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VAR500: 437 of Them Work With Dell
The VAR Guy
June 4, 2009
3 Min Read
When The VAR500 (formerly VARbusiness 500) was announced recently, Dell found an interesting statistic: 437 of the solutions providers on the VAR500 list have relationships with Dell. But that’s not all. Dell Channel Chief Greg Davis shared a few more partner program milestones with The VAR Guy on June 3. Here’s the scoop.
First, a little background. The VAR500 (formerly the VARBusiness 500) tracks the largest solutions providers and is published by Everything Channel. The VAR Guy writes about everything else channel.
Back in February Dell restructured around four customer units:
Consumer
Small and midsize business
Public sector
Large enterprise
Now, the Stats
Dell’s global channel organization, headed by Davis, focuses on units 2, 3 and 4. Now, some milestones. According to Davis:
Partner Revenue: Dell partners generated 22% of the company’s commercial segment revenue in the company’s most recent quarter. Not a huge percentage compared to channel giants like Microsoft and Cisco — but certainly a significant figure, considering Dell is a multi-billion dollar organization.
Registered Partners: Dell is approaching 50,000 registered partners worldwide, and about 18,000 of them are in North America.
Certified Partners: Nearly 630 partners in the US are certified in at least one of three channel programs: Enterprise architecture, managed services and federal. Worldwide, that figure is 1500 certified partners, and Dell wants to double its certified partner ranks this year.
Managed Services: In the managed services space, 147 partners are certified partners in the US. Dell announced a ProManaged-Managed Services program back in April 2009. Yes, the program involves Dell selling managed services direct across North America. But it also includes an agent reseller option, and Davis insists that Dell’s direct managed services offering has not slowed MSP interest in the company’s managed services options.
Server Distribution: Davis once again confirmed that Dell plans to offer servers through Ingram Micro and Tech Data. “We’re certainly working on that and you’ll see it soon,” he offered. However, Davis says Dell and its distribution partners purposely started their relationships by focusing on a select group of products to ensure all the right business processes were in place.
Revenue Opportunities: In terms of hot markets, Davis reinforced recent statements by saying Dell’s most successful partners are focusing on a select number of integrated solutions, such as backup and recovery, virtualized server farms, security, and mobility in the K-8 education market.
Dell’s Views On Cisco
The VAR Guy is at Cisco Partner Summit in Boston, where Cisco has spent much of the week attacking the HP-Microsoft unified communications partnership. And Cisco channel leaders are rallying partners to sell against HP.
With that context in mind, The VAR Guy asked Davis if Dell expects to compete or cooperate with Cisco, which is pushing deeper into the server market via the unified computing system strategy.
Davis didn’t take the bait. “I look at it as I’m s taying very focused on creating solutions and product offerings that meet the needs of solution provider partners. Many of them are Cisco partners. Fundamentally, we believe our servers, blades and EqualLogic storage are a great fit for customers who have Cisco routers,” said Davis.
The VAR Guy certainly isn’t suggesting that Dell’s channel program is perfect. From time to time, our resident blogger hears from VARs that want to speak with Davis about an issue or potential conflict. But overall, those partner concerns seem to be fewer and farther between…
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