Registered Partners

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.

In the third and final part of his series on MSPMentor, How to Fail as a Managed Service Provider, Peter Klanian discusses five more common blunders aspiring MSPs should avoid. If you've encountered any of the errors mentioned in the series, feel free to share your best practices in the comments section below.

CRN, Intel and Dell have a very informative session planned for later this week (Thursday). We have the results of Dell and Intel internal IT case studies, industry trends and metrics that all highlight a golden opportunity. During these hard economic times we have potential solution for you to offer your customers that has a quick ROI and positions them to leap frog their competitors. Now is the time for your customer to refresh their data centers and server rooms, come learn why?

In part two of his series, How to Fail as a Managed Service Provider, Peter Klanian offers the next four errors common to MSPs that reduce profit and discourage growth. Read over the common errors and join the lively conversation that is occurring on MSPMentor!

As we mentioned on Friday, Dell and CIT are offering special promotions until the end of the month for registered and qualified partners within the PartnerDirect program. To learn more about the promotion were presenting today, click on the attachment below and contact your sales rep for more details.