Dell Readies Channel Road Show

The Round Rock, Texas-based vendor plans six stops for channel-dedicated events as part of the company's forthcoming "Future of Computing" series of events.

"This is where we will invite channel partners, and their customers, to attend to see where Dell sees the future of computing. It's really a product road show about where we are investing research and development dollars. It's also an opportunity to educate the channel on our product, and give partners the opportunity to bring Dell to their customers, to talk about our products," said Greg Davis, vice president and general manager of Dell's Americas Channel Group.

The events will begin in June. Dell is still finalizing dates and locations, Davis said. In addition, Dell plans to hold its first partner advisory council at the end of May. "Michael Dell will be the host. I'm excited about that. There's a lot of activity that will help us gather more information," Davis said.

Meanwhile, Dell's deal registration program for partners and its managed services certification program continue to chug along, he said.

Thus far, Dell has had almost $591 million in registered revenue opportunities through the channel and has approved $322 million worth of opportunities, he said. "Clearly, there are opportunities that [partners] are bringing where we are engaged with other channel partners or our direct sales team is already involved. The process we laid out, we said we would get pack to partners within 24 hours to 48 hours whether we approve registration deals or not and that is happening," he said.

Dell now has 7,200 registered solution providers in the United States and another 695 in Canada, since launching the Partner Direct program in December 2007. The company continues to attract about 250 new partners per week, Davis said.

Mike Menegay, director of Dell Business Services, said the company will use a deal registration program for managed services opportunities that is similar to it program for products, but services partners likely will see more leads passed on to them, he said.

"Just this week, we had a couple of large opportunities come to us to fulfill direct. Our decision was to find the right certified partners to do the right managed services. Those are opportunities the partners never knew about," Menegay said. "Once clients see the value of the services and the brand of Dell, they will want a wider range of services than we provide today. We will bring partners in to customers who have been buying Dell for 10 years."

About 100 MSPs have been certified by Dell, Menegay said.