CRN Special Issue May 2020 - Issue 1393

SPECIAL ISSUE 1393 • MAY 2020

crn.com

‘THIS IS A TIME WHEN PARTNERS REALLY SHINE’

Solution providers’ skills and vertical industry expertise prove invaluable PAGE 14

SPOTLIGHT ON POWERSTORE The storage platform for the data era NEWS, ANALYSIS AND PERSPECTIVE FOR VARs AND TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATORS

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The Power Of Dell Technologies In these unprecedented times, Dell Technologies’ focus is on ensuring partners and customers have what they need to forge ahead. Fueling that future will be the company’s new nextgeneration Power-branded portfolio.

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Dell Technologies Chairman and CEO Michael Dell

Many things have changed.

Our commitment to you hasn’t.

Our global team is ready with the technology, support and strategy to keep your business moving forward.

See how at DellTechnologies.com/Partner/HereToHelp SE_Apr2020_DellTech.indd 1

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CRN Dell Technologies SPECIAL ISSUE A Letter From 4 Michael Dell

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CRN Interview Michael Dell on why now is the best time to be a Dell Technologies partner.

More With 19 Winning PowerStore

The Power Of Dell Technologies

Scott Millard details how the new architecture will propel channel storage sales.

20 CRN Interview

Bill Scannell on winning big in a data-driven, multi-cloud world.

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22 CRN Interview

Joyce Mullen talks about helping partners today and empowering them for tomorrow.

24 Raising The Bar

Darren Sullivan on how the Dell Technologies Partner Program is now better than ever.

25 A New Era For PCs

Game-changing innovation is here.

26 Digital Transformation

Five Power products unlock the future.

CORONAVIRUS CRISIS:

‘This Is A Time When Partners Really Shine’

Dell Technologies partners are proving they have the unique skill sets and vertical industry expertise to help their customers run their business.

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Next-Gen Storage Platform

For reprints and plaque requests, please contact The YGS Group at 800.290.5460 or http://crnlicensing.com.

CRN (ISSN 1539-7343), also known as Computer Reseller News, is published 14 times a year (February, April, June, August, October, December and 8 Special Issues) by The Channel Company, One Research Drive, Suite 400B, Westborough, MA 01581, and is free to qualified management personnel at companies involved in the reselling/ distribution of computers/networking systems, software and services. One-year subscription rates for all others in the United States are $209.00; Canada $234.00.

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PowerStore is the ‘absolute right platform for what customers need now and will need through the data era,’ says Dell Technologies’ Caitlin Gordon.

A Letter From Michael Dell This special edition of CRN finds us all in an unprecedented time. The full impact of the COVID-19 virus is uncertain and our world feels unsettled. I’m struck by the far-reaching effects on almost every person, family and community. And I appreciate the partner community’s ongoing efforts to serve customers while also protecting our global society and especially our most vulnerable.

While there is no denying the detrimental impact this pandemic is having on economic activity and the tragic loss of many jobs, there is another story about the incredible number of businesses that have been able to stay up and running and that’s because of technology that you help deliver. At Dell Technologies we are grateful to have a central role to play for our society. And I am personally grateful to our partners for the ways they have quickly adapted to the new realities of delivering the products and services the world needs now more than ever.

As we start to look forward, the world will be different—we’ll see less travel, more virtual, more work from home. And there are silver linings. We’re learning that productivity is higher conducting meetings by video, and interestingly, that it is easier to get in contact with customers and partners—a great tip for your sales teams. Virtual meetings from small groups and customer briefings to large town hall meetings are becoming a best practice.

At Dell Technologies, we have decades of experience in enabling remote workforces and supporting business continuity. We have one of the world’s largest and most flexible supply chains which is performing very well. Our innovation engine is strong. And with Dell Financial Services, we can find creative ways to get the resources you need. Across our organization we are creating the future of infrastructure to drive learning, insights, and action when and where it is needed. I believe it is the most important work we could be doing. And I thank our partners for trusting us to help your organizations navigate this unprecedented time of reinvention.

Whether we can offer advice, support and friendship or technology solutions to keep you and your customers up, running and productive, we are here for you. It is our honor to work with the industry’s best partner community.

Michael

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PARTNER PROGRAM GUIDE

Dell Technologies Puts Partners and Customers First With the full impact of the COVID-19 virus uncertain, these are unprecedented times. Our customers are navigating uncertainty and complexity, and it’s up to us – Dell Technologies and you, our partner community – to help them. Through all of this, the full Dell Technologies team is committed to supporting you, too.

It’s a great honor to be part of this remarkable partner community that continues to empower both large and small organizations around the world, especially in these unsettling times. Thank you for your partnership.

“

President, Global Channel, Embedded & Edge Solutions

It’s a great honor to be part of this remarkable partner community that continues to empower both large and small organizations around the world.

“

We are committed to keeping our communities healthy and safe, all while taking care of our customers’ and partners’ most critical needs. We know that our teams and technology are critical in enabling your customers to achieve their business goals in this rapidly changing environment.

Joyce Mullen

Find out more about the Dell Technologies Partner Program at DellTechnologies.com/Partner

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COVE R STO RY

The Power Of Dell Technologies

BY MARK HARANAS

A tangled-up, mishmash of storage, server and virtualization offerings with a slew of interoperability and performance issues. That is the technology scenario a large bank in New York was struggling with before Dell Technologies and AHEAD swooped in to save the day.

“It was a complete hodgepodge where it was very expensive to run and nothing seemed to work,” said Stephen Ayoub, president of AHEAD, a $1.3 billion Chicago-based Dell Technologies Titanium partner, regarding the bank’s IT infrastructure.

Together with Dell Technologies, AHEAD replaced all of those competitive products by leveraging mostly VxRail—Dell Technologies’ market-leading hyperconverged infrastructure—as well as VMware’s software stack to win a $150 million contract. AHEAD was able to save the bank millions each year by cutting its annual IT costs by 15 percent while at the same time increasing reliability and massively reducing deployment time and complexity.

“Our customer conversations are not about going down to the managers or directors to ask them to pick out point products, but to come up with a strategy around IT. Not a strategy around storage, a strategy around networks, a strategy around servers, a strategy around applications,” said Ayoub. “Three years ago, customers wanted bestof-breed products. Today, they’re asking less about best-of-breed and more about interoperability as IT is getting more complex. So if I want to offer them end-toend solutions, Dell is really my option because they’re the only one to truly deliver that. They’re in a position to have relationships across the entire organization.”

Partners like AHEAD said Dell Technologies’ nextgeneration Power-branded portfolio—including its brand-new midrange storage line—combined with its tightly integrated

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VMware software stack—are allowing them to take out server, storage and networking competitors at a stepped-up pace. On the strength of its growing portfolio, they said the $92 billion Round Rock, Texas-based behemoth is poised to make steep gains in infrastructure market share.

Dell Technologies Chairman and CEO Michael Dell said his company has never been better positioned to win share from competitors. “Our portfolio has never been stronger,” said Dell in an interview with CRN in mid-March, as the full severity of the novel coronavirus worldwide pandemic was still unfolding.

“The entire portfolio is being refreshed under the Power brands.

Markets are consolidating. We have very ambitious goals.”

In these extraordinary times, the company’s current focus is on helping channel partners and customers build the solutions they need to get through the coronavirus crisis (see “This Is A Time When Partners Really Shine,” p. 14).

“Customers and partners need us more than ever,” Dell said.

But when the world starts to get back to business as usual, the company will be primed to build on the strength of those products to continue its quest for market-share dominance.

Dell Technologies channel chief Joyce Mullen, president of global channel, embedded and edge solutions, said customers are reliant on the company’s channel partners to help them stay operational as a significant portion of the world’s population finds itself under lockdown.

“There are a whole bunch of new skills, capabilities and infrastructure design elements that many customers hadn’t really considered or hadn’t prioritized before this. Our partners are filling in those gaps,” Mullen said.

Dell Technologies’ end-to-end product lines are enabling customers across the globe to create remote workforces, secure critical data and scale without disruption, she said.

“We have best-of-breed products for anything the customer

THE POWER OF DELL TECHNOLOGIES

needs—laptops to hyperconverged infrastructure,” she said.

“So we have great solutions with our Power brands to back up all of their critical data, applications and the need for infrastructure that is being generated all over the world.”

Dell Technologies’ next-generation Power product lines in storage, servers, data protection and networking include tailor-made solutions for the SMB market all the way up to the largest enterprises in the world.

Its new PowerEdge servers aim to become the bedrock of modern data centers, while its PowerMax storage line is chock-full of automation.

Dell Technologies also is betting that its PowerSwitch networking gear will drive new wins in 5G and at the edge.

And, as protecting data becomes paramount for customers, its new PowerProtect data protection appliances are able to manage, recover and secure data at scale.

The new streamlined portfolio spanning from the edge to the core to the cloud is now locked and loaded, executives said. And, according to Michael Dell, now is the time for solution providers to sell across the full Dell Technologies portfolio.

“Partners who sell storage, server and client generate approximately 13 times the revenue per partner as compared to partners who are selling just two LOBs [lines of business], and approximately 40 times the revenue per partner who just sells one line of business,” Dell said. “The partners who are selling VMware are doing even better. Dell Financial Services is continuing to grow rapidly as partners are utilizing that. More and more partners are selling more multi-lines of business. We’re feeling good.”

Alongside its revamped Power portfolio, Dell Technologies has spent a colossal $5.5 billion on mergers and acquisitions over the past several years, buying some of the world’s top IT talent and technologies, including Kubernetes star Heptio at the end of 2018 and, through VMware, endpoint security innovator Carbon Black in 2019.

“If you look at the last couple of years, we’ve done $5.5 billion in M&A,” said Dell. “A lot of that is in areas like networking and security such as Carbon Black, bringing Pivotal into VMware, and the big VMware Tanzu [Kubernetes portfolio] that we launched. The combined power of those solutions is resonating.”

With its next-generation portfolio and experienced sales force ready to fire on all cylinders, Dell Technologies needed to find a way to rev up the delivery and go-to-market process in order to successfully execute on the company’s bullish market-share goals. To that end, Dell Technologies unified its enterprise and commercial sales organizations for the first time under the same roof and put EMC veteran Bill Scannell in place to oversee it.

‘The Sky Is The Limit’ Scannell said his aim is to lead a market revolution that gives Dell Technologies more than half of the worldwide server, storage and hyperconverged infrastructure market.

“The sky is the limit,” said Scannell, who officially became

president of global sales and customer operations in February and spoke with CRN soon afterward, ahead of the coronavirus being declared a pandemic.

Scannell aims eventually to win upward of 50 percent of the worldwide infrastructure market, a campaign that will be led by tens of thousands of global channel partners.

Those partners delivered $52 billion in orders over the past 12 months, backed by Dell Technologies’ 30,000-strong go-to-market organization.

“The opportunity for us to expand our storage market share [percentage] from the low 30s to the low 40s to the low 50s is there. Likewise, in hyperconverged—we were a little late to the market—but we quickly became the market leader there. Whether it’s VxRail or VxFlex, we have the best offering. … We have less than 30 percent server share. I believe as a market leader, we should have over 50 percent market share.”

Dell Technologies partners see Scannell providing the sales leadership to deliver big market-share gains. They credit the 34-year Dell EMC veteran with playing an instrumental role

‘We don’t have to spend a lot of time guessing what we’re going to do— we can cut to the chase and put the tough questions out there to make sure we can grow the partnership.’

–JIM KAVANAUGH, CEO, WWT, ON WORKING WITH BILL SCANNELL AND HIS TEAM

in EMC’s successful push into the channel in the 1990s and storage dominance in the 2000s. They say there is simply no one better to take over the reins of Dell Technologies’ 2,500 enterprise accounts and more than 500,000 commercial customers as its new sales leader.

Jim Kavanaugh, CEO of $12 billion solution provider powerhouse World Wide Technology, has known Scannell for years and believes him to be the spark that can ignite Dell Technologies’ channel sales to new heights.

“EMC was at one point a very direct organization. Bill saw where the market was going and the need to build out the channel partnership—he led a big part of that. He did a great job building the channel at EMC,” said Kavanaugh, whose St. Louis-based company works with 70 percent of the Fortune 100. “Bill is somebody who is very direct, which I like, so you know where he stands. The people that work for him try to take that same approach so we don’t have to spend a lot of time guessing what we’re going to do—we can cut to the chase and put the tough questions out there to make sure we can grow the partnership. Bill should put Dell in a better position

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across the board from an alignment go-to-market perspective.”

Kavanaugh said WWT’s Dell Technologies sales jumped more than 17 percent in 2019 compared with 2018, with continued high-growth expectations for this year.

Channel partners said Scannell’s career has led him to this moment, ready to step in when Dell Technologies needs a next-level sales leader who knows the industry inside out.

“Bill has a history of driving sales teams to one common goal—that’s what Dell needs right now,” said AHEAD’s Ayoub.

“They don’t need multiple segments, as they were set up in the past. I think you saw a disconnect when you had leaders of the commercial team and then leaders of the enterprise team because the enterprise team was executing as one team and one strategy, and the commercial team was still very segmented with the server team running one play, the storage team running another play and the backup team on their own. Billy does a great job in taking a complicated message, simplifying it and executing on a single go-to-market strategy.

He’s the right leader at the right time. He’s going to rally everybody to march toward one common goal.”

‘Three years ago, customers wanted best-of-breed products.

Today, they’re asking less about best-of-breed and more about interoperability as IT is getting more complex.’

–STEPHEN AYOUB, PRESIDENT, AHEAD

That goal is to rapidly increase market share in servers, storage, networking, hyperconverged and the client space.

“I’m focused on, ‘How do I get storage to over 50 percent share? How do I get server to over 50 percent share? How do we help consolidate the client business?’” said Scannell.

“Between our own networking top-of-rack switches to what we’re doing with VMware with SD-WAN, we have a great opportunity to go after that networking market, which is an adjacent market and a very profitable market. We have an opportunity to become a market leader in networking.

So the opportunity for Dell Technologies is great across the entire portfolio.”

When questioned about his strategy of indirect versus direct selling in his new unified commercial and enterprise sales organization, Scannell quickly fired back, “I wouldn’t say direct versus indirect, I’d say direct and indirect. It’s not an either/or—it’s a both. I’m no stranger to the partner community.”

After the blockbuster merger between EMC and Dell in 2016, Scannell became president of enterprise sales and

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customer operations. Over the past three years, he helped Dell Technologies grow from $77 billion in revenue to $92 billion, with more than half of the business now going through the channel.

Competition And Market Differentiation Looking at the market-share numbers for 2019, Dell Technologies won approximately 30 percent share of the worldwide external enterprise storage market by generating more than $8.5 billion in sales, according to market research firm IDC. Hewlett Packard Enterprise captured 10.7 percent global share with just over $3 billion in sales, while NetApp won 10.3 percent share with $2.9 billion in storage revenue.

In the enterprise server market, Dell Technologies captured 17.8 percent of the global market share with $15.6 billion in sales and shipped more servers than any other company last year by selling approximately 2,050,000 units, according to IDC. HPE, combined with its China-based joint venture New H3C Group, won 17.3 percent of the worldwide server market in 2019 with $15.1 billion in sales by selling 1,820,000 server units. There were no other server vendors that achieved double-digit market share last year.

In terms of competition with its main infrastructure rival HPE, Scannell said Dell Technologies has several advantages.

“HPE has done a lot of things well. They’ve done a lot of things I wouldn’t have done. But when I think of the hand we have to play, I think of our supply chain—we have the best supply chain in the world. We buy more than anyone else in the world. So at a time when [Hewlett-Packard] was splitting into HP Inc. and HPE, and actually hurting their buying power, we were bringing together Dell, VMware and EMC and actually increasing our buying power,” said Scannell. “So do I think we’ll continue to take share in the server market?

Darn right we will. Will we do it in the storage space? Darn right we will. Will we do it in the client space? Darn right we will. We’ve got the biggest organization supported by the biggest service organization, supported by the biggest channel organization in the world.”

One huge market differentiator for Dell Technologies is the company’s ability to create holistic architectures with products that seamlessly interoperate with each other from the edge to core to cloud. The family of brands under the Dell Technologies umbrella includes one of the largest PC vendors in the world in Dell; Dell EMC’s market-leading server, storage, hyperconverged and software portfolio; Virtustream for cloud computing management; security threat intelligence standout Secureworks; and virtualization and hybrid cloud superstar VMware, lauded by many as the company’s crown jewel.

Instead of having a complex IT environment made up of a slew of different vendors’ hardware and software, Dell Technologies’ ever-expanding portfolio enables the creation of differentiated all-in-one platforms from a single source.

These prepackaged and integrated platforms tightly wrap a mix of Dell Technologies data protection, networking, servers, security, software, storage and virtualization offerings

AHEAD THE POWER OF THE OF CURVE DELL TECHNOLOGIES

together for a powerful punch that is winning over customers.

One of its shining stars is the world’s most popular hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) platform: VxRail. Dell Technologies’ flagship HCI product has been growing annually at a triple-digit clip thanks to joint development from Dell EMC and VMware engineers who are working hand-in-hand.

Dell Technologies currently owns approximately one-third of the worldwide hyperconverged infrastructure market. In 2019, Dell Technologies generated more than $2.5 billion in HCI sales to dominate the roughly $8 billion global market, according to IDC. The only competitor even close to Dell Technologies is Nutanix, which generated just over $1 billion in hyperconverged revenue last year to win approximately 14 percent of the total market. Other competitors, including Cisco, Lenovo and HPE, were each only able to capture between 4 percent and 6 percent of the global market share in 2019.

With the deep level of co-engineering between Dell EMC and VMware, channel partners said VxRail is a clear cut above the rest.

Scott Winslow, founder and president of Waltham, Mass.-based Winslow Technology Group, saw a 77 percent spike in VxRail sales in 2019 thanks to the platform being VMware-centric.

“When you have 80 percent of the customers running VMware, that means VxRail can fit easily into 80 percent of the environments. The integration between VMware and VxRail is a strong selling point to the customer who’s likely going to be able support a VMware environment,” said Winslow, whose company is a 2019 CRN Triple Crown award winner, being named to the Solution Provider 500, Tech Elite 250 and Fast Growth 150 lists. “VxRail is making it simple for the customer. You have one-click upgrades so instead of having to upgrade your VMware, upgrade your networking, server and storage all separately, you’re doing all of that through one GUI, and it’s very easy from an operational standpoint. There are other solutions that support multiple hypervisors, but in many of the cases, VxRail is the solution for customers running VMware.”

Market-Disrupting Platforms With the full backing of VMware, Dell Technologies is doubling down on end-to-end platforms similar to VxRail that leverage the company’s next-generation Power portfolio.

Last year, Dell Technologies launched PowerOne, an autonomous infrastructure that combines PowerEdge modular servers, PowerSwitch open networking, PowerMax storage and PowerProtect data protection along with VMware vSphere virtualization, which is all deployed, managed and maintained under a single pane of glass. In addition, PowerOne includes a built-in intelligent automation engine, which automates thousands of tasks with the ability to have vSphere clusters available for workloads in just a few clicks.

Dell Technologies has the unique ability to build these

types of market-disrupting platforms under one roof.

However, that wasn’t the case just a few short years ago.

For example, Vblock was one of the first popular converged infrastructure platforms created years ago that combined Dell, VMware and Cisco hardware and software together in a prepackaged offering. Partners said Dell Technologies has the ability to take those end-to-end concepts to the next level, which is a key reason why they believe Dell Technologies can increase its market share significantly over the next several years.

‘The integration between VMware and VxRail is a strong selling point to the customer who’s likely going to be able support a VMware environment.’

–SCOTT WINSLOW, PRESIDENT, WINSLOW TECHNOLOGY GROUP

“So instead of needing to buy Cisco compute, you have an option with PowerOne for Dell compute, Dell networking and Dell storage. It’s like a competitor to the Vblock solutions which was somewhat Cisco-centric—now it can be Dellcentric,” said Winslow. “With PowerOne and its autonomous operations, they’ve really done a lot with simplifying operations of the infrastructure and making it easier to use.

So you have all this built on Dell hardware and software, VMware as a hypervisor and then autonomous operations built in. Talk about a way to drive up your compute sales and market share, this is one way to do it.”

In addition, Dell Technologies is betting that smaller, niche players will eventually face trouble as the market consolidates and customers seek less complexity and lower IT costs. Some channel partners feel the same way. “Some of those players are not as diversified as Dell and can only focus on one area,” said Winslow. “So some of these companies are going to struggle.”

The Impact Of Acquisitions Since 2019, Dell Technologies has purchased a slew of vendors, including application and artificial intelligence specialists BitFusion and Uhana; software-defined networking and management standouts Veriflow, Avi Networks and Nyansa; app deployment specialist Bitnami; and application security startup Intrinsic. One of its biggest purchases was DevOps superstar Pivotal Software, a $2.7 billion deal orchestrated through VMware that closed in January. Pivotal, which was already part of Dell Technologies’ family of brands, is the owner of the popular Kubernetes-based container platform

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THE POWER OF DELL TECHNOLOGIES

Pivotal Container Service (PKS) which is being natively integrated into various VMware products.

Dell Technologies’ most bullish acquisition came in October with VMware’s $2.1 billion purchase of endpoint security leader Carbon Black. VMware has already integrated Carbon Black’s cloud-native endpoint security software into its flagship hybrid cloud platform VMware Cloud Foundation and software-defined networking and security product NSX. Robert Keblusek, chief technology officer for fast-growing Downers Grove, Ill.-based Sentinel Technologies, said it was a bold move for Dell Technologies to buy and quickly inject Carbon Black’s capabilities into various platforms to bolster its security posture.

“Even though Dell has security products that they’ve made from acquisitions, I’m not so sure that they’ve been really stood up as a security leader. But when I start to think of leaders like Cisco, Palo Alto Networks—Dell is definitely getting all those pieces and parts together to attack the security market,” said Keblusek. “Carbon Black was an excellent acquisition. I also feel NSX adds to that overall security story when you start to look at data center, cloud, and then how they’re enhancing security with [VMware] SD-WAN by VeloCloud—those are all really strong plays for them.”

Dell Technologies is aiming to reduce the number of security products organizations need to buy in order to fully secure their business. Enterprises can have hundreds of different security point products from dozens of different vendors in their environment, making interoperability cumbersome and the price tag high. By building security features like Carbon Black directly into its broad infrastructure and software portfolio, Dell Technologies said it will further separate itself from the pack as it looks to change the security market landscape.

Scannell refers to the company’s security business as its “best-kept secret.”

“When I meet with customers to talk about our capabilities in security, they say, ‘Jeez, I didn’t know Dell did that.’ We talk about how we can help them with a multi-cloud strategy,” said Scannell. “The power of Dell Technologies, as we’ve come together, our capabilities are incredible. So whether it’s digital transformation, IT, security or workforce transformation, we have really good solutions in all those areas and a better hand to play than any one of our competitors.”

‘Unbeatable With Our Partners’ Dell Technologies’ channel community is paramount to the company’s success, accounting for more than 50 percent of the company’s total revenue. To push channel partners to sell end-to-end solutions that span multiple lines of business, the company launched the Dell Technologies Partner Program.

The program, which was rolled out in April 2019, makes it easier and more profitable for channel partners to sell across the entire Dell Technologies portfolio. The program also

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makes it seamless to buy, procure and sell solutions with all products purchased through the program—regardless of brand—counting toward tier status and tier revenue requirements. There is also certification simplification and joint program tiering to ensure partner investments and time in the sales field are maximized. Partners in the program also are granted more incentives, rebates and margins when they sell multiple lines of businesses.

“Many of our best partners are selling all of our lines of business,” said Scannell. “If you’re selling one of our lines— for example, you’re selling our server but not our storage or not VMware or the client—you make good revenue and profits. … [But] if I’m a channel partner and I want to grow my business by 100 percent, I’m going to sell more of the Dell Technologies portfolio. With that also comes more margin, more rebates and all the things partners like about the Dell Technologies program.”

Scannell isn’t the only longtime Dell Technologies veteran leading the charge toward market-share dominance. Jeff Clarke, chief operating officer and vice chairman for Dell Technologies, has been with the company since 1987, while Mullen’s tenure extends more than two decades.

Michael Dell said with the combination of an experienced leadership team, next-generation Power portfolio, a crossselling-focused partner program and one of the largest sales and engineering forces in the world, Dell Technologies has significant market-share opportunity in front of it.

“Billy has laid out an aggressive plan for the future. There’s a ton of opportunity ahead,” said Dell. “The product line has never been stronger.”

Partners have tremendous faith in Dell Technologies’ leadership team. WWT’s Kavanaugh said to “never underestimate Michael Dell,” who has a strong work ethic and drive to win.

“I remember talking to Michael at one point in time when he was taking a little time off vacationing. He spent two weeks on the beach, and he mentioned about at that point he was ready to pull his hair out because he was just getting bored. I would be the same way,” said Kavanaugh, who co-founded WWT in 1990. “In these types of challenging times and challenging business opportunities, the goal is to grow Dell Technologies. I think it is something that energizes him. … He’s always been creative, innovative and open-minded to where the market is going and what the customer wants.”

Kavanaugh said Michael Dell and Scannell are the one-two punch needed to drive Power portfolio sales gains. Scannell, likewise, has faith in Dell Technologies’ partner community. “[From] the day I started with the company 34 years ago, I’ve leveraged our partner community, and it served me well.

I don’t expect to go backwards in that area,” Scannell said.

“Our partners are looking for the safe bet, and our customers are looking for the safe bet. Who’s going to be here for the long term? Who’s got the winning hand? Who’s got the better strategy? We do. We are going to be unbeatable with our partners. I really believe it.” 

I N N OVATI O N E N G I N E

Michael Dell On The Impact Of The Coronavirus Pandemic, His Plans For R&D, VMware Integration And Networking Share Gains

BY MARK HARANAS

Michael Dell has always had the foresight to skate where the puck is going. Year after year, the IT leader has discovered ways to reinvent the company he founded in 1984 inside his dorm room at the University of Texas in Austin.

Dell has made some of the most successful IT bets in history, turning this once-PC-only company into a $92 billion powerhouse that is the worldwide leader in hyperconverged infrastructure, storage, servers and virtualization. However, Dell has never been more excited about the future of his company as he looks at the immense opportunities ahead around 5G, edge computing and customers seeking a single vendor like Dell Technologies that can support all of their IT needs.

In an interview with CRN in mid-March as the full impact of the coronavirus was still playing out, Dell discussed the work-from-home movement and broke down his plans around R&D spending, making acquisitions and winning more market share in the networking space.

In terms of the IT impact of coronavirus, have you ever seen something quite like this?

Having done this for 35 years or so, I’ve seen a lot of things.

There’s been nothing really like this. So the whole work-fromhome movement is something our customers need a lot of help with. We are actively helping our customers and partners with solutions, not just products. Because it’s not just as simple as, ‘OK, here’s your computer, go work from home.’

There’s a lot more involved in how do you get teams to be collaborative, be productive, share information and re-create the incidental communications and collaboration that occurs when people are physically together. Customers and partners need us more than ever.

Turning to the Dell Technologies business more specifically, how do you expect to significantly grow market share?

If you look at the innovation that we’re driving and the capabilities that we have, we can go win more market share.

The portfolio is super compelling. We are No. 1 in many areas and we’re all in one place. Some important areas: We’re No. 1 in public and private cloud IT infrastructure.

No. 1 in external enterprise storage. No. 1 in software storage.

No. 1 in all-flash arrays. No. 1 in hyperconverged. No. 1 in server units and server revenue. No. 1 in clients. Those are just some examples. There’s actually about 20 of those. You

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look back and say, ‘What’s happened in the last few years?’

We’ve had seven consecutive years of gaining share in the client business. I feel pretty confident we’ll have another one of those this year. Likewise in servers, we gained 590 basis points in the last three years. We’ve maintained No. 1 in server revenues for the last seven quarters in the world.

We gained over 300 basis points in storage share since 2017.

We’ve got ambitious goals. Markets are consolidating. We’re in a very strong position.

Just how much traction are you seeing with joint technology innovation between VMware and Dell?

If you look at what we did with VxRail and VxRack, just as an interesting example, those two combined have generated more than $4.5 million in orders since inception.

We’ve actually been exceeding the ambitious targets that we set for ourselves there. Those solutions continue to grow and get better. Now we have those with VMware Cloud Foundation, and we continue to enhance the combined solutions with the Dell Technologies Cloud, with Unified Workspace, with our SmartFabric Director— the innovation engine is on high. The partners [have been] extremely receptive over the last 12 months. Our global channel has delivered $52 billion in orders. As I’ve been out meeting with channel partners, they love what we’re doing and want to do more with us.

In terms of gaining market share in the networking space, do you think Dell Technologies could eventually catch up to Cisco?

Catching up to Cisco in a couple of years would take an enormous amount of growth. Look, our networking business is growing quite rapidly. If you look at some of the new domains like SD-WAN, we already have No. 1 market share there with VMware SD-WAN by VeloCloud. NSX is growing very rapidly. I believe NSX bookings grew over 20 percent in [VMware’s fourth fiscal quarter 2020]. Our networking switch business is growing nicely, certainly much faster than the industry and market. Part of this is we are building out these more designed solutions like PowerOne that include server, storage and networking. Look, customers and partners don’t want to put together a disparate set of products from companies who are No. 3, No. 4 or No. 7 [in market share] in all these different categories. So as we build solutions like PowerOne that bring together all the best capabilities and it’s built on VMware—which is doing incredibly well with enterprise customers around the world as they build out their multi-cloud architecture—we have a great amount of momentum in networking.

How much do you plan to spend this year on R&D? We have been investing between $4 billion and $5 billion a year in R&D, and we’ll certainly have more than $4 billion in our current fiscal year 2021. The entire portfolio is being refreshed under the Power brand. Markets are consolidating.

We are putting channel incentives in place to drive crossselling and specifically focusing on storage. Our storage capabilities are strong. We have very ambitious goals.

Why should partners sell more lines of business within Dell Technologies?

Partners who sell storage, server and client generate approximately 13 times the revenue per partner as compared to partners who are selling just two LOBs [lines of business], and approximately 40 times the revenue per partner who just sells one line of business. The partners who are selling

VMware are doing even better. Dell Financial Services is continuing to grow rapidly as partners are utilizing that. More and more partners are selling more multi-lines of business.

We’re feeling good.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Antonio Neri recently said his company’s consumption-based offerings are better than Dell Technologies’ offerings. Any thoughts?

I think the facts tell a little bit of a different story. The company you mentioned had revenues of a couple hundred million from [HPE’s GreenLake offering]. Our deferred revenues on our balance sheet—this is all in our financial statement, it’s not like we’re making up numbers—our deferred revenue at the end of last quarter was $27.8 billion. That’s billion with a ‘b’—up 16 percent year over year. If you go find the comparable number for the other company you mentioned, I think you’ll find they’re not even comparable.

Can you talk about your acquisition strategy?

If you look at the last couple of years, we’ve done $5.5 billion in M&A, primarily through VMware since the EMC transaction.

A lot of that is in areas like networking and security such as Carbon Black, bringing Pivotal into VMware, and the big VMware Tanzu [Kubernetes portfolio] that we launched.

The combined power of those solutions is resonating. We’re bringing Kubernetes into vSphere, which is very powerful, and we’re creating an application development platform and an enterprise-grade Kubernetes solution and, of course, all the hardware solutions to make all this work.

What’s your message to channel partners?

It is the best time right now to be a Dell Technologies partner. Our portfolio has never been stronger. The market consolidation is happening. We have the No. 1 solutions across all aspects of infrastructure, hardware and software. ...

Look at what we’ve done together with our partners in the last three years. Bill [Scannell, president of global sales and customer operations] has laid out an aggressive plan for the future. There is a ton of opportunity ahead. And again, the product line has never been stronger. 

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TH E BRI D G E TO CUSTO M E RS

CORONAVIRUS CRISIS:

‘This Is A Time When Partners Really Shine’

BY MARK HARANAS

14

Coronavirus Response

Mapping Dell Technologies’

One of the largest law firms in the country reached out to IP DataSystems during the coronavirus pandemic in dire need of accelerating its deployment of virtual desktop infrastructure.

“They called pretty frantically,” said Tom Murphy, president and chief operating officer at Ellicott City, Md.-based IP DataSystems, a Dell Technologies Titanium partner. “They would have been in a really bad place if we hadn’t been able to go on-site and implement the solution.”

IP DataSystems was able to quickly roll out eight Dell Technologies hyperconverged VxRail nodes and immediately sent a team on-site to the Baltimore-based law firm to help the business—which was strictly a workin-the-office-type company—transition into a remote workforce almost overnight.

“We had our team on-site in their data center standing up this solution so they could enable 3,000 additional remote users. It’s a huge law firm, and they really weren’t prepared to have all of their employees and lawyers pushed out of the office,” said Murphy, who has been providing the law firm with Dell Technologies storage and backup infrastructure solutions for years. “We’re doing all the data center infrastructure to make it work.”

Dell Technologies’ global channel chief Joyce Mullen has witnessed these and other solution provider success stories, proving just how important a role channel partners are playing in combating the pandemic.

“The partners are the bridge to their customers, providing technology that powers hospitals, research centers, technology that improves ventilator efficiency and is helping schools and governments get through this,” said Mullen, president of global channel, embedded and edge solutions at Dell Technologies. “[They are] helping businesses maintain their operations through what none of us ever envisioned in any of our business continuity planning. No one ever plans for the whole world to shut down. I feel like it’s teaching us an awful lot, and it’s putting enormous pressure and focus on technology as a major part of the solution.”

For Dell Technologies partner VirtuIT Systems, being that “bridge” to customers has been crucial as many of the solution provider’s customers are located in New York City, the U.S. epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak. VirtuIT Systems is making sure that its customers’ data, network and employees are secure.

“Our New York City customers have been a lot more frantic, ‘Can you guys help us make sure that our network

JA N .- M A RC H

M I D - M A RC H

Provides over $1 million to fund surgical masks, protective clothing and IT for hospitals in China and the CDC.

Matches employee donations to the CDC Foundation’s Emergency Response Fund up to $10,000 per employee.

SPECIAL ISSUE 2020

Donates $3 million in funds and technology to front-line organizations treating and containing COVID-19.

Michael & Susan Dell Foundation dedicates $100 million toward coronavirus relief.

M I D - M A RC H

E A R LY A P R I L

CORONAVIRUS CRISIS: ‘THIS IS A TIME WHEN PARTNERS REALLY SHINE’ isn’t going to get stressed or just implode if we have everyone remotely accessing our data? Is everything safe and secure?’” said Josh Lee, director of sales at Nanuet, N.Y.-based VirtuIT Systems.

As businesses need more IT infrastructure to accommodate an at-home workforce, VirtuIT Systems has seen an increase in demand for stand-alone PowerOne servers with VMware on top as well as VxRail as customers adapt to a remote workforce—in many cases for the first time.

“We’re making sure customers have access, their data is secure, their people are safe, employees are retained, and businesses stay afloat,” said Lee. Making sure employees are retained and businesses stay afloat typically aren’t a solution provider’s responsibility.

But the coronavirus pandemic has proven that when push comes to shove, solution providers and IT vendors are among the most important resources for customers today.

When the world needed to push the “fast-forward” button on digital transformation initiatives, Mullen said, Dell Technologies ramped up its efforts to better enable channel partners through the crisis. Throughout March and April, Dell Technologies launched a slew of new financial offerings and support to the channel.

Dell Technologies provided one-time cash payouts for up to 50 percent of current partner Market Development Fund (MDF) and Business Development Fund (BDF) balances for use toward marketing activities, while also allowing MDF in advance to free up cash. The company also waived the fee for services deployment training for VxRail, Unity XT storage and data protection DP4400 infrastructure offerings. In addition, the company offered new team-based training options for partners who had multiple individuals trying to get certified.

Through the hugely popular Dell Financial Services arm, the company is offering new deferred payment schedules and zero up-front costs to help partners preserve capital.

Dell Financial Services provided 24-month financing at zero percent interest for servers and select storage products; a six-month term and rotation lease options for select laptops, thin clients and mobile workstations; and three-, six- and potentially nine-month deferrals for customers.

“The new deferrals, quite honestly, are the biggest

strategy to getting people back to the table to say, ‘Hey, let’s see if we can push the project forward now because we can defer payments out to three to six months,” said Lee. Although supply chain has been an issue with some vendors during the coronavirus pandemic, Dell Technologies’ strong capabilities and strategy in the arena enabled the company to not skip a beat, said Mullen.

“Nobody anticipated this demand, but we have increased capacity in our supply chain and have been working through supply chain scenarios over the past year because of all the other things going on—everything from tariffs to tornadoes. So our supply chain is strong and resilient to handle this,” said Mullen.

In fact, when Texas Gov. Greg Abbott created a temporary Supply Chain Strike Force to help deal with the coronavirus, Keith Miears, senior vice president of worldwide procurement at Dell Technologies, was named Supply Chain Director for the entire state of Texas.

Dell’s stellar supply chain has helped many partners replace competitive products due to a lack of product supply from others, solution providers said.

IP DataSystems’ Murphy said one customer with 90 regional offices throughout the U.S. needed immediate help in securing laptops for its workers in the field.

“When they went to order about 1,000 laptops ... when the coronavirus started, [one vendor’s] inventory was so low they came to us and we worked with Dell and were able to satisfy that order and get them those laptops,” said Murphy.

“They were able to work with Dell to build a system that had a much faster delivery timeline.”

Mullen said partners have been “invaluable” in helping customers get through the coronavirus pandemic due to their unique IT skill sets and vertical-industry-specific knowledge to support education, government and health care.

“This is a time when partners really shine. They know their customers intimately. They understand the industries in which they’re operating,” said Mullen. “They understand how to get them to a point where they are working productively and effectively in an unprecedented environment. It’s clear that our technologies and partners are a very important part of the solution for this particular issue and will be for years to come.” 

E A R LY A P R I L

E A R LY A P R I L

Michael Dell forgoes his base salary through end of fiscal year 2021 due to COVID-19.

Works with i2b2 tranSMART Foundation to rapidly create a federation of research centers to study COVID-19 data.

Donates laptops to largest public health hospital in Brazil, SP Hospital das Clínicas.

Unveils new customer financing options, MDF and fee-waived training for partners.

E A R LY A P R I L

M I D -A P R I L

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ADVERTISEMENT

Dell Technologies Celebrates 36 Accomplished And Remarkable Women Of The Channel We are delighted and proud to celebrate the 36 trailblazing women of Dell Technologies, who have inspired positive progress in our partner community. This list recognizes our most influential women channel leaders dedicated to our partners’ success with Dell Technologies. Four of these leaders were also named to the Power 100, representing “the most powerful women leaders across IT channel organizations.” Congratulations Joyce, Cheryl, Mary Catherine (Dell Technologies) and Jenni (VMware)!

We are honored to have so many of our leaders recognized as channel power players. Congratulations to all winners!

POWER 100

Joyce Mullen

President, Global Channel, OEM & IoT

Kristina Austin

POWER 100

heryl ook

Sr. VP of Global Partner Marketing

amara Booth

POWER 100

Mary

atherine Wilson

Sr. Dir. of Global Marketing

iana Brode

POWER 100

enni Flinders

Global Channel Chiefs, VMware

eri Bruns

Sr. Dir., Global Alliances & Cloud Service Provider Marketing

VP, Alliances Service Providers & Industries Presales

Dir., Global Partner Marketing

VP, Global Partner Solutions

Natalie Crawford

Laura Davis

Anna orcey

Tara Fine

National Account Manager, MDC for CDW

Sr. Dir., Government, Education, Healthcare Partners, VMware

VP, Americas Marketing, VMware

Sr. Director, Canada Channels, VMware

Kate anestrari

Sr. Dir., Americas Partner & Alliance Marketing, VMware

Amy Flanagan

Sr. Dir., Chief of Staff, Channel Strategy & Execution for Americas, VMware

Dell Technologies PartnerIncrease Program:Your Simple.

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2020_WOTC_Dell_SE-v5.indd 1

4/29/20 2:13 PM

Kelli Furrer

Maureen Gaumer

Coleen Greco

Sarah Griffin

Sandra Haan

Erica Lambert

Patti Lewis

Amber McGough

Sarah Meyer

Kath Meza

Annette Parker

Michelle Pas

Sonal Patel

Isabelle Robert

Brinda Robin

Patty Scire

Sarah Shields

Cindy Spring

Shawn Trotter

Beth Villalpando

Heather Wilcox

Lisa Wight

VP, Federal Channel & Alliances

VP, Global Services Sales for Channel, Alliances & OEM

Dir., National Partners, VMware

Sr. Dir., NA Strategy & Programs

CSG Channel Field Marketing Dir.

Sr. Dir., NA Channel Marketing

Sr. Dir., Americas Systems Integrators & Systems Outsourcers, VMware

Dir. of Channel Marketing & Global Programs, RSA

VP, EMEA Enterprise Channel

Dir., NA Partner Marketing, VMware

Dir., Service Provider Program Strategy, VMware

Dir., Worldwide Partner Sales & Activation, Role Design & Integration, VMware

Dir., Global Specialty Channels Strategy & Programs

Director of GTM & Programs, Global Alliances

Dir., Dell Channel VMware Sales & Go To Market

Enterprise Channel Sales Dir.

VP, NA Channel Inside Sales

Sr. Dir., Partner Marketing, VMware

Dir., Dell EMC Partner Program Strategy

Sr. Mgr. Dell Technologies IoT Program and Partnerships

Dir., NA National Solution Providers & Distribution Marketing

Head of Worldwide Distribution, VMware

Join our network: delltechnologies.com/partner/womensnetwork

2020_WOTC_Dell_SE-v5.indd 2

4/30/20 10:38 AM

KEY TO THE DATA ERA

PowerStore’s machine-learning engine optimizes performance and reduces cost by automating labor-intensive processes like initial volume placement, migrations, load balancing and issue resolution. The platform will recommend where to best place data.

Meanwhile, Dell’s new container-based software architecture, PowerStoreOS, allows for next-level deployment flexibility by enabling feature portability, standardization

Dell’s Next-Generation Storage Platform Is Here: PowerStore Is ‘Untouchable’

BY MARK HARANAS

Caitlin Gordon VP, Product Marketing

18

To say that Dell Technologies is confident in its new midrange all-flash PowerStore platform is a significant understatement.

“The amount of time, energy and resources we have to build this platform, including VMware, there’s no one else in the industry that can ever attempt to touch this,” said Caitlin Gordon, vice president of product marketing for Dell Technologies. “Even looking into the future where we know we can go with PowerStore and what our competitors have today—and even what they could build if they tried to compete—this is untouchable and really exciting for us. … We fundamentally believe we’ve built the absolute right platform for what customers need now and will need through the data era.”

The worldwide leader in storage thinks it can leave the competition in the dust with PowerStore, a scale-up, scaleout container-based architecture built from the ground up with technology that addresses the challenges of an everincreasing number of workloads.

With built-in machine learning and automation, PowerStore is a programmable infrastructure that aims to streamline application development and reduce deployment time from days to seconds with VMware integration and support for orchestration frameworks including Ansible, VMware vRealize Orchestrator and Kubernetes, according to Gordon.

“Programmable infrastructure is something more and more of our customers are asking for,” said Gordon. “You can truly treat this system like code so you can streamline your development efforts as well as automate storage workflows.

It’s all about being able to take the database storage tasks and automate those in the tools and frameworks that our customers are using for the rest of their data center. It can now help you deploy new resources in seconds versus days. It takes out all those manual steps, which not only saves time, but helps reduce risk. … It’s truly an autonomous appliance.”

SPECIAL ISSUE 2020

and rapid time-to-market for new capabilities. Customers can run PowerStoreOS directly on the platform or within a virtual machine (VM) running on PowerStore’s embedded VMware hypervisor.

“PowerStore is the only purpose-built array in the industry with VMware ESXi hypervisor built-in,” said Gordon. “We are able to abstract that storage OS, on-board VMware and run that OS in a VM. Why would you do that? You’d only do that for this next piece, which is why we are introducing the industry’s first feature called AppsON. It allows us to run applications directly on the storage appliance.”

When PowerStoreOS runs on a VM, administrators can access the hypervisor to deploy apps directly on the appliance for maximum flexibility, making AppsON ideal for data-intensive workloads in core or edge locations and infrastructure applications.

Another major feature built in is Dell EMC CloudIQ, which provides proactive monitoring and predictive analytics inside PowerStore. CloudIQ puts planning data at customers’ fingertips by delivering a single-pane-of-glass view within their infrastructure, including real-time performance analysis and historical tracking.

Stephen Ayoub, president of Chicago-based AHEAD, a $1.3 billion Dell Technologies Titanium partner, said PowerStore is the “next-generation” future-proof storage solution customers are clamoring for.

“The architecture is looking at micro-segmentation and running containers on your storage array—that’s what the industry wants. That’s going to make complexity go away and it’s going to increase speed from the application side,” said Ayoub.

Dell Technologies said PowerStore is seven times faster and has three times lower latency response times compared with its Unity XT, due to end-to-end NVMe design and support for Intel Optane storage-class memory. Businesses can save money and space with PowerStore’s always-on intelligent deduplication and compression, with a guaranteed 4:1 data reduction without compromising performance.

New Anytime Upgrade options allow customers to upgrade their PowerStore system at any time in the contract. The combination of Anytime Upgrades and PowerStore’s adaptable architecture marks an end to the traditional cycle of disruptive platform migration, according to Dell Technologies.

“We will have seamless migration to PowerStore for a variety of all of our different existing storage portfolio offerings,” said Gordon. “Not only will it be a seamless experience, but it will also be the last migration that customers will ever do.

Because once they’re in the platform, they will never have to migrate again.” 

NEW STORAGE HEIGHTS

5 Ways Channel Partners ‘Are Going To Win More’ With PowerStore Dell Technologies kept partners top of mind as it was developing the new PowerStore midrange all-flash array, which is aimed at driving channel storage sales to new heights.

“PowerStore is containerized, 100 percent programmable, has scale-up and scale-out capabilities, you can swap and upgrade controllers in and across families nondisruptively.

There’s [also] differentiated VMware integration, industryleading performance and efficiency—when you think about all those things, that’s what the partners are asking for,” said Scott Millard, senior vice president, specialty sales, global channel, alliances and OEM at Dell Technologies. “There are absolutely no competitors who can deliver all of those things.”

In an interview with CRN, the 20-year Dell EMC veteran breaks down everything Dell Technologies is bringing to the table with PowerStore.

1.

PowerStore Is Part Of All ‘Existing Channel Storage Acceleration Programs’ PowerStore is going to qualify for all of our existing channel storage acceleration programs including our Competitive Swap incremental incentives, where we had a record year last year in qualified competitive swaps. Also for our New Business incremental incentives, our Partner Preferred account incremental incentives as well as our Tech Refresh incentives, these are all incentives on top of our partner base rebates. If we look at Tech Refresh alone, that’s where we are providing partners qualified leads for modernization and then we’re paying them incremental dollars when they convert those leads. Last year we had a record year, close to $2.5 billion in partner Tech Refresh, so that one program alone is delivering more leads in revenue to our partners than many of our competitors’ total revenue.

2. More Partner Incentives, ‘Smart Bundles Priced To Win’

One area we do need to improve on is at the lower end of the midrange market. So for entry and low-entry midrange, we’re launching some additional partner incentives that include simplified product positioning and ‘Smart Bundles’ priced to win. For a partner with a deal registration, [it includes] deeper discounting and price advantages over both direct and a nondeal-registration partner. We’re streamlining deal registration to sub-eight hours.

3.

New Tools Help Partners Automate ‘Entire Migrations’ Directly From PowerStore Manager Wizard We’re offering more ways to migrate than ever including new native tools that let you automate entire migrations

BY MARK HARANAS

directly from the PowerStore Manager wizard. Customers can complete a nondisruptive array-to-array transfer from existing Dell EMC midrange offerings ... in less than 10 clicks.

PowerStore can be deployed as a stand-alone appliance and will also be available for our PowerOne autonomous infrastructure and the Dell Technologies Cloud platform.

The new storage platform is covered by our Future-Proof Loyalty Program, which provides choice, predictability and investment protection, as well as our Dell Technologies On Demand program that offers flexible pay-per-use options.

4. ‘Thousands’ Of Partner Enablement Activities On Tap

If we look at the marketing tools that we’re providing partners with PowerStore available from our Digital Demand Generation Center, we have our digital activation packs, which include partner-branded emails, partner-branded social media, web content and partner-branded campaign building. We have thousands of partner enablement activities scheduled in May. Partners are going to be able to earn credentials toward their Dell Technologies Partner Program tier status as part of our virtual training. We’ve never really done that before. So the virtual training we’ll be driving in May will allow partners to earn credentials toward their tier status in the program.

Through our Partner Academy training program, we leverage the same sales and presales enablement content for our partners that we train our own sales and presales teams on. It’s called Dell Technologies Sales University [DTSU].

We’re taking the same badges and training content we use in DTSU and making that available in the Partner Academy for PowerStore. Last year, over 10,000 partner system engineers participated in our Heroes technical events. PowerStore will be featured in our Heroes events globally starting in May.

Scott Millard SVP, Specialty Sales, Global Channel, Alliances, OEM

5. New ‘Co-Delivery’ Offering Highlights Importance Of

Services To Partners We know how important services are to our partners’ profitability and relevance with their customers. So we have our architecture and deployment certifications available as well as co-delivery, which is a relatively new offering.

It allows our partners to sell our deployment services but actually deliver those services themselves using our tools and automation. Partners then get reimbursed and get paid rebates for delivering those services.

Partners are going to win more with Dell. We’re bringing a product to market that they really designed with us, aimed squarely at the fastest-growing part of the storage array market—midrange and all-flash. We’re excited to get these training sessions, demand generation and pipelines started. 

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C H AN N E L ADVO CATE

Bill Scannell: Why Dell Technologies ‘Stands To Benefit The Most’ In a Data-Driven, Multi-Cloud World

BY MARK HARANAS

Bill Scannell knows that Dell Technologies and its channel partners are in prime position to capitalize on the explosion of data in a multi-cloud world as businesses strive to digitally transform.

Scannell, who became Dell Technologies’ president of global sales and customer operations in February, has been instrumental in growing Dell Technologies, and EMC before that, for more than three decades.

“As exciting as the last 34 years have been, these next 10 years are going to be unbelievable,” he said. In an interview with CRN ahead of the coronavirus outbreak being declared a pandemic, Scannell explains why Dell Technologies—along with its partners—will shine over the next decade.

How big are the partner opportunities ahead in a datadriven world?

The two most important assets for any company are your people and your data. Data is growing a lot faster than the people. How you monetize that data, leverage that data and run AI across that data is going to allow you to make better decisions. In a digital world, it all comes down to the data—and it’s not just the data you have within your organization, it’s the data your partners have and the data that’s in the market in general. If partners can start to pull it all together and [use] that data to make business decisions, you’re going to benefit.

This data has to be stored somewhere. We’re the No. 1 storage company and No. 1 server company in the world, and data sitting on storage without compute attached to it is no good. You can’t run AI and [machine learning] against the data without having all the components that we offer today.

So as data continues to explode, the company that stands to benefit the most from it is Dell Technologies, and our partners.

How is Dell differentiating itself in terms of cloud-native apps in a multi-cloud world?

Every one of our customers is trying to transform digitally, which means they have to write new cloud-native applications to meet customers in new ways and new locations. With my Pivotal Cloud Foundry platform, I can help them write these applications in an agile manner and deploy them in the cloud of their choice, whether it’s a public cloud or on-premises cloud. We give them the opportunity to move from cloud to cloud because they’re developed in the correct platform. They didn’t use Amazon’s platform or Microsoft’s platform—they used a vendor-agnostic platform called Pivotal Cloud Foundry so I can move it from cloud to

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SPECIAL ISSUE 2020

cloud or run those applications on-premises.

Multi-cloud and IT transformation is a huge opportunity for us. Customers are trying to figure out what application they want to run in the public cloud and which ones are better run on-premises. We have partnerships with all the public cloud providers, but we have a very strong opinion that customers who are well-run and efficient can do it a lot more cost effectively on-premises than going to a public cloud—anywhere from 30 [percent] to 40 percent less expensive if they modernize their IT and take advantage of some of the assets we have with VMware.

You’ve been working with the channel for over 30 years.

Can you talk about your direct versus indirect strategy leading the new unified commercial and enterprise sales organization?

I wouldn’t say direct versus indirect, I’d say direct and indirect. It’s not an either/or—it’s a both. I’m no stranger to the partner community. From my early days as a sales rep for EMC, I’ve leveraged partners. Around 2012, we had already created a commercial division within EMC and said, ‘We’re going to go through the channel.’ Then in the enterprise we said, ‘We have a lot of uncovered accounts.

Let’s leverage the channel to go after that.’ We put together rules of engagement. There are customers that want to buy directly from us and we’ve had direct relationships for a long time, and where that exists, we should do that to give the customers what they want. A lot of customers want to work with their trusted channel partners. When that’s the case, we will work with the channel partner. We have reach in the market now with our channel organization that is immense. I don’t care what product it is, if they find an opportunity and bring it to me—guess what? I’m going to let them register that opportunity. We’re going to work with

them and make sure they’re wildly successful. It’s a great combination when everyone wins.

Can you talk about the relationship with VMware as VMware works with some of your competitors?

You’re now leading Dell’s massive client business. What’s your sales strategy around PCs?

VMware still has an ecosystem of partners, some of whom are my competitors, but their No. 1 partner in the world is Dell Technologies. We’re responsible for a large percentage of their revenue. The partnership is incredibly important for Dell and VMware because our customers are demanding it. However, if a customer says, ‘Dell, with all due respect, I want to buy VMware but I might buy one of your competitors’ compute,’ then we have to be able to step back and say, ‘VMware, go with the business.’ Then they’re a Dell customer through VMware. And once they’re a customer with either our VMware or our client or storage, we have a great opportunity to go in and cross-sell all the lines of business. Every one of those customers who have bought a Dell product—whether it’s VMware or client, etc.—they have a good experience with us. The doors are open to go in and talk about other products, other opportunities and how we can help with other problems they have throughout their organization. The best way to do that in a lot of accounts is to find the trusted channel partner. One plus one equals three when we get with our channel partners. It’s easy to go and exceed our customers’ expectations.

We’re always changing and always tweaking. When you stand still, everyone figures out what your plot is and they sell around it. Customers can buy directly from us, we can supply it to them anywhere in the world, but often a channel partner has a strong relationship with a customer and can sell them our clients. The market is consolidating. There are really three of us that mean anything in that space and then there’s a longtail of other vendors who supply PCs. Channel partners … want to figure out who the winners are going to be as the market consolidates. So they come to us with an opportunity to say, ‘Hey I have a customer who is not buying Dell. I’d like to introduce you into the account and register the opportunity.’ Guess what? That’s incremental business for us and we’re going to work with the channel partner. Where it makes sense to partner in the client business, we’ll partner.

What were the behind-the-scenes discussions when EMC purchased VMware in 2004 and then Dell purchased the company in 2016?

EMC bought VMware for around $600 million. Their valuation eventually became north of $60 billion. When we first acquired them, I remember [former EMC CEO] Joe Tucci saying, ‘Hey Bill, we’re going to buy this great company.’ I said, ‘I know them, it’s a great acquisition.’ He said, ‘But we’re going to work with all your competitors. We’re going to let VMware partner with NetApp and with IBM and with HP and with Dell,’ who was a competitor at the time ‘and we want you guys to take a back seat and let VMware build an ecosystem to build their business.’ And we did that. It was the right thing to do. When Michael [Dell] acquired EMC, he said, ‘The time is right for us to embrace VMware around having you guys give them more reach into the market.’

Quite frankly, you can’t deliver IT transformation without VMware. You can’t deliver digital transformation without VMware. You can’t do security transformation or workforce [transformation] without VMware. VMware has over 90 percent of the server virtualization market. They’re a leader in software-defined storage and a leader in software-defined networking.

What mark does Bill Scannell want to leave on Dell Technologies?

I would like for Dell Technologies to be better when I leave than when I took over the position. I’m blessed with an incredible team of leaders and sales folks around the world.

I look at my peer group with [COO and Vice Chairman] Jeff Clarke, [Chief Customer Officer] Karen Quintos, [Chief Marketing Officer] Allison Dew—I think everybody at Dell sells. There are 30,000 official [sales] folks, but we have almost 170,000 employees that every day are trying to exceed customer expectations and help out any way they can. So whether it’s the admin answering the phone or the presales person helping or the delivery person or the marketing person creating brand awareness—whatever the function is, everyone has a common goal of creating technology to improve human progress. That’s our strategy as Dell Technologies. Make this place a better world. Help companies do cancer research quicker, feed the hungry, build homes for the homeless. We’ve got this great vision as a company. It’s great being part of it. 

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Dell Will Come Out Of Coronavirus Pandemic ‘Stronger And More Effective Than Ever’ Joyce Mullen, president of global channel, embedded and edge solutions, says the pandemic has changed almost everything as to how we go about our home and business lives. What it hasn’t changed, however, is Dell’s commitment to partners. ‘We are absolutely ensuring that we have their backs,’ Mullen says in an interview with CRN.

BY MARK HARANAS

How have partners stepped up to the plate to help customers through the coronavirus pandemic?

There are a whole bunch of new skills, capabilities and infrastructure design elements that many customers hadn’t really considered or hadn’t prioritized before this.

Our partners are filling in those gaps. They’re helping them figure out how to move from where they are today to where they want to be, which is obviously a more flexible operating environment that works when people are remote. Those skills and capabilities to understand how to do that—from web conferencing to networking gear and the infrastructure to back it up—all of that is in the wheelhouse of partner capabilities.

We also know that for education, government or health-care institutions there is some very specific knowledge required to support those environments in this new world order. So the expertise that our partners have around those industries and specific requirements is invaluable at this stage.

Coronavirus has accelerated remote working initiatives. How prepared is Dell Technologies?

We’ve had a work-from-home strategy at Dell for about 10 years. ... We have the opportunity and advantage to practice on our own team members with what we’ve been putting together now for customers for the last several years, but obviously at an expedited pace in the last couple of months.

I’m also really proud of our supply chain team.

Nobody anticipated this demand, but we have increased capacity in our supply chain and have been working through supply chain scenarios over the past year because of all the other things going on— everything from tariffs to tornadoes. So our supply chain is strong and resilient to handle this. We have a bunch of capability in that space that is quite critical and it’s a skill set we’ll continue to build out.

How are you enabling partners to have effective work-from-home strategies?

We have some best practices that we put together

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to share with partners and customers about how all of that works. Everybody is trying to figure out how to make sure equipment gets into the hands of the people who need it.

For example, the first step was for every student to try to get a Chromebook. After a while, you realize you might need to build out capabilities more effectively. So you might need a bigger monitor depending on your job or maybe a docking station or more support. We’ve been fielding questions around that and put together some good solutions including VDI [virtual desktop infrastructure]. Now we’re hearing about interest in business continuity and security because the threat surface is now bigger so [we’re focusing on how] we make sure our teams are protected and our data is protected through a broader threat surface. I feel we have a good handle on what it takes to work effectively from home. We’re sharing that through the bundles and solutions we’ve been building for our customers, and we’re backing that up with a very diverse and capable supply chain.

What does the future look like for Dell Technologies and for your partners after the coronavirus pandemic?

We’re hosting digital Partner Advisory Boards, digital CTO events, our Heroes training events are better attended than ever before because of digital access.

We’re very optimistic about how we continue this type of digital engagement going forward. We are focused now more than ever on helping our partners build digital marketing capabilities.

We’re thinking there’s some good that can come out of this. We’re making sure we’re listening really effectively and putting together the right kind of process and programmatic changes to demonstrate we’re here to help them. How can we help partners today, but then how do we empower them and also build pipeline, solutions and capabilities together for the future? Because there will be an end to this. The idea is that we will come out the other side more efficient, stronger and more effective than ever. 

Deliver efficiency everywhere Dell can help keep your client’s workforce productive no matter where they are.

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Precision 7740

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PRO M I S ES KE PT

in working in these solution areas, that those partners are well-known to our internal sales force to collaborate on deals.

They’ll also get early access to new services competencies as they become available.

The Dell Technologies Partner Program is largely designed in terms of our requirements around partner revenue thresholds to achieve tiers as well as their certifications. What we want to really make sure with these new competencies is we have a program structure that is traditionally oriented, but then complement it in ways to recognize partners through branding and additional access to training in order to recognize those partners that provide broader end-to-end capabilities across our portfolio.

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3 Ways Dell Technologies Is ‘Raising The Bar’ Across Its Partner Program

BY MARK HARANAS

Darren Sullivan SVP, Global Partner Strategy, Operations

In Darren Sullivan’s nearly 20 years at Dell Technologies, he’s never been more bullish on the company’s channel strategy as a slew of new offerings are being added to the Dell Technologies Partner Program.

“In light of the things we’ve teed up in terms of program design, how we’re improving the partner experience—I’ve never been more optimistic about what the potential is for our partners,” said Sullivan, senior vice president of global partner strategy and operations. “We are really raising the bar here. Our tagline of ‘Simple, Predictable, Profitable’—those aren’t just words. We take those to heart. I feel like we’ve never been better at being able to fulfill that promise to partners with the things that we’re doing this year.”

In an interview with CRN, Sullivan details three elements that are elevating the Dell Technologies Partner Program.

1.

Recognizing Partners With ‘End-To-End Capabilities’ We’re announcing our new Proven Partner Services Competency. This is going to recognize partners with comprehensive proven capabilities to design and deliver Dell Technologies infrastructure and solutions end to end. These competencies will be initially available in two solution areas: data center infrastructure, which includes alignment across server, networking, storage and data protection competencies; and hyperconverged infrastructure, which includes HCI, networking, server and data protection competencies. So we’re really excited about this addition to the program to really recognize those partners who have those comprehensive end-to-end capabilities for our solutions.

A partner with a competency will be prioritized in our ‘Find A Partner’ capability in our partner portal. The goal is to give them priority access to leads from our internal sales force. So we want to make sure this is a strong go-to-market engine so that partners who have these capabilities and are successful

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Revamping The Solutions Configurator Tool Provides ‘Immediate Benefits’ To Partners We made an effort this year to integrate our quoting platform across server, networking and storage. We’re using our Solutions Configurator tool to bring together the Dell EMC storage products into the same platform as we provide server and networking to partners. But it’s not just about bringing these products together, we’re also enhancing the capabilities for our partners in everything from deal registration to orders.

There are immediate benefits just in terms of being able to work in one tool, which makes it easier for our partners to work with us so they’re not having to access multiple tools that are set up differently with different processes and policies and so forth, but instead one consistent solution for our ISG [Infrastructure Solutions Group] portfolio.

We’re also going to be providing much greater pricing transparency in the tool so when you’re a partner who has an approved deal registration, it’s integrated with your quote and we’re able to show our partners what their pricing advantage is on that particular opportunity versus all other partners who don’t have a registration.

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Eliminating Quarterly Growth Targeting Process Drives ‘Simpler Approach’ We have eliminated our quarterly growth targeting process for our resellers. In the past, they received a target across seven lines of business, four times a year across all of our medal-tiered partners. It was a really complicated and a not very predicable component of our program. So we have chosen to eliminate that to drive a simpler approach.

We also simplified our programs’ product rebate structure from seven lines of business with two or three product categories within each line of business to just three lines of business: client, server and storage. It makes it easier for partners to understand and operationalize as opposed to maintaining rates across all of those elements.

We’ve increased our program automation so that it’s more transparent to partners on what is rebate-eligible in the quoting process as opposed to after-the-quarter reconciliation. What we’ve introduced on the quoting tool is visibility up front so a partner will know if they’re eligible to receive rebates on that particular quote or not. What that provides is advanced notice so that they don’t go through the whole selling cycle and not realize that, after end of quarter, it might not have been rebate-eligible. So we’re providing that visibility right up front so that partners know what’s eligible or what is not for rebate earnings. 

Delivering A New Era For Dell Technologies PCs OPTIPLEX 7070 ULTRA

5G-Ready Latitude 9510

Dell Technologies’ new breed of all-inone PCs for the workplace was launched last year with the OptiPlex 7070 Ultra, offering a form factor small enough to fit entirely inside the back of a monitor to provide a zero-footprint desktop.

Dubbed the world’s most flexible commercial desktop offering, the OptiPlex 7070 Ultra enables customers to upgrade their display and PC separately while supporting up to three displays.

Dell’s OptiPlex 7070 Ultra is just 0.78 of an inch thick with a width of 3.8 inches and a height of 10 inches—for a total volume of only 26.6 cubic inches.

That small size enables the desktop to essentially disappear into the back of a display stand. Processor options consist of eighth-generation Intel Whiskey Lake processors, topping out at the Core i7-8665U (quad-core, clock speed of up to 4.8GHz). The Core i7-8665U and one other available processor for the Ultra, the Core i5-8365U, also include Intel vPro. For memory, the product offers a range of options, starting at 4 GB of RAM and reaching up to a massive 64 GB of RAM. On storage, up to 1 TB of NVMe SSD and 2 TB HDD are available on the OptiPlex 7070 Ultra.

Latitude 5300 2-in-1

Latitude 7220 Rugged Extreme Tablet

The Latitude 5300 2-in-1 Chromebook Enterprise features a 13.3-inch touch screen with up to 255 nits of brightness and durable Corning Gorilla Glass.

The device maintains portability with a starting weight of 3 pounds and a thickness of 0.76 of an inch. On performance, processor choices go up to a quad-core, eighth-generation Intel Core i7 and the notebook supports up to 32 GB of RAM. Battery life reaches up to 14 hours on a charge. The convertible laptop offers capabilities aimed at simplified deployment and IT management within businesses including Chrome Enterprise for multilayered security and support

along with an enhanced Google Admin console for Chrome OS.

Dubbed the lightest and most powerful 12-inch fully rugged tablet on the market, Dell’s Latitude 7220 Rugged Extreme was built to keep users connected in the most extreme environments. Configuration options include the latest eighth-generation Intel Core processors with up to 2 TB of performance and reliable PCIe solidstate drives. Features include a 1,000-nit FHD display with anti-glare coating with glove-responsive and multi-touch capabilities. The Latitude 7220 Rugged Extreme has integrated security such as a built-in infrared camera with Windows Hello facial recognition with optional fingerprint, contactless and contacted smart-card readers.

At CES this year, Dell Technologies unveiled its new Latitude 9510 notebook with a 5G-ready design, built-in artificial intelligence and what Dell says is the longest battery life of any 15-inch business PC. The Latitude 9510 offers advanced connectivity with support for both Wi-Fi 6 and high-speed 5G mobile broadband. Key AI-powered features include ExpressResponse, which assesses user preferences and taps machine learning to more quickly launch frequently used applications while also boosting application performance. The 0.67-inch-thick Latitude 9510 stands out with up to 30 hours of battery life on a charge. Available both as a 2-in-1 or a clamshell model, the notebook includes a 15-inch display with FHD resolution and slim bezels around the InfinityEdge screen.

XPS 13 Dell introduced its new XPS 13 this year, redesigned to provide smaller bezels around the InfinityEdge display that allow for an impressive screen-to-body ratio of 91.5 percent. The display size is 13.4 inches in an 11-inch form factor, while the aspect ratio was changed to 16:10 for a larger workspace area on the screen. The display is now 25 percent brighter with deeper keys and a 17 percent larger touchpad. The XPS 13 offers 10th-generation Intel Core processors for enhanced performance and longer battery life. The body is made from a combination of machined aluminum, carbon fiber, woven-glass fiber and hardened Corning Gorilla Glass.

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5 Power Products Accelerating Digital Transformation PowerOne Autonomous Infrastructure

Dell Technologies is taking converged infrastructure to the next level with its PowerOne autonomous infrastructure, combining all of Dell’s flagship infrastructure products together with VMware vSphere in a single architecture wrapped in a new built-in, outcomeoriented automation engine. The special

PowerProtect X400 Data Management Appliance To p r o t e c t , manage and recover data at scale in on-premises, virtualized and public cloud environments comes the PowerProtect X400 multidimensional appliance with PowerProtect software. The software delivers data protection, replication and reuse as well as Software-as-a-Service-based management and self-service capabilities that give data owners the autonomy to control backup and recovery operations. Available as a hybrid or all-flash data management appliance, the PowerProtect X400 can scale up with grow-in-place capacity expansion and scale-out compute power and capacity.

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PowerMax 8000 Storage Array

sauce in the autonomous infrastructure is its built-in intelligent PowerOne Controller automation engine, which can automate thousands of tasks with the ability to have vSphere clusters available for workloads in just a few clicks. The PowerOne Controller uses a Kubernetes microservices architecture and Ansible workflows to automate the configuration, provisioning and life-cycle management of the components to create a customermanaged Data Center as a Service.

PowerOne contains the company’s infrastructure product lines including PowerEdge MX modular servers, Dell’s open networking switches, PowerMax storage and PowerProtect data protection along with VMware’s vSphere, NSX and vCenter, which are all deployed, managed and maintained holistically. The architecture provides a single system-level API to give users the control to create businessobjective pools of resources. The API can be tied into existing tools such as service portals to deliver programmable—versus manual—operations. This type of infrastructure as code is designed to eliminate the need to log into individual component management systems.

Dubbed the world’s fastest storage array, the PowerMax 8000 provides end-to-end NVMe, storage-class memory and massive consolidation for mission-critical workloads. The future-proof storage array scales to up to 4 PB of effective capacity with global deduplication and compression. The PowerMax delivers enterprise performance density with up to 7.5 million IOPS per rack and 187,000 IOPS per rack unit, as well as up to 350-GBps bandwidth. With PowerMax, customers can consolidate block, file and mainframe workloads and real-time analytics apps on a single array. The product has a plugin for VMware’s vRealize Orchestrator to automate workflows.

PowerEdge R940xa Rack Server

PowerSwitch Z9332F-ON Switch

The global server market-share leader’s powerful foursocket PowerEdge R940xa server is designed to accelerate applications to deliver real-time decisions for GPU database workloads. It combines up to four CPUs with four GPUs in a 1:1 ratio and enables low latency with direct-attached NVMe drives. The R940xa has mixand-match capacity and performance options with up to 32 drives as well as RESTful API for developers. The server tackles performance bottlenecks with improved response times and reduces statistical errors. It is optimized for workloads that are compute-layer-heavy and leverages CPU RAM to move data into GPU RAM for faster computation.

The PowerSwitch Z9332F-ON is a 400GbE open networking switch designed for high-performance workloads. The switch was purpose-built for data center networks with intensive compute and storage traffic, such as high-performance computing, artificial intelligence and streaming video. The compact PowerSwitch Z9332F-ON provides density of either 32 ports of 400 GbE or 128 ports of 100 GbE in a 1RU design. The product can come with third-party software or the company’s OS10 Enterprise Edition networking operating system that enables Layer 2 and 3 switching and routing protocols with integrated IP services, quality of service and automation features.

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Executives Dell Technologies Powers Real Transformation And Innovation

With revenues of $91 billion and 157,000 team members, Dell Technologies is one of the world’s largest IT companies serving the needs of global corporations and governments to small businesses and consumers. Our partners have access to the industry’s most innovative technology and services portfolio spanning from edge to core to cloud and truly extraordinary, world-class partner programs. Dell Technologies is the one partner that can offer customers every kind of technology solution and service needed to take their business to the next level. And the one after that.

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I N N O VATO R S

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DISRUPTERS

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Michael Dell

Chairman and CEO

Our partners are

critical to our success and we thank you for the trust you place in us. Dell Technologies will continue to

innovate the most

comprehensive solutions to help you, and your

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President, Global Channel, OEM and IoT TOP

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Rohit Ghai CEO, RSA

Jeff Clarke

Vice Chairman

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Pat Gelsinger CEO, VMware

Cheryl Cook

Senior Vice President, Global Partner Marketing

CHANNEL SALES LEADERS

Joyce Mullen

MOST INFLUENTIAL

CHANNEL SALES LEADERS

Congratulations to Michael, Joyce, Jeff, Cheryl, Rohit, Pat and Jenni for this prestigious honor and thanks to our partners for delivering exceptional solutions to our collective customers. Together, we are achieving amazing results and transforming businesses.

MOST INFLUENTIAL

At Dell Technologies, our purpose is to drive human progress through greater access to better technology, for people with big ideas around the world. Our success is a function of more profound, more meaningful engagements with our partners. By working together, we will continue to help organizations and individuals build their digital future and transform how they work and live. And we’re very grateful for the trust that you place in us.

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customers, succeed in the digital future.

Jenni Flinders

Global Channel Chief, VMware

Join the Dell Technologies partner program for an experience that is simple, predictable and profitable. www.delltechnologies.com/partner

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Already a leader and pioneer in electronics recycling, Dell Technologies commits to protecting the planet, reducing our impact and relying on renewable resources. Now and in the generations to come.

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