CRN Exclusive: Dell President And COO Marius Haas On Integrating A New 'Amazing Asset Pool'

Haas On The Record

For Dell Technologies President and Chief Commercial Officer Marius Haas, the company's end-to-end portfolio of products from PCs to high-end data center gear and cloud services will propel the company into commanding market positions and give partners a huge opportunity to deliver unique solutions and services.

In an exclusive interview with CRN ahead of Dell EMC World, Haas says the complex nature of customers' journey into the digital age creates a perfect scenario for partners that can use their expertise to bring together complex, multifaceted solutions using "the broadest portfolio in the industry."

Click through for Haas' take on the Dell-EMC integration, the opportunity for partners and a range of other topics.

How are you handling the integration when it comes to the business units that are essentially independent companies, VMware and Pivotal, for example?

How does Dell Technologies come together in a succinct way when you have this amazing asset

pool, this portfolio of intellectual property that is second to none in the industry and able to address almost all, if not all, of the core technology trends that are important and relevant to our customer base? It's our job to bring that in a way that's clear in how it solves core business

problems for our customers in conjunction with our partners in delivering that.

For partners, what are the benefits of focusing their partnership on Dell rather than with competing vendors?

I'll start with the end customer first, and this is consistent feedback. The customer is looking for fewer partners, technology partners, not more. The customer is not looking to become the systems integrator of the different solutions that are in the market. Translate that back into the partner ecosystem and the channel partner ecosystem. When they have someone like Dell Technologies that represents the broadest range of technology in the industry, their investments are going to have an enormous return compared to other areas where they now need to become experts in some of the silo components of the different technology architectures versus being well versed in the pieces that we bring together as one collective company.

How do you think Dell Technologies stacks up in the security market?

If you look at the key areas within security and you match up our capabilities to them, there is no one that I can see that even comes close. Start with threat detection and response, endpoint security management, identity and access assurance, risk management, secure infrastructure and security services. You layer on top of our capabilities anything from AirWatch, NSX within VMware to RSA to SecureWorks. I can't find anyone that comes close.

As you integrate the companies, what new go-to market opportunities are you looking forward to?

The biggest opportunity that we found really early on is the lack of overlap within the account base. That means that when our sales-makers come together as a single selling team with a single channel program, we have so much white space that we can go after within the account base that we know really well and have the opportunity to increase share of wallet to grow the business. It's enormous. Add to that the opportunity to go after the acquisition of new accounts, and certainly we will do that. We believe most of the competitive landscape is getting weaker and weaker. Some might call it smaller, but we see it as weaker.

You've touched on some wider market changes that Dell Technologies wants to take advantage of. Where do you see those changes taking the channel?

I think it creates an opportunity for the channel. The complexity of transforming a workforce, of transforming a company in this digital era, how do you make sense of the security environment in this era? Those are all complicated, complex and multipronged solutions you need to bring together, and that's why the partner ecosystem is so important. Even though we believe we have the broadest portfolio in the industry, there's a lot of great expertise that partners can add from a services perspectives or from another solutions perspective where they can fill in the gaps in the enterprise, which allows them to create unique services and allows them to articulate their specific, unique value-add.

Where do you think partners will recognize their most profitable opportunities? Is it specific product lines or services?

I think it's all of the above. When I talk to partners, they have a specific, key differentiation that they're investing in. A few of them have an opportunity to do it on multiple fronts. What we offer is the opportunity to really complement what they're looking to do with the broadest range of capabilities and enabling them to go hunt for new incremental business with us. It's a very, very strong value proposition.