How SHI Built A $1B Dell Technologies Business

‘We’ve got a sizable team on our side focused on Dell, and they have a sizable team on their side focused on SHI,” says SHI Senior Vice President of Sales and Solutions Kapil Bansal. ‘Dell is certainly one of the leading investors in rebates, marketing dollars and direct head count supporting the channel.’

SHI has built a more than $1 billion business with Dell Technologies thanks to its consulting prowess and ability to deliver breakthrough solutions.

SHI—a top-tier Dell Titanium Black partner—posted strong double-digit sales growth with Dell in the last fiscal year with $500 million in Dell PC and client systems business and another $500 million in the storage and data center infrastructure side of the business, said SHI Senior Vice President of Sales and Solutions Kapil Bansal.

In the client device business, the $16 billion solution provider powerhouse, No. 12 on the 2025 CRN Solution Provider 500, has won Dell Technologies North America Sales Partner of the Year for two consecutive years.

One big differentiator for the SHI client business is a tool it developed called Benchsmart that provides detailed metrics for multiple OEM client devices models across 48 specific parameters including energy consumption, heat performance, latency and even tokens per second, which measures large language model performance.

SHI says the Benchsmart tool is optimized for AI workloads rather than the “speeds and feeds” that many vendors traditionally have used to measure the performance of their systems.

“We’ve been able to work with Dell and our customers to really leverage that type of more consultative selling and really push the CSG [Client Solutions Group] channel with Dell to tremendous effect,” Bansal said.

The Benchsmart tool has been picking up momentum, with more customers leveraging it to make client device purchasing decisions, said Bansal.

SHI has used the same kind of consulting prowess on the data center side of the business with Dell solutions.

One notable example is an AI-based video processing loss prevention solution for a large Northeast grocery store chain with Dell servers running Everseen vision AI software with Nvidia GPUs.

The theft prevention solution—which cost $20,000 for each location—prevented that much theft in the first year alone for each site, said Bansal.

SHI has deployed the retail theft prevention solution in half of the grocery chain’s stores last summer and is now deploying it across the remaining stores based on the return on investment from the first 200 stores, said Bansal.

Bansal credited Dell Chief Partner Officer Denise Millard and Dell Senior Vice President, North America Kyle Leciejewski for building an outstanding channel offering and driving strong sales engagement in the field with the SHI team.

“The Dell program has always been very good for us with very strong rebates, marketing dollars,” he said. “We’ve got a sizable team on our side focused on Dell, and they have a sizable team on their side focused on SHI. Dell is certainly one of the leading investors in rebates, marketing dollars and direct head count supporting the channel. They have really leaned in.”

SHI has also had success working closely with Dell in universities with research projects that feature AI solutions.

“We go in and talk to customers from the perspective of maybe we can help you vet use cases before you submit them for research grants to increase the probability to get the grant approved,” he said. “We also look at potential internships for students and even co-selling curriculum together. We go in with a broader public private collaboration. We have done a couple of these with Dell, which has been very powerful.”

The universities are attracted to the partnership by the imaginative SHI approach with the opportunity to test out the AI solutions in an SHI lab setting, said Bansal.

“We are encouraging them to have their students come into our labs and work with us,” he said. “There are all these things we are doing, and Dell is supporting us.”

Looking ahead, Bansal is optimistic about the trajectory of the Dell business in 202

“We are feeling good,” he said. “Our expectation is the AI investments, which have been more geared to the hyperscalers and the neoclouds so far, will move down to the enterprise. That should have a solid effect on the channel to help us in 2026.”

On the client business side, SHI is still seeing benefits from the sunsetting of Windows 10 in favor of Windows 11. “Only 50 percent has transitioned at this point in time,” he said. “That should accelerate client systems sales.”