Dell President Marius Haas Sees Explosive $40B Channel Growth Opportunity, Pledges Most Profitable Channel Program In The Industry

Dell EMC President and Chief Commercial Officer Marius Haas is fired up about going to market with channel partners for one simple reason: he sees no bigger growth opportunity anywhere else in the industry.

Haas, a fierce channel advocate who has ultimate responsibility Dell EMC's combined channel sales, said that the vendor, working together with its channel partners, has the potential to add billions in revenues to its coffers.

"I think we could add billions of dollars. Billions," Haas said Tuesday during a live on-stage interview at the 2016 Best of Breed Conference in Atlanta. "If you assume right now that it's well over $40 billion in revenue flowing through the channel and we're less than 10 percent of the market, why can't this be 15 [percent]? Why can't this be 20 [percent]? We're talking about an additional $40 billion," Haas said. "Where else are you going to get that kind of opportunity? Not very many places. When people ask me, 'Hey, Marius, you're in a big organization, your role has changed, why are you still excited about being here?' There is no opportunity that's bigger than this."

[Related Video: Dell EMC's Haas Speculates On Meg Whitman's Future With HPE]

id
unit-1659132512259
type
Sponsored post

In order to gain share and achieve that growth, Haas pledged to build the most profitable channel program in the business, bar none.

"It has to be profitable, and it has to be more profitable than what you can get from anyone else," Haas said.

To build what Haas says will be a "world-class program," he and his team will be melding together the best elements from the stand-alone Dell and EMC channel programs.

"Partners like the predictability of the EMC model. Then, too, partners like the economics of the classic Dell program. So think about this: Why not take the best of one program, and the best of the other program, and bring them together to create one world-class program?" he said.

Stelios Valavanis, president of onShore Security, a Chicago-based security solution provider and Dell partner, said he is committed to partnering more closely with Dell after Haas' appearance at the BoB conference.

These guys are not afraid to reinvent themselves," Valavanis told CRN. "A lot of big companies are afraid. We walked away from EMC in the past because I felt they were hard to work with. Now I am going to give them another shot."

Valavanis said he was inspired by Haas' pledge to dramatically grow the channel business.

"I believe Dell is getting real serious about the channel," he said. "I like when a company is trying to step up instead of staying in a safe place. I see them willing to make deals and work hard."

Jack Kaiser, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Aqueduct Technologies, a Waltham, Mass.-based solution provider and EMC and Cisco channel partner, told CRN that he is also interested in expanding his relationship with Dell.

"I like the message," Kaiser said. "It's what channel executives like us want to hear: More channel business. Marius is a straight shooter. He wants to move in the right direction and grow."

By December, Dell EMC will start rolling out more details of its combined channel program, including how partners qualify for the different tiers in the program, and how those tiers will correlate with the investments partners will make in the program, Haas said.

This also includes clear penalties for Dell sales reps that break the rules that protect partners, he said.

"Within Dell EMC, it is a fire-able offense if you don't honor the registration process," he said. "We are going to be really clear about that. [And] if a partner tries to undercut another partner, and it's not within a fair competitive environment, we make sure the ethics are applied."

Haas indicated that the Dell EMC business incumbency program - which guarantees storage account protection for EMC partners in existing accounts based on a three-year history- could be extended to other areas including the data center."We will go even further," he said. "I might even introduce the whole data center to have that whole line of business incumbency program. We are working through it, but we are pretty close to getting something that we think [the channel] will be very excited about.

Dell EMC partners are also going to benefit from the increased R&D investment and supply chain scale that the $70 billion company brings to bear, said Haas. "Our R&D spend is going to be over $4.5 billion a year, double that of HPE, double that of IBM," he said. "So I would say if you want someone helping drive innovation for you and for your customers, that's a good place to start."

Dell's forthcoming unified channel will feature Gold, Platinum and Titanium levels, Haas said. Dell is keeping its options open for a fourth partner tier, called "Titanium Black." However, he said, the company is deliberately keeping details about that tier secret.

"Think about it this way," Haas said. "You don't know what the criteria are for an American Express Black Card. You don't know, but once you get it you feel really special. There will be some instances where we have a very small group of partners that fall into that category. From a global perspective, they have to have a global ELA [enterprise licensing agreement], something along those lines, to be defined, and we will communicate that."

On the product side, Dell EMC has already started consolidating the code base of its Compellent SC and EqualLogic PS line, and plans to do the same with the EMC Unity line as well, Haas said. This includes a focus on common management, replication, and tiering capabilities to drive the most value for customers without having to end-of-life a product.

"I'm not saying that in three or five years that this roadmap won't change," he said. "It might. But, it's also with the understanding that we will have clear migration paths onto a single code-based architecture, with a 'nobody gets left behind' philosophy. But, as of right now, every product that we've announced and shown to partners and customers in the storage portfolio we are committed to in perpetuity."

Yet while Dell is busy consolidating its product lines, some of those lines will remain independent because of their value in terms of working with strategic technology partners, including Dell EMC rivals, Haas said.

One of those is VMware, which has become the de facto standard of software-defined technology, he said.

"It has to work with everybody," he said. "It has to work with HPE. It has to work with NetApp. … It is our job on the Dell EMC side to make sure that our technology works best with VMware, not vice versa. [VMware] will make sure that they provide the open ecosystem to drive virtualization across all pillars of the data center, and try to drive any cloud on any app on any system."

It is heartening to know that Dell EMC will allow certain of its technologies, particularly VMware, to remain autonomous in terms of working with non-Dell platforms, said Jason Wright, managing director of All Covered, a Houston, Texas-based solution provider and Dell channel partner.

"It's important because we don't just work with Dell," Wright told CRN. "We work with other manufacturers. Let's say that, all of a sudden, VMware could only run on Dell servers. That would create a problem for us. The fact that VMware will continue to develop and integrate with other platforms is really good for us."

Wright said his company has seen Dell improve its channel engagement in the last year or so before the EMC acquisition was announced. "I liked how Haas talked about Dell getting more aggressive in pushing the data center business out to the channel," he said.

Steven Burke and Sarah Kuranda contributed to this story.