Dell Intros New Products, Services, Touts Partner Strength

(Dell’s Michael Dell on stage at Dell Technologies Summit in Austin, Texas, Nov. 12.)

Dell Technologies on Tuesday rolled out PowerOne autonomous infrastructure and On Demand, a set of consumption-based, as-a-service offerings, while outlining its strategy for the coming decades.

The announcements were made during this week’s Dell Technologies Summit in Austin, Texas. This is the first time the annual event has taken place where Dell is based.

Michael Dell, Dell’s chairman and CEO, told attendees he’s proud of the last 35 years, but is focused on the next 35, and “if we fall short in any area, we fall short on all of them.” The key will be unlocking the power of data to solve society’s greatest challenges, he said.

Dell’s 2030 vision includes one-for-one recycling, women making up 50% of its global workforce, and providing access so everyone can participate in the digital economy. In addition, Dell will use digital tools to make it easier to get insights from, measure and monitor compliance issues using digital data.

And partners will continue to play a significant role in Dell’s growth and goals, he said.

“In our partner program, we had $52 billion in orders through our partners in the last year,” Dell said. “Their capabilities are always evolving, and customers are challenged by all of this. If you go to an individual customer … they need a lot of help. Partners bring a diverse set of capabilities, skills and reach to help them. We’ll develop new competencies and training to help them. They’ll be a super part of our go-to-market engine to make these solutions real.”

PowerOne integrates PowerEdge compute, PowerMax storage, PowerSwitch networking and VMware virtualization into a single system combined with a built-in intelligence engine to automate thousands of manual steps over its life cycle, according to Dell.

On Demand includes a set of consumption-based, as-a-service delivery models and services, expanding Dell’s flexible consumption portfolio to support Dell EMC PowerEdge servers and the new PowerOne autonomous infrastructure system.

Dell’s Joyce Mullen

Joyce Mullen, Dell’s president of global channel, embedded and edge solutions, tells us PowerOne will enable partners to sell more across line-of-business technologies with the potential for larger deals and margins. It also opens up the converged infrastructure opportunity to a broader partner base and those seeking an all-Dell EMC solution, she said.

“PowerOne brings together compute, storage, networking, virtualization and data protection from across the Dell Technologies portfolio,” she said. “Traditional infrastructure and reference architecture can easily take six to eight months to implement, but PowerOne can be implemented in as little as six to eight weeks, resulting in improved time to value and ROI for both partners and customers. Furthermore, PowerOne comes with a set of sales enablement and demand-generation materials to help partners sell and drive demand; these materials and more information can be found in the demand-generation center of the partner portal and the digital marketing tool.”

On Demand enables partners to provide the services and solutions that “matter the most in today’s on-demand economy,” Mullen said.

“On Demand provides partners with freedom of choice in the way they resell or consume technology to fit a customer’s budget for IT spend and move from capex to opex if needed,” she said. “It also provides flexibility in how workloads are …

… optimized to meet exacting financial and technical customer specifications. Moreover, it enables predictable outcomes by applying consistent payment solutions with transparent cost structures across our wide range of performance-optimized and secure technology solutions.”

Partners can resell products, solutions and services in the On Demand portfolio, and also will earn financial incentives, Mullen said.

“Infrastructure and services are eligible for the Dell Technologies Partner Program benefits related to solution provider, CSP+SO and systems integrator tracks. Moreover, our flagship consumption-based offering, Flex On Demand, offers a referral fee option in which the partner receives payment equal to 10% of the committed contract value. Additionally, there is a resell option for Flex On Demand in which Dell invoices the partner monthly at a base usage charge and the partner invoices their customer at their uplifted service charge, often accompanied by other value-added services. Approved partners can also add charges for their own deployments to the same invoice.”

Dell has the “same interest as its partners at heart — delivering customers with the best experience possible,” Mullen said.

Also during the conference, Shekar Ayyar, VMware‘s vice president and general manager of telco and edge cloud, and Jennifer Felch, Dell’s chief digital officer, talked about how 5G and IoT will redefine cloud computing. 5G will have a direct impact on retail, manufacturing, financial services, smart and safe cities, media and entertainment, health care and energy, Ayyar said.

5G will enable a number of new edge clouds and will extend to numerous enterprise use cases, he said.

“I see enormous opportunities [and the] opportunities for social impact are enormous,” Felch said. “I love the fact that we have the opportunity to partner across Dell Technologies … so we can all focus on what matters.”