Dell EMC Channel Leader: We Sold Companies And Acquired EMC For A Reason, Here's Our Channel Blueprint For The Future

Partner Blueprint For The Future

Dell Technologies is undertaking a multi-year channel initiative with the overall goal of enabling partners to easily build and sell holistic solutions across Dell, Dell EMC, Pivotal, RSA, SecureWorks, Virtusteam and VMware. Dell EMC global channel chief Joyce Mullen said the $80 billion company is investing heavily in making this a reality with consistent "negotiations" between leaders of each brand.

"The companies under the Dell Technologies umbrella are not accidental," said Mullen, in an interview with CRN. "We sold a bunch of companies. We merged with EMC. We sold off those companies that we didn’t feel fit inside this overall opportunity. And the opportunity is to go after four transformations: digital transformation, IT transformation, workforce transformation, security transformation. We have to make it easy for our partners to put these pieces together."

Mullen talks to CRN about the future of Dell Technologies channel and what partners should be doing today.

Dell Technologies World was sort of the coming out party for a unified channel enablement strategy. Why now?

There's these massive transformations happening in the world and our customers need a ton of help. So digital transformation is obviously a really big deal, but then there's IT transformation, workforce transformation and security transformation. The reason we have the companies that we have under the Dell Technologies umbrella is because of how they all fit together. Now if you think about what our partners are doing around that, if we really want them to fast track their ability to deliver these transformations, then we got to make it easier for them to figure out how to transact, engage, buy [across Dell Technologies]."

The companies under the Dell Technologies umbrella are not accidental. We sold a bunch of companies. We merged with EMC. We sold off those companies that we didn’t feel fit inside this overall opportunity. And the opportunity is to go after four transformations: digital transformation, IT transformation, workforce transformation, security transformation. We have to make it easy for our partners to put these pieces together.

How big is the channel role going to be inside a unified Dell Technologies?

Customers are trying desperately to figure out how to deliver the outcomes that are associated with digital transformation or security transformation -- they're not too interested in how to make all those piece parts work together. So they want more of a solutions orientation. I think partners are going to be faster at putting these solutions together than we are going to be. In fact, some of them already are, but we've got to make that a whole lot easier. So all that together says, 'Ok, how do we work across these brands? How do we make it simple for our partners to transact, engage and purchase across those brands, so that they can put the pieces together for customers and deliver the outcome-oriented solution?' That's the idea.

So how are you making that happen for partners?

We've already established a framework, which is Dell Technologies and all of the various brands – and those brands [like] VMware and Pivotal will still have their own partner programs -- but this sits on top of that. What we're saying is, 'There's a couple of changes we'll be implementing.' One is the Titanium Black status, which is our highest partner status, is going to have access to a concierge-type model. They're going to have somebody that is basically an account manager that works across all of those companies. The second is, we are working on aligning the training credentials so that, if you take a hyper-converged training competency, you don’t have to take it once in the VMware program, then once in the Dell program. Or if you want to learn about kubernetes, you don’t have to take it in the Pivotal track and then take it in the VMware track. So we simplify and consolidate all of that. The next thing, which I think is really important to partners is, we will implement a solution badging structure. So when partners get really good at delivering these transformations – and we have to figure out how we define those precisely – then they're going to get a badge that says they're really good at it. Those are bragging rights. That's something they can put on their website and talk to customers about.

Will you create a program that sits across all the seven companies individual partner programs?

We're building a rewards program that makes it advantageous for our partners to put together these pieces to try to drive more cross-selling. The program is about incremental rebates and incentives. We're not going to do sort of a wholesale change. You'll just earn more money if you put together these solutions. So if you figure out how to do a bunch of cross selling, we'll reward you for that. Think about one-plus-one equals three, instead of one-plus-one equals two. So we're trying to drive our processes to support the solution orientation.

When are you expecting this 'rewards program' to become available for partners?

We try very hard to keep our program very predicable for the year. We announced the new changes to the [Dell EMC partner] program in February, and then we'll keep that consistent for the year. So the rewards will kick-in in the program next year. We might start doing some stuff in the back-half of this year as we get clearer on exactly what we're doing. It will kick into the formal program in the beginning of [next] year.

Over time, the partners who have the most capability across the most of these solutions and transformations are going to be our highest-level partners in terms of Titanium Black status. … This is why we're saying now to partners, 'Start getting smart about the transformations, start building competencies and practice capabilities.'

What investment dollars are you spending today around initiatives like simplified training and certifications across Dell Technologies?

We have a program office working on that. We're making some investments on the consulting capabilities. Then inside each of the [seven] companies, they're setting aside people to work on this process. We got to make this work for everybody. There's a lot of things we have learned from an attempt at this – for example I think from the EMC point of view from the federation programs -- so we're smarter now. We know what didn't work there. What was working there. So we are taking that into account.

When we start to clarity specifically which trainings qualify, we've got to be very respectful of -- for example Pivotal is an expert on cloud-native everything, VMware is the virtualization expert, Dell EMC is the hyper-converged infrastructure expert – so how do we make sure there's a lead who's getting the final call on the training requirements and that sort of things, but being respectful of the other teams. The whole deal around Dell Technologies is, it's got to be collaborate and it's a negotiation.

How are you getting leaders from these seven companies all on the same channel page?

When I [became Dell EMC's channel chief] here, people were talking about it and teams have been working on it for awhile. If you think of the spectrum of opportunity: one extreme is you do nothing and everybody operates independently; the other extreme is you say, 'Hey it is one channel program,' -- there are obviously issues with that. This goes back to May or June of [2017] we sort of settled on, 'Wait a second, we have to figure out a in-between plan. Somewhere where we respect the individual brands and their individual partner programs, but it's got to be better than the previous federated version because we got to drive more benefits to partners. We got to drive more capability for our customers.' That's why we're going down this middle path, and yeah, there's a whole lot of negotiations. A whole lot.

Do you see channel M&A ahead with a more solution-oriented, cross selling focus?

Our partners are all sort of thinking about their own M&A strategies depending on the goals they have. We talk to many of them about what they're thinking about. They're looking for growth opportunities. So it's either different capabilities around solution competencies or it's different capabilities from a geographical coverage or different market spaces wherever they're trying to go. That would be great if they did. We'd love that.

Does this mean the end for the traditional channel partner?

If I'm a partner, and I'm not investing in solution capabilities or I'm not investing in emerging technologies, I'm thinking I'm going to get more and more marginalized. But we have some partners who are really good at selling boxes, and if that's what they want to do, they can do that. I don’t think it will go away. But the partners who bring more value and delver those newer skills and develop those consulting practices are the ones who are going to make the most money because the customers will pay for it. Just like you're seeing in a bunch of the businesses we operate -- the commoditization of PC's is very clear, the commoditization of servers has started -- so for those reasons, you kind of got to figure out how to add value somewhere else if you still want to make the same amount of money.