DELL EMC channel is a $35 billion powerhouse

The new Dell Technologies comprises four different business divisions namely the Dell Client Solutions Group, Dell EMC Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG),Dell EMC Services and the strategically aligned businesses – Pivotal, SecureWorks and VMware. Under the Dell EMC ISG business, there are three sales motions- Enterprise Sales Team, Commercial Sales Team and CSB (Consumer Small Business). Dell has a centralized global channel organization. 
Dell EMC has also recently named Tian Beng Ng as senior vice president and general manager for its Channel business in the Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) region, except Greater China. In this role, he will report to John Byrne, president, global channels at Dell EMC. 

In an exclusive interview with VARINDIA, Byrne and Ng discusses the highlights of the new Dell EMC Channel business and program -

Benefits to channel post-merger:
Globally, we have formed platforms such as the Partner Advisory Boards and Partner Advisory Councils. Our partners believe that the channel is an important growth engine and the community wants to grow the top as well as the bottom line. Globally, our Channel business is growing 3-4 times the market rate and in APJ, it’s growing at the rate of 6 times. - faster than the global channels.   

We can truly offer the end-to-end solution, from the PC all the way to the Cloud - what we call edge to core to cloud. Dell EMC has the widest portfolio of products in the industry, and invests more than $ 4.5 billion (USD) annually on research and development, which is double from our competition. We are the market leaders in PCs, virtualization, All-flash storage, hence the partner community is confident about selling all our portfolios.  We are the company that is #1 in everything, all in one place.

At present Dell and EMC will maintain separate deal registration and partner programs through 2016. We are working hard towards combining the two programs that will go live next in February 2017.

Role of Partner Advisory Council:
Historically Dell and EMC have had separate Partner Advisory Boards and Partner Advisory Councils, but starting February there will be one Dell EMC Partner Advisory Councilper region. We present all the data, ask our partners on their performance and suggestions for our program in these meetings. We will be listening and working to build a program that reflects partners needs and wishes. We also talk about partners’ roles of engagement, deal registration. We made sure they know there will be zero tolerance on any violation of deal registration. If you look at EMC’s model, which is front end, and the Dell’s model which is back end, and how we are coming together, we’ll need to assess which business model will be effective for the partner’s business. 
 
Investment Plans:
Other feedback that we have received is that we have to improve our tool and processes. So we are making a significant IT investment of $26mn. In February, there will be one portal where partners of Dell or EMC can sign in, one deal registration. We will also hire people at the back end. 

Channel Strategy:
We are building one channel. During Dell EMC World in October, we’ve announced the new Dell EMC Partner Program, a new partner program that combines the best of the legacy Dell and EMC partner programs into one for the benefit and profitability of our partners. 
Currently, of the top 400 partners from the legacy EMC, 60% are already selling Dell solutions. In the past when the partnership between Dell and EMC was not officially formalized, the competition had tried to lure them but our partners did not budge from their position as they were waiting for the compelling value proposition from the new entity. Today, we are able to deliver this value proposition to our channel ecosystem through our new program that will be launched in February.

Roadmap for IoT:
IoT is obviously a big market opportunity. In Asia, we have participated in a number of key IoT projects. We did a project with Fujian University in China, where we did the Smart City project. We equipped 120,000 government vehicles with GPS devices to track the movement of the cars using Dell solutions, analyzing the traffic patterns of the cars in the Fujian province of China.