Profitability is the centre of Dell that it designs into partner programs. The recently announced PowerStore initiative is aimed to provide partners with 20 points in combined front-end discounts and back-end incentives
Despite the tougher year, Dell Technologies posted better-than-expected results for the fiscal fourth quarter, driven by both continued strong personal computer demand and signs of optimism that enterprise IT spending will accelerate in the second half of 2021 as the pandemic fades. For the full financial year, Dell had a record revenue of $94.2 billion, up 2%. The Q4 revenue was $26.1 billion, up 9%.
Above all, the contribution of channel business continued to break the record, this year too, the partner business delivered $52 billion, globally in orders. As the channel business outperforms, the company has decided to make the channel business more predictive and profitable with its PowerStore platform.
Midrange storage is the market that is growing exponentially and that is the area where Dell has yet to gain more share. The company intends to make its PowerStore and PowerScale offering a compelling proposition for its partners.
Last year, Dell Technologies launched its mid-range platform- PowerStore. Since the launch company is excited as the mid-range market holds the largest opportunity for the partners. In fact, in APJ, just within this region, the mid-range market accounts for 62% of the storage market and it’s about a $2.2 billion market. The company believes the PowerStore platform addresses a lot of the cloud challenges. It combines the best of the hardware with Apps-on capability. With PowerStore, customers can deploy it to meet their cloud strategy and their business needs very well.
In a recent channel announcement for 2021, Tian Beng, Senior Vice President & General Manager – Channels, Asia Pacific Japan at Dell Technologies announced a new PowerStore initiative that aimed to provide partners with 20 points in combined front-end discounts and back-end incentives. Now, Dell has decided to further increase discounts and expand the initiative to include the PowerScale family, including Isilon. This expanded initiative is effective immediately.
“Last week we recently announced some changes where we’re actually further enhancing our program and increasing some of the discounts that we’re giving to our partners. We believe that partners selling PowerStore can actually earn now up to 20% of upfront margins; just on the upfront without counting the backend. So it’s a profitable business for our partners,” says Beng.
Under this expanded initiative, partners selling eligible PowerStore or PowerScale products with approved deal registration will get an increased front-end discount on those products, aimed at providing an average of 20 points in addition to standard eligible storage and acquisition back-end rebates. Partners are free to set their own resell pricing and the actual margin may vary by transaction, region, partners’ own resell price, and other factors.
In India too, Dell’s channel business posted a phenomenal result. The channel chief of India called it a ‘historic’ year for Dell India. Every single line of business(LOB) showed a huge growth year on a quarterly basis. This all led to the big win in the market as Dell India, a subsidiary and placing Dell into the leadership position in every single category that we sell.
“This is further shown up by our results. Our partners continued to stay focused in this tough time and our partners were our great support and we continued to show our strength in our partnership,” informs Anil Sethi – Vice President & General Manager, Channels, Dell Technologies.
Profitability is the centre of Dell that it designs into the programs of the partners. Be it any single kind of business or any LOBs which partners are selling. Dell continues to focus on their profitability that keeps their organizations moving and connected to Dell.
Sethi emphasises, “Partners who are selling more than three lines of business, their profitability is much higher and so we are working towards when partners come on board, we are becoming a single-window for the entire infrastructure needs.”
Keeping pace with the evolving market requirements and convergence of cloud, Edge, AI, Machine Learning, 5G, Data Management and Security. Another big area where Dell is putting its best foot forward is- APEX- Everything- as-a-service.
“We are going to see this coming up in the second half into India while it comes into the worldwide in the first half. We already are seeing a big success into the other parts of the world starting with the US market and I am sure you are going to see us talking more about it as we move it into the coming quarters,” concludes Sethi.
