Dell EMC Launches 2019 Partner Program Focused on Growth

Dell EMC on Wednesday formally launched its 2019 partner program, making refinements rather than major changes and addressing the continued evolution of its go-to-market program, new storage initiatives and operational efficiencies.  

Dell EMC’s Joyce Mullen

Global Dell EMC partners drove $49 billion in delivered orders last year. Joyce Mullen, president, global channel, OEM and IoT Solutions at Dell EMC, wants to drive that figure to $70 billion. Keeping that in mind, the company channel chief outlined the partner’s path to profitability in four areas: expand and grow; deliver transformational solutions; accelerate storage; and attach to increase value. 

She also noted Dell EMC’s plans to help partners achieve more this year.

“Make it easier for you to grow your business with us, fast track your ability to deliver transformational solutions, taking advantage of all of the capabilities that Dell Technologies’ family of brands offers, and embracing and monetizing emerging technologies,” Mullen said.

Today’s news follows a partner-priorities push that the company outlined in October. In particular, Dell EMC wanted to close out the year with a big push to gain market share in storage.  

While fourth-quarter figures aren’t yet available, Mullen discussed channel-specific third-quarter results, beginning with a 21 percent year-over-year (YOY), increase in channel order revenue and more than 15,000 new and reactivated customers. Other figures include a 38 percent YOY increase in server revenue, 13 percent increase in client revenue, and 12 percent uptick in storage revenue. 

“The average number of lines of business – storage, servers and networking [and so on] – being sold by partners was up by 10 percent,” said Mullen. “This growth is a testament to the investments that you’re making in our business.” 

Dell EMC’s Darren Sullivan

Darren Sullivan, senior vice president global partner strategy and business, addressed partner-program design and updates for 2019. He outlined enhancements in program requirements, all of which are specific to the vendor’s solution-provider track.

The program has three tiers – gold, platinum and titanium – with requirements in each tier for total revenue, services revenue and training. Last year, the training requirement was simplified — one for gold, two for platinum and three for titanium. Going forward, service-delivery competencies will count toward program requirements. So, earning any product, solution or services-delivery competency will count toward next year’s competency requirements. 

Expect to see the launch of new competencies and trainings – such as a new data-analytics solution competency – throughout the year.

Sullivan also said that for gold-tier partners, the company is cutting in half the number of individuals required to complete training — one sales and one systems engineer. 

“We hope this change allows more partners to achieve gold status and financial benefits,” he said. 

Sullivan said revenue requirements have been simplified to a single path, and the requirement to sell multiple lines of business was removed. He also noted that the company is extending its tier credit multipliers throughout the year. 

“Each dollar of storage and data protection revenue will count three times toward tier credit, and hyperconverged infrastructure revenue will count one-and-a-half times. With these multipliers in place for a full year, you can really accelerate your status in our program,” he said. 

How can partners make money? It’s about benefits.

The current rebate structure will continue. What will change, based on partner feedback, is the …