Tag: Dell

Sarah Shields is Dell EMC’s channel queen

Posted on December 1, 2016 by - Moving People, News

sarah-shields-new-620x350Dell EMC has confirmed that Sarah Shields has the top job running its UK and Ireland channel.

Shields ran the local channel for Dell and was facing off against Kevin Sparks her EMC counterpart. It is not clear what his role will now be in the glorious new empire. Dell says it will be making any announcement about his role in the future. We hope he does not get special projects, with an office in the lift.

She officially takes control in February and will head up a new Dell EMC partner programme. Of course, Dell says that its new cunning plan was built in “collaboration” with its “partners” that sell its stuff.

Dell EMEA channel overlord, Michael Collins claimed that resellers, integrators and distributors had seen “significant [sales] growth” under Shields over the past 19 months.

Shields joined Dell, from Gateway in 2008 and has run the consumer, online, SMB and enterprise channels. Before Gateway, where she was as European sales director she had been a business manager at Acer and channel manager at AMD.

Dell says diversification was the best thing he did

Posted on October 20, 2016 by - News

dellchannTin box shifter and CEO Michael Dell has said that moving away from grey boxes for a bit was one of his cleverer moves.

Talking to the assorted throngs at Dell World, Dell claimed the firm’s wider range of offerings and its EMC deal was a key to helping it thrive at a time when former PC rivals have faltered.

“In fact this last quarter we outgrew our competition and the last year to date all of our major PC competitors have declined while Dell is growing. We are the only one that is growing.”

He believes that the “physical reality is transforming into a digital reality” and firms that used to have a ‘physical businesses’ strategy must transform as well to stay afloat.

“This is what the best leaders are focused on,” he said.

Dell rejected claims that the firm would be overly distracted by its acquisition of EMC and the huge array of technology tools and products that it now owns. But nothing like that was happening.

Dell said the firm will still focus on the PC hardware space, as PCs were just as relevant now and in the future of connected devices and the burgeoning internet of things.

“PCs in all their various forms are deeply integrated into the computing, and this is especially so in the internet of everything and the innovation that is happening at the edge, and in another 15 years, we are going to have another 1000 times improvement.”

Dell spruces up its channel with EMC blood

Posted on October 18, 2016 by - Moving People, News

Michael DellDell has named its new channel and sales executives and appears to be leaning on EMC bigwigs to improve its channel.

EMC channel chief Gregg Ambulos is now in charge of the North American channel, after EMC’s John Byrne was made global channel supremo in July.

Ambulos reports to Byrne, and his appointment came along with a host of other executive moves designed to streamline and unify the Dell Technologies sales and channel operations.

Byrne, who worked for AMD, is now the president of global channels and reports directly to Marius Haas, Dell COO and president of commercial solutions.

This looks like Dell intends to lean heavily on EMC’s channel expertise and moving towards partner-led customer engagements, similar to EMC’s programme.

Jim DeFoe is now the head of global distribution. DeFoe is a 20-year Dell veteran, and has spent almost all that time as vice president of global sales channels and programmes.

Cheryl Cook is now the head of partner marketing, reporting to Nina Hargus, senior vice president of global field marketing. Cook was the face of Dell’s channel operation after coming from Sun.

Kimberley DeLeon, another former AMD bod, was hired by Dell last January. She will be the head of global channel programmes at Dell Technologies,.

Randy Huey, also from Dell is now the head of channel strategy, Huey will lead channel strategy and planning. He and Byrne will map out plans for partner spending and coverage across Dell and EMC.

Pilar Schenk will be head of channel sales planning and operations.

Tian Beng Ng will be the head of Asia-Pacific and Japan channel sales. He has been with Dell 17 years, most recently as vice president and managing director, South Asia and Korea. Alvaro Camarena  is now the head of Latin America channel sales. Camarena has been with Dell eight years as executive director of Latin America channel programmess. Michael Collins will head Dell’s EMEA channel sales operation. The 14-year Dell veteran was most recently vice president of strategy and channel, EMEA.

British business not ready for digital transformation

Posted on October 13, 2016 by - News

hqdefaultBritish business is not ready for digital transformation and might become obsolute, according to Independent research commissioned by Dell and conducted by Vanson Bourne.

Vanson Bourne surveyed 4,000 medium to large enterprises across 16 countries and 12 industries for the Dell ‘Digital Transformation Index’, and found that nearly half of all businesses – at 41 percent – are uncomfortable with the pace of change.

They are complaining that there has been “significant disruption” over the last three years and a third of them believe that their businesses could be made completely obsolete in the coming years.

Dell said that report highlighted  discrepancies in the mature markets versus emerging economies such as India, places which were unencumbered by legacy infrastructure that needed replacing.

Dell said that there were five different categories in the British market: leaders, adopters, evaluators, followers and laggards. The bottom three set make up the largest group – with 41 percent lumped into the ‘followers’ set. Few have made digital investments or carried out some tentative planning for the future. The 19 percent in the ‘laggards’ class, with no plan at all, and 24 percent in ‘evaluators’, who are very gradually embracing a more digital approach.

The study aimed to clarify the meaning digital as  many companies found themselves boasting of being digitial when they had not got a clue what it meant.  The term digital transformation is cloaked in different interpretations: some organisations might think it means simply building an app or bringing in some new kit.

Dell becomes the king of the servers

Posted on September 15, 2016 by - News

Michael DellNew numbers from the Gartner Group show that Dell has beaten HPE to the top spot for server shipments.

To be fair, though, the market shrank and worldwide server revenue is down 0.8 percent.  Shipments are up by two percent which means that there is some pretty nasty price cutting going on.

Everywhere except for Asia/Pacific and North America is in decline, though shipments in those areas grew by 5.6 percent and three percent respectively.

Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner said: “Dell garnered 19.3 per cent of the market and moved into the No. 1 position in worldwide server shipments due primarily to growth resulting from programmes it has in place in the Asia/Pacific region, most notably in China. However, HPE continued to lead the x86 market in revenue with 26 per cent of the market.”

He added: “x86 servers grew 2.1 percent in shipments and 5.8 percent in revenue in the second quarter of 2016.”

Dell’s strong performance did not see its revenues match the growth. HPE continues to hold more of the market share in revenue though that contracted by 6.4 percent year-on-year, while Dell saw almost 10 percent growth.

IBM’s server revenues dropped by 34.4 percent but then it did flog its business to Lenovo.

HPE’s shipments also contracted year-on-year, shrinking by more than 18 percent, while Dell, Lenovo, Huawei, Inspur and others pulled up their socks.

Dell names top channel execs

Posted on September 13, 2016 by - Moving People, News

michael-dell-2Dell has announced its regional execs to run its channel after completing the $60bn buy-out of EMC.

Most of the names are similar to those who ran Dell’s channel before.  In the Asia Pacific region is Ng Tian Being, who was veep of South Asia and Korea; for Latin America is Alvaro Camarena, who was exec director of channel programmes; and for EMEA it’s Michael Collins at least after January.

Collins was only given the channel role and replaced Laurent Binetti, who had been in the job for 30 years. .

Until then, both Collins  and Philippe Fosse (the current EMC EMEA channel head] will continue to jointly-lead the Dell EMC EMEA Channel business in their established roles.

Fosse was EMC’s EMEA East, before he moved into the position more than four years ago. Prior to that he was at HDS, Xiotech and further back in the annals of time he was at StorageTek.

He is yet to have a role in the glorious new Empire. He apparently has a job but it has not been “formally announced” yet.

The only EMC person to have a role announced is Greg Ambulos, who ran global channels for EMC and will control North America channels at Dell.

 

EMC warns that a further channel push could be a bad thing

Posted on August 10, 2016 by - News

emcEMC is warning investors that leaning on the channel once it is acquired by Dell could seriously damage its health or at least wealth.

EMC  does about 60 percent of its business through the channel, and is worried that an increased reliance on channel partners “may negatively impact” gross margins.  It told  the US Securities and Exchange Commission:

“As we focus on new market opportunities and additional customers through our various distribution channels, including small-to-medium sized businesses, we may be required to provide different levels of service and support than we typically have provided in the past. We may have difficulty managing directly or indirectly through our channels these different service and support requirements and may be required to incur substantial costs to provide such services, which may adversely affect our business, results of operations or financial condition.”

EMC has traditionally focused on high-end enterprise customers while Dell, its soon-to-be parent company, used its renowned supply chain to become a leader in the consumer, small business and mid-market arenas.

For EMC’s second quarter ended June 30, perhaps its last as a stand-alone, publicly traded company, EMC’s revenue was essentially flat year-over-year at $6.03 billion while its profit jumped more than 21 percent to $630 million or 29 centers per share.

The Dell-EMC merger, which will result in the creation of Dell Technologies, is expected to close before the end of October.

EMC votes to become part of the glorious Dell empire

Posted on July 20, 2016 by - News

legionnairesEMC has approved Dell’s $60 billion offer to become part of the glorious Empire in the largest technology merger ever.

The newly combined entity, to be named Dell Technologies, aims to be a one-stop shop for information technology sold to businesses. OF course they all say that, but this will be pretty big.

It will consolidate diverse products and services under one umbrella, including personal computers, servers, storage and networking equipment.  The only thing which could stick a spanner in the works is regulatory approval from China.

EMC Chief Executive Joe Tucci said before the vote that the board evaluated numerous options and decided that the merger with Dell is the best outcome.

Once combined, the two companies plan to help customers move to cloud computing, which likely would be a hybrid approach that includes both cloud and on-premises operations.

The deal will also let Dell exploit EMC’s “converged infrastructure”, to sell computing, storage and networking equipment as an easy-to-install bundle.

The deal will give current EMC shareholders a tracking stock for VMware shares. Consequently, the privately held Dell will issue quarterly financial reports.

 

Today is D-Day for EMC

Posted on July 19, 2016 by - News

michael-dell-2Today is the day that EMC shareholders vote to merge with Dell, or tell Michael Dell to go sling his hook.

The merger was announced last October and will create a more-than $70 billion global IT powerhouse with significant strengths from PCs to security and the high-end data centre.

EMC had been under pressure from shareholders to be broken up so being swallowed whole came as a bit of a surprise. The company’s enterprise business will be run from EMC’s headquarters in Hopkinton – a place in America somewhere –  while the rest of the business will be run from Dell’s house in Texas.

There is no guarantee that Dell will manage to convince shareholders. However, the signs are that it will be rubber stamped. The deal has received the seal of approval from two independent proxy firms, ISS and Glass Lewis, and hasn’t been the subject of any public investor unrest. But nothing is certain.  Dell’s Empire has a debt loading which makes my credit card bill look very small potatoes.

Still the deal is worth $62.3 billion.

Shareholders are being asked to approve the merger, vote to give huge “go away”  payments to top EMC executives as a result of the merger. This is basically giving $90 million to EMC Chairman and CEO Joe Tucci; CFO Zane Rowe; EMC Infrastructure President David Goulden; Marketing Chief Jeremy Burton and COO Howard Elias. They will only get the money if they bugger off and never darken Dell’s door again.

Dell himself is quietly confident that everything will go through on time. He thinks that the merger will be completed by October.

Channel partners positive about European changes

Posted on July 12, 2016 by - News

emcChannel partners across Europe appear to be an optimistic lot, unless you are talking about HP, according to figures gathered by beancounters at Context.

In the outfit’s ChannelWatch, channel partners generally approved of their distributers and even liked the move by Dell to buy EMC. If they were unhappy about anything it was the splitting off of HP.

Jeremy Davies, Context CEO and co-founder said that resellers were clear on their opinions, especially when it comes to how they rate their distributors where overall the verdict has been good.

The reaction towards distribution in the UK was particularly positive, with 40 per cent thinking their partners were ‘excellent’. That was higher than elsewhere in Europe, which in the case of France and Portugal had the lowest levels hitting the top mark.

The Context survey found more partners thinking of adding Dell to their lists in the next six months. However, HP is not doing so well with two thirds of respondents claiming that the firms split might make them less inclined to take on products in the future.

Dell jacks up Brexit prices

Posted on July 6, 2016 by - News

michael-dell-2UK suppliers are already having to pay the cost for the UK’s Brexit referendum result – Michael Dell is already jacking up his prices by eight percent.

Dell increased UK prices across its portfolio by eight or nine percent, according to its partners. He is not the only one.  Canalys warned that US vendors will begin hiking the prices of its products feared the UK IT market could shrink by as much as 15 percent next year.

Dell tends to hedge everything against the dollar on a quarterly basis. It was expected that he would do it in August but it was brought forward.

Fortunately, all the suppliers are in the same boat and no one is going to get an advantage out of this. However, it does makes sales teams look a bit stupid if they quoted a price one morning and are having to jack up the prices a few days later.

The worry is that clients will start looking at their budgets again and wonder about suspending projects until things have settled down a bit.

In a statement, Dell said:

“Dell’s priority is always to provide great value to our customers and partners. We carefully consider price moves for our customers and partners, and have worked diligently over the past several months to postpone any increases pending the outcome of the EU referendum. In line with the rest of the industry, our component costs are priced in US dollars, and unfortunately, the recent strengthening of the US dollar versus the euro and other currencies in the EMEA region, following the UK’s decision to leave the European Union, will have a direct impact on the price we sell to our EMEA customers and partners.

“We understand that this is an uncertain time for many British businesses and we will continue to work closely with our customers and partners to provide great value products and services,” a spokesDell said.

Dell gives up on Android tablets

Posted on July 1, 2016 by - News

tabletDell has stopped selling Android devices as it moves to Windows 2-in-1 devices.

It has said that it is giving up on its Venue line of Android tablets, and will no longer offer the Android-based Wyse Cloud Connect, a thumb-size computer that can turn a display into a PC.

Dell has long said that the slate tablet market is over-saturated and declining. They appear to be being replaced by  2-in-1s which provide a more spiritual  blend of PC capabilities with tablet mobility.

Dell won’t be offering OS upgrades to Android-based Venue tablets already being used by customers.

Customers who own Android-based Venue products, Dell will continue to support currently active warranty and service contracts until they expire, but will not be pushing out future OS upgrades.

Dell now mostly has laptops and 2-in-1s with Windows on its books with a smattering of Chromebooks, which run Chrome OS. These can run Android apps through access to the Google Play Store but not Android.

If you don’t want Windows, Dell also sells XPS and Precision laptops with Ubuntu to developers, and thin clients with Linux, Windows Embedded and Wyse’s ThinOS operating systems.

Venue is a brand often placed on the chopping block by Dell.  It killed off Venue smartphones in 2012, but reintroduced the brand through the tablets. You can find Venue tablets with Windows but the product has not been upgraded in a while.

HP is also doing something similar. It now offers just a handful of Android tablets, mainly for businesses. Lenovo is offering fewer Android tablets and has expanded its Windows-based, 2-in-1 lineup.  So much for Steve Job’s “game changing” technology which was going to change the world.

Dell flogs his software arm to the House of Elliott

Posted on June 21, 2016 by - News

elliotTin box-shifter Michael Dell is about to flog his software division to buyout firm Francisco and the private equity arm of activist hedge fund Elliott Management.

Dell needs to get rid of its software assets so that it can buy data storage company EMC for $67 billion. EMC owns a controlling stake in VMware and other software assets, so Dell does not need its own.

One of the things that Dell wants to off-load is Quest Software, which helps with information technology management and SonicWall, an e-mail encryption and data security provider. It is keeping Boomi, which is cloud-based software integration software.

The deal is expected to be formally announced this week, although it is possible that the whole thing could go tits up and never happen. Neither Dell nor Francisco are commenting.

Dell’s software division is not particularly profitable and Dell needs as much cash as he can get his paws on to reduce the debt he took on when took the outfit private.

 

Dell returns to PC World

Posted on June 13, 2016 by - News

michael-dell-2Dell is back flogging its grey boxes at PC World after a three year hiatus.

Apparently Dell has reformed its relationship with Dixons Carphone, owner of the Currys and PC World.

Dell has been  ramping up its retail presence and signed a deal with John Lewis to give it more of a presence on the high street. IT also improved its  distribution links to Ensure.

What this means is that Curry PC world will flog the Dell XPS, Inspiron and Alienware ranges as well as some monitors. These are normally sold online using Dell’s famous direct model.  It looks like the PC World move is designed to maximise the back to school buying period.

Alienware is already well known in gaming circles and it will now be given a chance to grow the brand in the largest high-street computing retailer.

Dell UK general manager, retail, consumer and small business, Jamil Nathoo said that having a significant player in the retail industry this relationship is key in giving customers the choice that they’re asking for.

“We’re excited to continue bringing innovative and high-performing technology to consumers on the high street,”  he said.

IDC names the top storage types

Posted on June 6, 2016 by - News

storageThe former maker of expensive printer ink HPE is doing rather well in the storeage league tables.

Beancounters at IDC have looked at their quarterly enterprise storage numbers and found HPE is the top of a declining market.

The overall enterprise storage market was worth $8.2 billion in the first 2016 quarter, down seven per cent on a year ago.

HPE did share its top place with EMC but HPE nominally ahead at $1.42 billion, up 11 per cent year-on-year, with EMC making $1.35 billion n, down 11.8 per cent year-on-year.

Dell was third with $845.5 million, down 5.8 per cent year-on-year, and NetApp fourth with $645.5 million, down 15.6 per cent.

Thinks are set to change when Dell merges with EMC. If you add those two outfits figures together you end up with revenues of $2.27 billion, almost double HPE’s revenues for the quarter and more than three times NetApp’s revenues.

IDC’s Liz Conner, research manager, Storage Systems said: “Spending on server-based storage was up, spending on traditional external arrays continues to decline, while the nature of hyperscale business leads it to fluctuate heavily with that market segment seeing a heavy decline in 1Q16.”