Dell revamps partner programme

Dell Technologies has revamped its partner programme, offering its channel partners a more streamlined way to sell solutions based on Dell's whole portfolio, in addition to new rewards and incentives.

The new programme, dubbed the Dell Technologies Advantage framework, will sit alongside the existing partner programmes offered by Dell EMC and the other companies which make up Dell Technologies. The Advantage framework offers increased financial and certification benefits for partners who sell across multiple Dell Technologies brands.

"Partners sit at the forefront of helping customers embrace Digital Transformation. At its core, the Dell Technologies business addresses this need and uniquely enables partners with the products, services, financing and programs to make them successful," said Joyce Mullen, president, Global Channel, OEM & IoT Solutions for Dell EMC. "We've seen tremendous growth and momentum over the past year... Our top priority is helping partners solve their customers' complex digital challenges."

The changes to the partner programme are predominantly designed to boost channel revenues for Dell's more niche subdivisions like Pivotal, SecureWorks and RSA, but according to the newly-appointed chair of Dell's EMEA partner alliance, the program brings significant benefits for partners.

"What we said is 'OK, we need extra benefits when we take out a competitive label', said SLTN's founder and CEO Eugene Tuijnman. "Plus we wanted to put in rebate programs, so depending on your certification, your volume, et cetera, you get additional benefits."

"Most of it is based on aligning the programmes of the strategic aligned businesses. The other aspect is that it's much more focused on the longer stretch. So we don't give extra discount up-front; it's much more in the form of a rebate programme - which you can use, for instance, in [marketing development funds]."

Dell has also announced a new programme to help simplify the process of selling data centre infrastructure. The Dell EMC Ready Stack program helps partners to make data centre deployments easier for customers by creating bundles with Dell EMC's storage, servers, data protection and networking products. Partners will also be incentivised for selling Dell's infrastructure products.

For partners who have worked their way up to Titanium Black status in the Dell EMC partner programme, this rating will also be applied across all of Dell's businesses.

Dell is also scrapping the old Partner Advantage and Sell and Earn programmes, replacing them with the new points-based Dell EMC MyRewards Program. This new system includes improved promotional offers with bonus payouts up to three times larger, and offers better rebates for partners around the company's storage products.

Finally, Dell is also launching a series of new 'Solutions Competency' offerings, allowing partners to access high-level training and tools to help them serve customers in specific areas. The first of these new competencies is an IoT solutions competency, which will be available this week. It will be joined later in the year by competencies in high performance computing, data analytics, business applications and security. The company's existing competencies are also set to be expanded later in the year.