Dell Attacks: Price Discounts Aimed At Displacing Competitors

In an April 24 letter to solution providers, Greg Davis, Dell's vice president and general manager of global commercial channels, wrote that Dell will invest more "energy and funds into PartnerDirect programs and channel leadership to work with you, our partners, and deliver long-term, end-to-end solutions that will power our customers' businesses."

That investment includes the pass-through of several pricing initiatives to solution providers including additional global list price discountsand programs to assist with buybacks, POCs and seed systems for customers considering Dell's server solutions, according to Davis.

[Related: Dell Updates PartnerDirect For Software VARs ]

The pricing moves are designed to offset campaigns from other vendors to "stay competitive with negative messaging," Davis wrote.

"This program is designed specifically for replacement of competitor server products in order to bring to those companies higher price/performance value of Dell x86 server solutions," wrote Davis. "Complementing these programs we will provide supporting materials to arm you and your sales team, along with our sales support, to engage customers in migrating their business to Dell's best in class enterprise solutions."

Michael Goldstein, president of LAN Infotech, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based VAR, said he'll take all the help he can get as a Dell partner to win in the market.

"It's a great program. It's such a competitive space right now with Dell and Hewlett-Packard, and we've even seen competitive offers from Lenovo," Goldstein said. "Any little edge we can get and pass to customers is a great win for everybody."

PUBLISHED APRIL 24, 2013

This article was updated on April 29 to reflect new information from Dell that zero-percent financing will not be included in the new initiative.