Dell Plays To A Tough Crowd At XChange

Davis, with hat very much in hand, had the difficult task of selling solution providers on Dell's nascent channel partner program, launched as PartnerDirect in early December. One fellow in the audience likened it to "walking into an alligator farm wearing a chicken suit." Another, MSP Arian Soheili, said of Dell's attempts to build a channel, "It's like seeing an ostrich trying to fly."

For his part, Davis remained calm and collected during the ribbing in the Q&A session that followed his presentation. He admitted several times that Dell's channel efforts have a ways to go and urged partners to contact him directly with any issues so they might be resolved.

"I do not have a company that has channel DNA. We have direct DNA," Davis said, but noted that it would be unrealistic to expect all the kinks to have been worked out just 90 days into Dell's first official partner program.

"We are on a long journey to change our company and change our strategy. I hope as we begin to build trust in our channel, we too can win some awards some day," he said, referring to Thursday night's Channel Champions awards, where partner-friendly vendors like HP, Cisco and IBM won multiple trophies.

Davis urged solution providers to consider leveraging Dell's size and the scale of its global operations to eliminate their own inefficiencies in assembling servers, storage and software components and let Dell "put together solutions for you to deliver to your customer."

But VARs working in the enterprise architecture space --along with managed services, one of two certification paths Dell has built for partners in the initial stages of PartnerDirect -- weren't necessarily buying the pitch. One HP partner noted that putting together components and software for customers is where many earn their keep, to which Davis replied that letting Dell assemble and box the core solution would reduce overall costs and allow partners to focus on higher-level solutions.

Another attendee worried if Dell's growth of its Enterprise Architecture certification program was going to put too many high-end enterprise solution providers into competition with each other. To that point, Davis clarified Dell's plans for its 250 Enterprise Architecture partners, saying as the program developed the vendor would create narrower certification tracks to prevent an oversaturation of enterprise partners in any one area of specialization.

Dell's managed services offering, which came about with the acquisition of MSP platform developer SilverBack last year, continues to be seen as a major threat by MSPs like Soheili. The managing director of Cantatus Systems Group in Vancouver, B.C., Soheili has a big problem with Dell's bundling of a free managed services trial period with direct system sales.

"I don't have a problem competing with Dell because we can kick their butt on the value of the service that we provide. That's not an issue. The issue is that they're providing something free of charge that has value. They're commoditizing an area that should not be commoditized because it's value-based," Soheili said.

"They come stand here and say they're committed to the channel but whatever they're doing is to destroy all the profit margins we have, the way we do business."

But Davis, having accepted the chicken suit, forged ahead on his journey through the alligator farm of solution providers. He said he anticipated more conflicts with the direct side of the house, but said he and his channel team would manage them. He noted that a partner portal link had been created on the front page of Dell.com, "the hottest e-commerce site in the world," resulting in 160,000 click-throughs last week.

"I'm a long way from getting it all done. I'm not standing here telling you it's done, but I want to show you the commitment and the steps we're taking to build our channel. I understand that we have to evolve as a company and earn your trust," he said.