Q&A: Dell's Davis Dishes On Why VARs Should Trust Him

As the man squarely in the middle of Dell's channel program, it's up to Greg Davis to win the hearts and minds of VARs, even if that means putting up with a lot of criticisms along the way. Davis, vice president and general manager of Dell's Americas Channel Group., recently spoke Scott Campbell, Everything Channel assistant news editor, about the vendor's progress. The following are excerpts from the conversation:

Have your EqualLogic sales been impacted by the fact that CDW is no longer selling those products and other billion-dollar-plus solution providers will only sell them to legacy customers? Have you been able to recoup that revenue through new partners?

The focus that I have is on true value-add solution providers. While many of my competitors are clearly focused on larger direct marketers, my focus is on enabling the street level solution provider who's investing in field-based skilled workers to compete with CDW. When I talk to my solution providers, they see what my competitors are doing with CDW, as clearly their biggest competitor. I have an opportunity to focus on the solution provider who is face to face with customers, providing implementations, investing in the solutions, growing our server, storage and services business and enable more business through them.

You've stated you have about 11,500 partners now and about 350 enterprise partners. How many were EqualLogic partners that were grandfathered in and how many new partners are there?

We launched the Enterprise Architecture [certification] in February. We did that about the same time closed [the] EquaLogic [acquisition]. Grandfathered into the certification were approximately 400 total EqualLogic partners. About 110 were what EqualLogic called certified or premier partners. We've grown from 110 to about 360 roughly today. A focus of our program continues to be on certifications, identifying and recruiting the right enterprise solutions partners.

Internally, we have another list of about 200 we are actively talking to. Certainly, we'd like to add another couple hundred by the end of the year. The real trick there is identifying the right types of partners and making sure we've got the right types of resources to support those efforts. We have invested in a dedicated channel storage team. We are focused on those partners we have, but we have the capacity to support a couple hundred more.

Does the enterprise certification impact only EqualLogic products, or other products as well?

It includes all our server and blades products. We've seen a great opportunity in that area and great acceptance. Existing EqualLogic partners weren't Dell blade customers and vice versa. We're focusing a lot of their solutions practice around virtualization and consolidation in the data center. We have great blade products and when we go to market with a certified bundle, EqualLogic with blades, we're having great success.

How many of the existing EqualLogic VARs became part of the enterprise certification beyond the original 110 and how many came from other areas?

It's about one-third [EqualLogic VARs] that have moved up and invested and the other two-thirds is a combination of new partners and existing Dell server and storage partners.

What type of partner are you looking for?

Partners that are having great success with us tend to be solution provider partners who are focused one of three different solutions. They have a lot of skills around virtualization, VMware implementations. In addition to virtualization, we're helping consolidate servers with a blade type of implementation or rack server implementation. They're also investing in knowledge and people that understand power and cooling. We've seen great channel customers growing in those three areas. [End user] customers are asking for expertise there. Another growing area is around green IT. CIOs are asking about green IT, how you can help partners go green with their infrastructure and save more energy. The products they're putting put in are environmentally safe. And can drive lower costs for them.

With the cost of energy so high, do you see more demand for green technologies?

IT is great in saving electricity costs. Partners that can implement solutions around powering down data centers and cooling down a center is real dollars saved.

Our partners are asking us for green certifications. We are working with them to figure out how to train and develop their staffs around [green] certifications. We clearly see it as an opportunity for Dell, for us to do better job as an industry leader, but it's also a clear differentiator to provide our channel partnersa way to differentiate themselves.

One VAR told me he believed in Dell because the direct and channel business has a single profit-and-loss report, whereas other vendors have separate P&Ls for channel and direct, which could lead to conflict. Is that by design?

My boss, Paul Bell, has responsibility for all channel and direct business. My relationship with him has been able to work through conflict, without having to escalate anything. What does that mean? I think it means our general managers who lead our biz units understand the importance of our channel initiatives, to ensure we have the right engagements. We understand it's going to be an evolution. What's really important is that engagement is not just a channel engagement, but an engagement across Dell.

Clearly there are still many VARs who don't trust Dell, who think it will be too difficult for you, given your direct heritage, to build a channel program. What would you like to say to those VARs?

As I've said before one of biggest challenges is communicating our value proposition and sharing it broadly, which is what we're doing. I personally try to participate in community forums and blog activities. We set up our own PartnerStorm portal where partners can share ideas and we can continue to improve. I speak at as many channel events as I get invited to. It's a continual process of how do you communicate that. The real proof is in how you do the things you say you're going to do. It's been nine months [since announcing PartnerDirect], but Dell has done everything it said it was going to do. Have we had conflict? Absolutely. Everyone in the industry does. As long as we continue to deliver what we commit to, I hope they give us a chance."

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