Navigating Success: Exploring Dell's Partner-First Strategy

Kena Johnson In today's digital landscape, businesses need reliable, secure and easily managed storage solutions that can perform at high levels. Dell Technologies latest release of PowerStore introduces features to enhance cyber resiliency and efficiency. Here today to discuss this further is Alan Ashby from Dell Technologies. Glad to have you with me, Alan. Considering IDC's projections indicate a 10.9% growth in the total storage market, what drives Dell's emphasis on this market expansion? Alan Ashby Yeah, based on what we're seeing, there's a lot to look forward to this year. You know, as you mentioned, the IDC marketplace is calling for, you know, greater than 11% growth. You know, there's other areas of the market that are also expected to grow even more substantially, such as the primary storage, the mid-range price bands, you know, which are expected to grow about 17.6% year over year. You know, the overall storage market itself is a really big marketplace, and it's projected to be roughly a $3 billion market opportunity in North America. And Dell's uniquely positioned to win across that entire storage landscape due to our full portfolio of solutions. You know, we have industry leading platforms across verticals, storage types and price bands. You know, we offer customers architectural choice with key industry leading platforms like PowerStore, PowerFlex, PowerScale, PowerProtect and others. So no matter if your customers are looking for scale up, scale out, NAS, file block, object HCI or three tier architecture, you know, Dell really has an industry leading solution for them. So I would say, yeah, we're really excited for the year to come. Kena Johnson Now last year, Dell announced a partner first strategy. What does that entail? Alan Ashby Partner first for stores is really a key initiative within Dell. And it's really changing the makeup of our own DNA.You know, launched last year. There’s really three key components that you need to remember. You know, first, the vast majority of all Dell accounts are named as partner first accounts, with 99% of accounts globally included in that sales motion. Two for these accounts, when a Dell sales team sells to those accounts with and through a partner, they get paid more. So there's significant incentive for Dell sellers to find the right partner and partner together and win. And then third, you know, we took our existing partner record program, and we expanded the number of accounts that have partner of record and multiply that by four. So the Dell partner record program means that if a Dell seller team finds an opportunity that they will work in and through that partner that it's named. So it gives partners protection and partners are awarded partner record based off of historical look back as well as selling into new business accounts, something we call MBI. You know, we're excited about where we're seeing from the early motions around partner first and expect this sales motion to add significant value to our partners this year.