Partner Direct Events

This week we announced the Enterprise Architecture Partner of the Year Awards (Note:  Login to the Partner Portal before linking to read the announcement). Congratulations to the winners:  (National) GreenPages, Open Storage Solutions and Nviron and (Regional) Corporate IT Solutions, Syscom Technologies, Keep IT Simple, Eagle Software and OPUS Consulting Group.

Looking back at the nomination award forms, I see a number of common threads.  First, these partners lead with Dell solutions to their customers, solving their critical business challenges using a consultative approach from needs assessment right through to planning and deployment. Second, despite encountering initial bumps in the PartnerDirect program road and challenges engaging with the Dell direct account team, these Partners persevered by staying the course – building relationships across all the Dell lines of business and customer segments and by figuring out how to best work together with the Dell Channel and direct account teams teams to grow their businesses.  And, third, these Partners fully utilize Dell Certified Partner resources by participating in Dell training programs, holding lead generation, tradeshow, and solutions events, scheduling Call Blitz Days, and passing along incentive and promotion opportunities.  In some cases, this level of engagement has earned Partners significant--even high double-digit growth year over year.

Having personally called each of these Partners to notify them of the award, I can tell you they were all very excited to be a “Partner of the Year” and looking forward to leveraging this recognition in their marketing efforts and in the press.  Even more important, the awards are just one more way they’ve been rewarded for their willingness to work through challenges with us and take advantage of the Dell brand and market share opportunities.  That’s the secret in the sauce.

Yesterday, we had a live webinar for our PartnerDirect partners designed to provide ideas and guidance on how to drive more virtualization business with your customers.

Three things you will learn more about during the webinar include:

· How to help your customers achieve an 8 month ROI on server consolidation

· How to leverage virtualization to increase availability and faster recovery when/if disruptions occur.

· How to deploy servers 43% faster than previously possible

Dell is working hard to demystify the complexity associated with virtualization. This webinar will talk through how and what we are doing to make that possible. Here is the archived recording to watch when you get a chance.

Today, Dell announced the availability of new servers, storage and virtualization solutions for you to offer your customers.

Building on our Efficient Enterprise launch back on March 30th, Dell today announced the expansion from those first five server platforms and the PS6000 Series iSCSI storage array with three more server platforms and the introduction of our new PS4000 Series iSCSI storage array.

Our new Dell EqualLogic PS4000 Series arrays offers all the great features and capabilities of our EqualLogic PS6000 but scaled down so it's in the "sweet-spot" for your small, medium business customer needs or for larger customers looking to compliment their existing PS6000 deployment with a remote, branch office storage array solution.

Meanwhile, our 11^th Generation of PowerEdge servers are joined by the latest additions

• T410 is designed for robust performance and flexibility for growing businesses and remote sites in a tower form factor.
• T710 is designed for high performance and capacity for server consolidation and virtualization in a tower or 5U rack mountable form factor.
• R410 is designed to be the most versatile rack server, with high performance and high value in a compact rack form factor for all business applications.

All three servers offer the industry’s only “instant-on” embedded systems management that simplifies deployment and management while being powered by the new Intel Xeon 5500 Series processors.

Finally, Dell announced a variety of virtualization oriented features, capabilities and enablement deliverables including engineering validated reference architectures. To learn more about these new virtualization, server and storage capabilities please register for either this Friday’s PS4000 Webinar or Monday’s Virtualization webinar called “Dell Virtualization: Simplifying the Path to Profit” for PartnerDirect registered and certified partners.

Update 6-24-08: In this short vlog Sean Phelan of Dell PartnerDirect talks with OuterNet President Dan McDougal about the latest 11G products and services.

About a week ago Dell Channel Group held several webinars where they shared the secrets to selling business laptops in this increasingly mobile and competitive world. While some of it sounded like “selling 101” (know your customer’s needs before you start selling), it did do a nice job of breaking the conversation down to six big ideas which any channel partner can use. It is pretty easy to sell a laptop, but selling the idea and strategy behind mobility is a lot different. Selling laptops lead to sales. Selling mobility leads to deep relationships, sales of hardware, and services. At the risk of oversimplification, here they are:

1. Find out what your customers are trying to accomplish: If they are battling IT complexity, make sure you sell those laptops with strong & centralized remote management features and security. If they are trying to manage costs, the answer is the same – laptops with embedded remote & centralized management tools lower the total cost of ownership.

2. Determine how laptops are being used: The usage environment says a lot about the type of laptop needed. A really mobile workforce requires lighter or more rugged laptops with advanced wireless, networking, and remote management capabilities. High performance use requires mobile workstations – not necessarily the lightest but certainly the most powerful. Standard office performance or limited mobility really points to small business laptops.

3. Assess what their IT environment looks like: High-end applications, centralized management, and flawless reliability & support really point to enterprise-class laptops (Latitude, Precision, and OptiPlex). Simple or non-standard environments call for small business laptops (Vostro), where most management is done at the laptop. And if the customer doesn’t have a centralized security or storage environment, there are great opportunities for partner services to standardize and protect.

4. Determine their level of understanding about laptops: Some customers will see a laptop as a critical element in a strategy to increase worker productivity. These are the ones that will be willing to pay for the features and support needed to protect and management them. Other customers see laptops as a way to un-tether people from their desks. These are the ones that are looking for more basic wireless and security features that are managed on the laptop (finger print readers, disk encryption, Wi-Fi catcher, etc.).

5. Assess their level of sophistication: Complex networks and more complex applications require business models like Dell Latitude laptops and Dell Precision Mobile Workstations. These models are specifically made for these types of uses. Simple networks and standard business applications require models like Vostro laptops & desktops or OptiPlex desktops.

6. Find out what they want to do themselves: This is both a hardware fit and services fit for the channel partner. The more your customers want your assistance – from simple deployment to managed services – the more you have an opportunity to sell services. More importantly, these kinds of services often provide visibility into the customer IT infrastructure, which can lead to even more opportunity.

Dell laptops come with the kinds of tools and features that allow a channel partner to deliver what their customer’s need, everything from self-managed laptops to enterprise-class ones with embedded remote management features. The replay of the webinar is available here, and it is certainly worth a listen. And Registered channel partners also have access to Dell’s Guide to Selling Laptops, Desktops, and Workstations, which can be found here, or you can look at the Easy Matrix Partner Tool here.

So in this environment, anyone can sell a laptop. The market wants them. But selling mobility can lead to much deeper relationships with customers that solves bigger issues that just the price of the box. If you want to see more of this kind of thing, let use know.

This week I have been attending the ChannelExpo 2009 show in Birmingham, UK. The show had a great turn out and for me was an ideal opportunity to meet with partners, customers and members of the UK IT trade press at our Dell stand.

For Dell, the event marked 16 eventful months in the channel. Reflecting on this opening period and what we’ve learnt was the focus of my keynote speech in the seminar theatre on the first day.  Talking with existing and prospective partners encouraged me that we are making the right enhancements to PartnerDirect.  We now have over 17,000 partners across EMEA and our channel business is worth $11bn worldwide.

One of the key things we have taken from the last year is the value of feedback from partners in developing the programme.  This is why we created the Partner Advisory Councils (having just held our second one last month in London and attended by Michael Dell). Without partner input we genuinely would not have got to where we are now, and have the planned enhancements for the next 12 months.

Our recent company re-organisation is another enhancement allowing us to integrate our partners and business segments. The channel is now woven into everything we do.  This combined with the changes to internal processes that encourage and reward our internal teams working with the channel means we are continuously evolving. The initial concerns the partner community had towards Dell’s commitment to wholeheartedly adopting a channel model are disappearing rapidly.

Our partners are evolving too.  Charles Darwin is often misquoted as saying “survival of the fittest”. What he actually said was the species most responsive to change are the ones that survive. This is happening across our eco-system too, as partners move from broad coverage to specialisation in services and vertical solutions.

This clear differentiation is something we are striving for in our partners and our PartnerDirect programme – the desire to stand out above the rest.  Dell is committed to becoming the No.1 partner rated programme through listening, engaging and enabling our partners to lead with Dell.

The year ahead is set to be a challenging one for the whole industry as we work through the world economic crisis. However, I’m confident that our partners are accepting the challenge in the right way by adapting and evolving how they work with their customers, in the same way that we are evolving the programme that serves them.