Opinion: Will you partner with Dell?

Dell’s local channel strategy has been announced, so it’s time to start asking yourself the question – will you partner with Dell?

I’ve just met the traditionally direct vendor’s two new Australian channel folk. Dell has a monumental task ahead if it wants to win over the locals.

My opinion is that some partners will jump straight on board to see if there is money to be made, others are very wary.

I contacted a few Australian partners, starting with our resident reseller Mathew Dickerson. He’s never afraid to speak his mind so I asked, ‘would you consider partnering with Dell Mathew?’ NO was
the clear answer.

He went on to say that he isn’t convinced Dell understands its business model or believes in the channel.

“I think this is just a play because they have looked across the fence and the grass looks greener on the other side (reseller land) so they want to try it a bit,” he said.

“If they threw out their entire direct model and went channel I would look at it differently but I don’t see that to be the case. I think this is a case of having a bet each way,” added Dickerson.

Michael Jenkin, Microsoft MVP and a director of Business Technology Partners, echoed Dickerson’s comments.

“The simple answer is no. I was previously in this situation in 2001. I had supply and support issues and it took three weeks to return a quote for servers,” he said.

“I sold about 30 poweredge servers and workstations but it was a battle. I then moved to HP and had such a fantastic experience. I can only hope that Dell has gotten better, mind you, back then, it only had three staff in Australia.”

With a local channel team finally being formed, one year after the US trial, you can bet your margins there’s interesting times ahead.