Storage Is Dell EMC’s Year-End Push for Partners

Dell EMC is closing out 2018 with a big push for partners to sell storage, services, and acquire new customers, fattening the coffers for those who heed the call. 

In an online Dell EMC partner broadcast that paraded some of the vendor’s top channel executives across a virtual stage, the company laid out its priorities for the last few months of 2018, including updates on program tracks, OEM, IoT, global alliances, and updates on other initiatives, such as ease of doing business, program strategies, storage initiatives and marketing. 

“Today, we’re delivering on our commitments to be simple, predictable and profitable, and, as always, we’re going to talk about how you can make more money and grow your businesses and what you can expect from us in the coming months,” said Joyce Mullen, president, global channel, OEM and IoT solutions at Dell EMC, who kicked off and hosted the partner broadcast. 

Joyce Mullen

Joyce Mullen

Partners account for more than half of Dell EMC revenue. 

Wednesday’s broadcast touched on the five components of the Dell EMC Partner Preferred Program: coverage model, joint account planning, competitive pricing, compensation protection, and earned partner of record. 

It was Marius Hass, president and chief commercial officer at Dell Technologies, who homed in on the priority to boost the company’s storage and data-protection product sales. The vendor has a 30 percent market share in storage, but it wants more and is incentivizing partners through it’s Partner Preferred Program and DP4400 Acceleration Program. The DP4400 is an integrated data protection appliance. 

The Enterprise Preferred Program, introduced in August, is being expanded by opening 20,000 commercial preferred white-space accounts, offering more competitive pricing and new acquisition/deal registration with an incremental discount. Dell EMC is also improving its line-of-business incumbency program, offering an earned-partner-of-record model for formal protection to partners who earn new data-center business by selling storage.

“All storage deals that we find in that account will go to through you. And where we don’t have a server and networking business, that business will go to you too,” said Mullen. 

The DP4400 Accelerator Program for partners offers dedicated resources, training and enablement, competitive pricing and compensation, said Scott Millard, vice president, global channel specialty sales. 

Mullen gave an update on the previously announced Dell Technologies Advantage framework for partners who sell across the entire Dell Technologies portfolio, which will kick off soon with select partners. The program will be expanded to include more partners next year and is expected to be fully operational in fiscal year 2021.

The vendor introduced its first co-skill certification badges that bring together Dell EMC proven professional and VMware certified professional certifications. Today, the badges are for individual administration and design capabilities across converged and hybrid cloud. Expect to see services implementation and deployment badges across the Dell Technologies portfolio. 

Mullen also addressed the company’s rules of engagement. She noted that while Dell EMC has made substantial improvements to the rules over the past couple of years, its processes weren’t strong enough and executives didn’t get the visibility they needed to make good choices. 

That’s changing. Going forward, regional presidents and Mullen will drive the process. 

“Violations, which are pretty rare, by the way, are being reviewed and offenders are being held accountable,” Mullen said.

She also noted that company will measure the effectiveness of the latest actions.

“Rules are rules and we take them very seriously,” she said.