Clarke said.

“So when I think about all of that and all of the devices coming, we will need more technology to help customers deal with all of this data,” he said.

Dell EMC unveiled new storage and server technologies, hyperconverged infrastructure and cloud offerings. Dell and Dell EMC will provide AI, machine learning and deep-learning capabilities from the desktop to the data center.

In addition, Dell EMC gave a sneak peek of its new PowerEdge MX modular infrastructure, with more information to come later this year.

Also, Virtustream, a Dell Technologies company, launched the next generation of its its risk management and continuous compliance monitoring solution. It also unveiled the Virtual Cloud Network with new VMware NSX networking and security portfolio.

“I think it’s a huge opportunity for us to collaborate with our partners and extend the Dell brand, to extend Dell Technologies’ reach into a broader set of customers to help them solve their IT transformation/digital transformation, and we’re excited about that opportunity,” Clarke said.

Dell EMC’s Joyce Mullen on stage at Dell Technologies World, May 1.

Partner feedback has been “overwhelmingly positive that we are highlighting the right things that are shaping our industry, which is shaping our road map and is what our customers are asking for,” he said.

“They were very excited to see us respond,” Clarke said. “In fact, I announced our ReadyStack solution that is a channel-exclusive offer that is for the converged space, and it was received overwhelmingly positive[ly].”

Joyce Mullen, Dell EMC’s president of global channel, OEM and IoT, said partners are “really leaning” into these new technologies. earning more than 100,000 credentials. She also said that, based on revenue, Dell EMC’s channel business is bigger than …

… McDonald’s, Starbucks, Nike, Facebook and other big names.

“We have an unbelievable portfolio of assets and brands, and our aim here is to figure out how to make it easier for our partners to transact across all of these brands,” she said. “We’re going to reward them when they pull these solutions together.”

In the Solutions Expo, Dell EMC executives talked to Channel Partners about growth and new opportunities in Dell EMC Global Alliances, which includes SIs, outsourcers, telcos, cloud service providers and industries. Global Alliances grew 28 percent year over year, which translates to $9.3 billion in overarching revenue to Dell Technologies.

“We’re addressing those partners that are on the upper echelon dealing with our customers at the line-of-business level,” said Scott Sherman, Global Alliances’ director of sales strategy. “One of the things that we’re really doubling down on … is what we call our Cloud Partner Connect program. That’s where we marry up all of our channel programs with our cloud service providers. Our channel program is huge, but they’re also encountering the situation of their clients wanting off-premises cloud, too … so we bring those two together.”

Mullen also said Dell EMC’s OEMs encompass a rapidly growing area of business. This is a $110 billion market, growing at compound annual growth rate of 12 percent, she said.

“But there are miles to go in this business,” she said. “We use this as the tip of the spear to expand our IoT business. It’s a natural extension to take what we’ve learned from OEM and apply it to the wild, wild world of IoT.”