Tag: Dell

Dell to build IoT division

Posted on October 12, 2017 by - News

fings-ain-t-wot-they-used-t-be-all-star-studio-cast-recordingDell Technologies is going to spend a billion dollars to create a new division focused on the Internet of Things (IoT).

As you might expect, the division will focus on developing products, research and partnerships for a field that connects everything from driverless cars, talking fridges and light bulbs to the internet.

The cash will be spread over the next three years and it will employ artificial intelligence and machine learning technology.

Michael Dell, CEO of Dell Technologies said that IoT is fundamentally changing how people live and organisations operate.

“Dell Technologies is leading the way for our customers with a new distributed computing architecture that brings IoT and artificial intelligence together in one, interdependent ecosystem from the edge to the core to the cloud. The implications for our global society will be nothing short of profound.”

The company’s new IoT division will be led by VMware CTO Ray O’Farrell. The IoT solutions division will combine its internally developed technologies with various Dell Technologies offerings.

O’Farrell said: “Dell Technologies has long seen the opportunity within the rapidly growing world of IoT, given its rich history in the edge computing market.”

“Our new IoT division will use the strength across all of Dell Technologies’ family of businesses to ensure we deliver the right solution – in combination with our vast partner ecosystem – to meet customer needs and help them deploy integrated IoT systems with greater ease.”

 

Dell EMC will be 60 percent indirect channel

Posted on October 6, 2017 by - News

michael-dell-2After making a name for itself with his direct channel, Michael Dell is going to be flogging more than 60 percent of its overall revenues through the channel in a few years

Dell EMC chief commercial officer Marius Haas told a keynote Q&A session at EMEA Canalys Channel Forum that Dell’s indirect business will become its main source of revenue in the next few years.

Michael Dell has previously said that the firm’s channel business was worth $35 billion, but Haas said that leading up to 2020, indirect sales are expected to exceed 60 percent of the firm’s overall revenues.

“When we first looked at the numbers, we said roughly in the $35bn range… we don’t have a target to say ‘this route to market is this percentage of our business or our goal. I think we will be close to 55 to 60 percent of our revenue flowing through [the channel].”

Haas conceded that faults in Dell’s deal registration process have caused some frustration among partners.

Dell had 160,000 deals registered last quarter around the globe and not all of them went flawlessly, so there are a couple of areas where its partners indicated that it needs to improve, he said.

Veritas does not think Dell’s EMC mash up was a good thing

Posted on September 21, 2017 by - News

 

img287110241024-580x358Dell’s merger with EMC sparked much mirth at its rival,  Veritas.

The wags at Veritas mashed up a picture of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and celebrity Kim Kardashian in the process to have a dig at Michael Dell’s efforts.

Mike Palmer, executive vice president and chief product officer at Veritas, used his keynote address to talk about “data monsters” and displayed six such ‘monsters’ on the big screen: Mike and Sully from Monsters, Shrek, Frankenstein’s monster, Stripe from Gremlins, the Night King from Game of Thrones and finally an image which blended the faces of Kim Jong-un and Kim Kardashian.

He said that it had created each ‘monster’ to demonstrate a different type of data threat. For Mike and Sully, Palmer said: “Some monsters learn how to add value in society, such as these guys who eventually created energy through laughter”, while the likes of Stripe transformed into something evil and were “not as well intentioned”.

The Jong-un-Kardashian mash-up was all about Dell and EMC. “I got this from Dell EMC. They went to the Kim Jong-un school of sales training, realised that sort of dictatorial hardware image isn’t what they wanted, so they mashed it up with Kim Kardashian and that is what we got.”

Kicking Pat Gelsinger says he does not work for Michael Dell

Posted on September 13, 2017 by - News

Pat-Gelsinger-300x199In a comment which would be news to his boss Michael Dell, VMware CEO Kicking Pat Gelsinger says he does not work for him.

Gelsinger was playing down the influence parent company Dell has on VMware, citing recent partnerships with Dell’s competitors as proof

The relationship between the pair has become more formal since Dell acquired EMC, which owned VMware, most recently when Dell announced it would be distributing VMware products.

Speaking at VMworld Europe in Barcelona, Gelsinger stressed that VMware remained an independent company.

“I don’t work for Michael [Dell], I work for the board of directors. We remain an independent legal company with our own route to market.”

Gelsinger said that VMware’s independence is proven by the relationships it has formed with vendors that compete with Dell.

“At VMworld US when I was announcing the HP relationship, Michael Dell was in the front row. Absolutely, we’re going to partner broadly across the ecosystem, but we’re going to accelerate the business of VMware by Dell reselling and investing more around the VMware products.”

Dell was benefiting from VMware’s ecosystem – highlighting the announcement today that Dell EMC will offer its commercial customers access to VMware products in IBM’s cloud. The partnership also sees Dell EMC’s infrastructure products added to the IBM Cloud.

“Because of VMware and our partnership with IBM, today Dell announced their partnership with IBM and that is largely as a result of the work and innovation that we were doing jointly with IBM; now it’s expanded to benefit Dell as well,” he said.

“There you see the synergies playing out: not Dell helping us, but us helping Dell.

“Overall we feel very good that the relationship is going quite strongly. We’re announcing major partnerships with other companies like Lenovo, HP, Amazon that aren’t Dell partners, but also doing more with Dell.”

Punters want fewer vendors, claims Dell

Posted on September 1, 2017 by - News

Michael Dell says that customers want fewer vendor partners and he Michael Dellknows of a company which has swallowed so many companies that they only need to deal with just one.

Dell said in an interview with Bloomberg Television at the VMworld conference in Las Vegas that one of the things that he had seen with all his business cocktail mixing is that customers actually don’t want to have more partners – they want fewer..

“We’ve seen really a fabulous response – revenue synergies greater than we thought, coming faster than we thought. Dell, EMC, VMware go together like peanut butter and chocolate,” he said.

Dell is facing pressure from cloud providers such as Amazon and Microsoft and merged with EMC last year to bring together two traditional hardware companies in one of the biggest corporate tie-ups in history, valued at about $67 billion when it was announced. As part of that deal, Michael Dell also picked up majority ownership in companies such as VMware, whose virtualisation software lets businesses cram bigger workloads onto servers. VMworld is an annual event that features that company’s latest products.

One of the issues that analyst said at the time was that it could mean that customers might not like having the “one-stop-shop” that Dell was offering. After putting all your eggs in one basket is never sensible, unless you like omelettes.

Dell is saying the opposite and customers prefer the simplicity of dealing with a monolith for everything.

Dell EMC allows top partners to buy VMware software

Posted on August 24, 2017 by - News

michael-dell-2Dell EMC’s key UK partners are testing a scheme where they can buy VMware software from the vendor.

The big idea is that the vendor will make sure they can deliver a more complete solution by allowing its level one titanium and titanium black partners get access to VMware software.

Apparently, it is something the channel wanted so partners could combine that technology with the hardware it is selling from Dell and EMC.

The latest move will not have any impact on the VMware channel partner programme and Dell EMC’s distributors have been briefed on the plans and have reportedly given it their blessing.

Michael Collins, senior vice president for Dell EMC Channel Business in EMEA, said that it had always promised partners that it would be simple, predictable and profitable and it had to respond to the demand from its largest partners to make it simpler to add VMware to a converged solution sale.

The scheme is in pilot mode for the second half of this year and being run in the UK and France in Europe as well as the US, Canada, Mexico and Brazil with plans to potentially extend it to other countries in the future.

Most of those partners that will be eligible to buy VMware through Dell EMC are already selling the virtualisation software but will now have more choice about how they pull it all together.

 

Dell hit by increasing component costs

Posted on June 12, 2017 by - News

Dell logoGrey box shifter Dell said it is pleased with its maiden results under its new go-to-market structure, even if it was kicked in the nadgers by rising component costs.

The Texas-based giant posted an operating loss of $1.5 billion on revenues of $17.8 billion.

Dell’s Client Solutions Group saw revenue rise six per cent year on year to $9.1 billion and operating income of $374 million.

Dells Infrastructure Solutions Group made $6.9 billion revenue, made up of $3.2 billion from servers and networking. This was a five per cent annual rise. It also made $3.7 billion from storage.

ISG’s profitability was hit by a spike in the cost of components such as memory, some spot prices for which Dell said have doubled over the last year. Operating income for this division fell to $323 million, with operating margin tumbling to five per cent, down steeply from 12 percent the previous quarter.

Dell Technologies CFO Tom Sweet said he was happy with the overall results in the first quarter of our new go-to-market structure

On a first quarter conference call, Dell Technologies president David Goulden said that although the vendor had tried to make the cost increases stick in the channel and its rate prices, this had not always been possible.

“Customers don’t like paying more [than] what they paid last quarter – that typically not being the case in IT. Typically, in the IT industry, there are expected price decreases on a sequential basis, not price increases.”

Memory spot prices had doubled year on year, with SSD component costs also up 20 percent or more.

Goulden added that the component cost hikes have been most acute in servers, where he said that Dell had gained on its closest competitor.

“A certain amount of the pricing increase will actually stick and yield the incremental return, others will not, because the customer either won’t go there, or somebody else in the market hasn’t increased their price and you wind up in a competitive environment.”

 

Dell claims client computing is still its core

Posted on May 11, 2017 by - News

michael-dell-2At the inaugural Dell EMC World event in Las Vegas this week, Dell pledged that client computing “remains core to our business” and said that the PC will be back with augmented reality, subscription payment models, and wireless charging.

Dell Technologies chief marketing officer Jeremy Burton said that the PC will evolve in the coming years, as well as some of the technology the vendor is ready to bring to market now.

He showed off the Latitude 7285, which Dell claims is the world’s first wireless-charging two-in-one laptop and the Canvas, a 27-inch monitor pitched at the design industry. The latter involves a stylus, for drawing, and a ‘totem’ dial-style tool for cursor control. He said:

“The PC is smack bang in the centre of what is going on in the world Augmented reality and virtual reality are technologies that are now at the tipping point. This will be a $45bn [annual] hardware market, and a $35bn software market by 2025.”

Dell is also looking to forge partnerships with other AR and VR players, and is launching a partner programme through which to formalise ties with industry specialists.

“We want to work with a broad ecosystem to make this a reality,” said Burton.

Michael Dell showed off VMware’s AirWatch enterprise mobility management which has been embedded into some of its client computing devices he also revealed that the vendor’s PC-as-a-service offering will be available across the world during 2017.

“We are announcing the global rollout of our PC-as-a-service, which combines the latest Dell PCs with financing services and support for a single predictable price per month,” he said.
Dell added: “To make it extremely clear: the PC remains core to our business and strategy – it is how work gets done.”

Dell in the clouds again

Posted on May 10, 2017 by - News

Michael DellGrey box shifter Michael Dell talked up the importance of a ‘multi-cloud’ world and waded in to AWS, Microsoft, and Google by claiming that, for many customers, “public cloud is twice as expensive as on-premise”.

Dell said that while all styles of cloud computing have their merits and applications, customers should not relytoo heavily on any one model, – particularly public cloud.

“If you have a public cloud-first and -only strategy, you will find yourself uncompetitive in the long term. On-premise offers automation capabilities on an unprecedented scale. Many customers have already told us that the public cloud is twice as expensive as on-premise,” he said.

David Goulden, president of Dell EMC, added that Dell’s cloud offering addresses not only generalist productivity and business applications, but also core applications that many enterprises would not typically consider suitable for the cloud arena.

“Most clouds target the millions of general-purpose applications,” he said. “Our cloud strategy targets those, but also targets performance-intensive, mission-critical applications that most customers would not [otherwise] consider running on a cloud or as-a-service basis. We, uniquely, have a hybrid cloud strategy for all your applications.”

Dell EMC is adding its 14th generation of its PowerEdge range of servers this summer and the new VMAX 950F all-flash storage array.

The vendor also boosted its VxRail suite of hyper-converged technology, including the launch of a single-processor unit which allows businesses to invest in hyper-converged infrastructure for a capital investment as low as $25,000.

Dell Financial Services is to a launch a payment offering for hyper-converged infrastructure providing customers with the option of “cloud-like consumption” of the technology.

Dell predicts digital transformation explosion

Posted on May 9, 2017 by - News

funny-cat-running-21-desktop-wallpaperMichael Dell is so pleased with his shiny new EMC acquisition and his going private that he is predicting a digital transformation explosion in businesses.

Talking to Dell EMC World 2017 Dell said that: “This isn’t our show, this is your show. It’s about how you’re changing the world and using transformation to change your businesses. Making digital transformation happen, making it real, that’s why we created Dell Technologies, combining innovations from Dell EMC, Pivotal, RSA, Secureworks,Virtustream and VMware. This allows us to innovate like a startup with the scale of a global powerhouse.”

Michael Dell enthused about the importance of both Digital and IT transformation, not only in the technology industry but in the whole workforce.

Dell said: “We are at the beginning of an innovation explosion. CEO’s want their companies to become technology companies. You’re competing with startups who are more sophisticated at injecting new products into their platform. You need an IoT strategy, a cloud strategy and a workforce strategy. As well as security, that’s the highest priority of all.”

Dell boots “rogue resellers”

Posted on March 15, 2017 by - News

RogueOneDell EMC has booted two partners off the Dell EMC Partner Programme this week claiming they were engaged in repeated abuse of the deal registration system.

Dell is not telling anyone who is in hot water but said that they abused the deal registration system of the new programme, which went live last month.

It says that it will enforce its zero-tolerance view on any dodgy deals its partners or its inside sales staff are involved in.

One partner was “consistently reselling goods secured for a named customer” and boosting the grey market and the second was registering a deal for customer A and then repeatedly selling to customer B when they knew they couldn’t get a deal reg for customer A in the first place. If that makes sense.

When Dell EMC launched the new combined partner programme it stressed the importance of its rules of engagement. The code of conduct was designed to ensure the Dell EMC inside sales force, which has historically been a direct-selling business, does not gazump channel deals, but also to ensure fair-play among partners.

Dell EMC said that the company had no problem booting out those that purposely cheat.

Dell EMC uncovered the issues with the partners’ deal registrations itself internally, but soon after doing so, was alerted to the issue by numerous others from its partner base.

Dell EMC tells partners to prove their worth

Posted on January 31, 2017 by - News

Michael DellDell EMC is putting the thumbscrews on its partners and demanding that they prove they belong in their assigned tiers in the company’s new glorious unified partner programme.

Dell EMC’s decision to “status match” solution providers into the programme has forced some solution providers to boost revenue to maintain that tier status.

This is because the new tier status is not automatic. In Dell EMC’s 2019 fiscal year, which begins in February 2018, tier eligibility will be based on new revenue targets and training requirements, she said.

The new Dell EMC partner programme officially rolls out 8 February, and is organised into Gold, Platinum and Titanium tiers and an invite-only Titanium Black designation.

Dell EMC channel chief John Byrne  wants to push solution providers to win new business, and solution providers expect that the new revenue requirements will force them to up their game.

To earn a position in the top tier of the old Dell programme, a solution provider had to book $5 million in annual revenue. For the top tier of the old EMC programme you had to book $100 million or more.

The thought is that pressure could spur merger and acquisition activity among Dell EMC solution providers.

Dell EMC names WWT as its black knight

Posted on January 5, 2017 by - News

BlackknightDell EMC has announced WWT was a partner who would be heading to its new exclusive titanium black status.

The vendor had already revealed in October that there would be would have three main levels: titanium, platinum and gold, with something called titanium black.

Those who were platinum partners would be eligible to go for the Titanium Black level and it appears that World Wide Technology (WWT) has been given the chance to be the first.

Dell said that WWT was one of a select number of companies to be awarded Titanium Black status in the updated DellEMC partner programme.

“This new, highly exclusive status is an extension of the Titanium Tier within the Dell EMC Partner Program and will apply globally to all entities under the CDW banner.”

Needless to say, Bob Olwig, vice president of business development and innovation at WWT was chuffed.

“We established this strategic partnership to provide enterprise customers with hands-on access to Dell EMC technology for private and hybrid cloud, storage, data protection and availability, converged infrastructure, big data analytics, security and the Internet of Things,” Olwig said.

John Byrne, president, Dell EMC global channels, is hoping that the Titanium Black level was the best of the best. Partners with Titanium Black status had to place a big bet on Dell EMC.

“They’re going above and beyond. They’re investing heavily in us and we are returning the investment in them so they can continue to achieve the extraordinary,” he wrote in a pre-Christmas blog post.

“Titanium Black provides a rare and distinctive opportunity far and above what partners have experienced anywhere in the industry Together, through the Dell EMC Partner Program, Dell EMC and our partners will attack the market—with our Titanium Black partners leading the way. We’ll deliver incredible transformation for our customers. We’ll be the channel to watch,” Byrne said.

Dell-EMC to slash distributors

Posted on January 2, 2017 by - News

emcDell EMC is planning on slashing its distie numbers any day now.

Michael Collins, senior vice president of EMEA channels at Dell EMC said that partners from EMC and Dell vendor programmes will be migrated onto the Dell EMC Partner Programme based on the status they obtain through the firm’s annual audit at the end of this year.

We already knew that Dell EMC was planning a  tier system dubbed the Dell EMC Partner Programme with the programme’s entry-level tier being be Gold, followed by Platinum, Titanium and an “invite only” tier named Titanium Black.

Collins said that Dell’s EMEA partners will shortly receive notification concerning their status in the new programme with regards to how they are performing against revenue and certification criteria.

He said that once thresholds were announced, partners from both sides of the business will have until the firm’s next annual audit – held at the end of next year – to meet programme criteria.  EMC partners will gain an extra month to meet criteria requirements.

Dell had made it clear as early as last year that it was feeling a bit over-distributed, and it will look to reduce its number of distributors by December this year. So far it has not made any changes but Collins said that cuts will be made “very early next year”. The channel boss said that he has issued a request for information with all of the firm’s distributors across the EMEA region, asking them to underline their “strategy going forward”, the extent of their geographical scope and details regarding their “business plan” and commitment to Dell.

He said that he will look at the disties based on their business portfolio. The important areas will be: where are they planning to grow, are they selling across the Dell EMC portfolio, and how much MDF will they be expecting from Dell.”

 

Dell details channel tiering plans

Posted on December 22, 2016 by - News

dellchannTin-box shifter Dell been telling its partners how the new tiering levels will work on its unified channel programme.

Dell EMC resellers and distributors will see the launch of the unified partner programme on the 1 February next year. It was announced in October will it started it would have three main levels: titanium, platinum and gold, with an exclusive titanium black status also available.

John Byrne, president, Dell EMC Global Channels has now outlined how partners can qualify for those different levels and what will be needed with.

Writing in his bog, Byrne said that the levels of the tiering will be determined by legacy programme rules and there will be revenue and training requirements for those that want to join the scheme.
Under the changes those that were Dell PartnerDirect Premier+/EMC BPP Platinum partners will be eligible for the titanium level; Dell PartnerDirect Premier/EMC BPP Gold will be platinum; and Dell PartnerDirect Preferred/EMC BPP Silver will be gold.

Those who were ‘registered’ under the old Dell programme or ‘authorised’ under the EMC scheme they will now be classed as authorised.

“Partners who are members of both legacy programs and meet the requirements of each will be awarded the higher status of the two. For example, if a partner is Preferred in Dell PartnerDirect and Gold in the

EMC Business Partner Program, that partner’s new Dell EMC Partner Program Tier will be Platinum. It’s just the right thing to do. It’s ‘Partner First’,” said Byrne.

The unified programme was simple, predictable and profitable and it would continue to be open to suggestions from the channel over further improvements.

“The Voice of the Partner has been absolutely critical, and we will continue to have “big ears” and listen closely and constantly to what they need and want from our program,” said Byrne.