Dell, SonicWall Deal: HTG Leader Advises Calm, Waiting
It’s been a week since Dell announced plans to acquire SonicWall, an MSP favorite and a maker of firewalls, secure wireless solutions, secure remote access and more. And for some MSPs, the fact that Dell is the new owner hasn’t been such an easy pill to swallow.
HTG Peer Group founder Arlin Sorensen noted in his blog last week that he’s received a volume of emails about the Dell, SonicWall deal from MSPs concerned about what it all will mean.
Indeed, Sorensen tells MSPmentor, “SonicWall has the greatest penetration of any security vendor in the firewall space by a significant amount. They were an early sponsor [of HTG] and have aggressively trained and invested in HTG and the results have followed. It is safe to say that HTG members have had a strong relationship with them based on mutual investment by both HTG and SonicWall.”
So it’s not a surprise that SonicWall’s CEO reached out to Sorensen last week to answer any questions he had. In his blog post, Sorensen puts it this way:
“I got a call from Matt Medeiros who is CEO at SonicWall. He had Marvin Blough, who leads sales there, on the phone with him and wanted to catch up with me about the announcement Tuesday that Dell was buying their company. I have to say that these guys are a class act. They didn’t call to put a spin on what was happening and try to sway me into the Dell camp.
“I’ve had my share of challenges with Dell over the years in how they have worked in the SMB market, and have made some strong statements about their approach in the marketplace. But during our call we were able to talk facts and the background on the deal. I absolutely trust the SonicWall leadership team – and am not making any rash decisions on what may happen.”
Sorensen points out that “relationships are the core of life and business. They are hard to build and harder to maintain.” Therefore, it’s unwise to throw them away without proper reflection. Basically, we don’t know what is going to happen yet.
Check out the blog and some of the comments under it, including some from concerned partners and one from Dell Channel Chief Greg Davis, who also posted a comment on MSPmentor.
There was this scorpion that wanted to cross the steam. The frog put her hands on her hips and exclaimed “Oh HELL NO. I saw what happened the last time to that fool who took you across the river!” The scorpion earnestly replied to her “Miss Frog, I’ve reformed! I’ve changed my ways. And I really need to get across that river, I won’t sting frogs anymore!” Time and the devil will tell.
Unicorn,
We’ve had some great conversations over on The VAR Guy. Thanks for jumping over to MSPmentor. I’m keeping an open mind on Dell-SonicWall. But I also value the healthy reminders you’ve offered me and The VAR Guy readership over the years. So your point is noted.
-jp
I think this is a great opportunity for DELL and SonicWALL. I got thinking the other day and really thinking about putting a blog post up about this on my MSP Business Blog. Although many of us are channel focused and want the health of channel to continue I really don’t think that end customers really care about the health of the IT channel. I see this with many of my internal IT professionals I work with. They constantly tell me that they would rather deal direct versus a reseller. Wow, that was an eye opener. I can only begin to believe that this holds true for most small business owners as well. They don’t care that we are upset SonicWALL was gobbled up my DELL.
However, what they do care about, is a tech firm who understands their business challenges and offers solutions to resolve their pain and then take care of them. So my advice to MSPs is not to worry about the collapse of the SonicWALL channel and focus on providing the right services to the clients and perfecting their skills around client service and attention to the needs of those who write the cheque.
Cheers
Stuart Crawford
MSP Business Consultant
Ulistic Inc.
I would agree with Unicorn on this one. Sonicwall being gobbled by Dell is not a good thing for the channel – and as history has shown time and time again, what isn’t good for the channel, is usually not good for businesses that rely on a trusted advisorship relationship to guide their business in making the right IT choices to make the operational side of their business help them grow. At the end of the day, all that Dell cares about is selling boxes – whether they are blue, black or grey, it’s all about selling more and more boxes. You can’t change that DNA with ease. Look how long it took for IBM to change from a box-pusher to a services company. I am glad that FAR is still with one of the few independant firewall manufacturers left in the industry. That is…until they get bought too? It’s a fluid industry right now, anything can happen :).
O.
There’s some irony in your comment. IBM shifted from box pusher to services company, and IBM Global Services wound up competing with many service providers along the way. So the transition from box pusher to service provider isn’t always a good thing. It’s only recent that IBM has reached out to MSPs in a big way…
-jp
actually my intention wasn’t that what IBM did (migrating from box to services) was a good thing for the channel – I was trying to say that Dell is the business of pushing boxes, and that it doesn’t care what those boxes do (storage – security – paper plane making). IBM, on the other hand, really went through the grinder to become a services company and divest itself of the “box pushing” aura. The analogy I was trying to make was, Dell trying to “pretend” it is channel-centric is a hard-sell, no matter what company they acquire. You can’t buy channel-centricness – it’s earned, not purchased.
Maybe I am going around in circles and not making sense…:)
O.
Osama: Thanks for coming back to the conversation and clarifying. Got it.
-jp
Joe, Thanks for appreciating my weird comments over the years. I wonder about stock too. Sonicwall will probably keep building their own boxes in San Jose/Phoenix? but now things might change. The distribution channel might be interesting too. I am watching this from afar.
Osama, it made my day to see somebody agree with this Unicorn on something. Happy Friday! 🙂
Unicorn: Good point on distribution. We’ll watch to see if there are pipeline adjustments.
-jp
HEROware has been a Dell OEM now for over 1.5 years, and for the most part they are a great partner. Their products are solid, well priced and the delivery is right on par with the others. As far as Dell buying some of our competitors in the BDR space, it’s understandable that Dell has finally jumped in the Mamp;A fray instead of continuing to watch Cisco, HP and Microsoft gobble up companies. I am surprised it has taken so long.
Good luck to Sonicwall, I hope it turns out better than a few recent purchases like Cisco’s acquisition of Flip!
Fred Mayne
HEROware
Fred@10: Did I ever mention that I purchased about 10 Flips the day Cisco killed that business? I stockpiled because I love Flip…
-jp