Partner Direct Community

I recently discovered a LinkedIn group called Channel Management Experts, which is quickly becoming one of my favorite resources for staying up-to-date on important channel issues. In fact, the group has discussions almost daily that leave me wondering, what would our Dell partners think? For example, Channel Maven blogger, Heather K. Margolis, sparked a great discussion about incentive programs for channel partners a few weeks ago, and I hope you will weigh in on the topic here.

Group members had varied perspectives on the topic of incentive programs, and the general consensus seemed to be that there is no single solution that will fit every partner. As member Ravi A. commented, the channel has evolved over the past two years. Earlier partners participated in any incentive program to receive recognition and improve their bottom line. Fast-forward to the present and channel partners seem to care more about pricing advantages than prestige.

Some group members chimed in, saying that depending on the purpose of the incentive programs, it might make sense to offer them. Others are flatly against any incentive. Instead, they want vendors to focus their time on improving products, building better demonstration tools or creating partner sites.

So, what do you think? Are incentive programs of value to you?

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?

Dell’s Certified Partner, The I.T. Pros, landed on MSP Mentor’s second annual top 100 MSP report this week. The report distinguishes and identifies the world’s most progressive managed service providers.

"The I.T. Pros is very pleased to be ranked with one hundred of the top MSP’s in the World," said Doug Ford, President of The I.T. Pros. "As a Dell Certified Managed Service Partner we’ve leveraged the tools and resources available from Dell to launch our managed service practice into overdrive. Growing at a rate of over 100% annually since 2001 we are strategically positioned to make a big impact in the SMB marketplace in 2009 by helping small businesses survive a failing economy by doing more with less."

Doug’s enthusiasm and savvy, no doubt led to this outstanding recognition. We’ll continue to hear more from Doug and his team on the Dell Channel Blog and you can also find Doug on Twitter, @dougford99. You can contact The I.T. Pros at http://www.theitpros.net/ for more information on their company and services.

I’d also like to recognize Joe Panettieri for his hard work and coverage of the MSP industry. He realizes the potential of MSPs as well as the tremendous growth that’s occurring in managed services revenue. For those interested in learning more about MSPMentor, visit the site at http://www.mspmentor.net and you can find the full report at http://www.mspmentor.net/resource-center/

It’s now a year since we launched PartnerDirect in Europe and the first thing we would like to do is thank all of our partners who have contributed to the success of the program in the first twelve months. When we launched PartnerDirect we were responding in part to demand from customers who wanted more choice in the way they could purchase Dell technology, and also to feedback from resellers who were keen to engage with Dell in a structured way.

On February 12, 2008, when we launched PartnerDirect in Europe, we were already conducting business with 30,000 resellers worldwide and had approximately $9 billion in Dell annual run-rate revenue globally. PartnerDirect formalised our existing channel initiatives, and was built based on feedback from thousands of solution providers.

We starting operating with some skepticism from the channel and the media, but our success over the last twelve months is a testament to the fact that we have fulfilled the promises we made to our partners when PartnerDirect was first announced. In Europe, we now have over 15,000 partners on board in nineteen countries. Globally, we have over 35,000 registered partners, who can access the portal in 19 languages in 148 countries..

In June 2008 we announced our Certification program and in September we held our first Partner Advisory Council in Europe with Michael Dell in attendance, giving PartnerDirect members the opportunity to pass on feedback and help shape our channel programs going forward

We know that the year ahead is likely to be a tough one – IT spending priorities will change and purse-strings will be tightened. Dell’s ‘Simplify and Save’ motto clearly will resonate well in the times ahead and it is up to us and our partners to make sure this message gets out there to end-users. Over the coming months we will be making further announcements around PartnerDirect which we think will really help our partners remain profitable and defy some of the warnings we see every day in the media.

We have aimed to make the idea of listening to partners and customers a defining theme for PartnerDirect. Many of the changes we have made to PartnerDirect in the first year have come around as a direct result of feedback that we have solicited from partners. We had a great start in 2008 in EMEA, but there is much more potential to expand PartnerDirect. In 2009, we will continue to evolve PartnerDirect by:

· Increasing our focus on fostering advocacy and collaboration between our direct and channel business

· Announcing the next accreditation in our Certification program

· Continuing to invest significantly in our rebate program for our partners

Today’s anniversary is the culmination of months of hard work by our European PartnerDirect team. We would like to thank our Dell team and our partners for making PartnerDirect a success in 2008. As we look to FY10, let’s continue to build on the solid foundation we have laid down for our channel partners and for Dell.

According to a post on ZDNet Asia, Safeway Insurance removed a storage I/O bottleneck that undermined sales efforts and hampered their online performance. By utilizing Dell EqualLogic’s PS Series Storage Area Network (SAN), Safeway Insurance was able to add new capabilities and reduce admin time.