Shant Soghomonian at Dell Technologies on his new promotion, partner trends and AI

The Dell senior director and GM partner ecosystem ANZ spoke to CRN Australia at Dell Technologies Forum in Sydney.

Over the past few years, there has been an increased focus around partner differentiated services and capabilities, according to Shant Soghomonian, senior director and general manager, partner ecosystem ANZ at Dell Technologies.

Speaking to CRN Australia at Dell Technologies Forum in Sydney, Soghomonian noted how partners are asking the tech giant about offering more unique services to their customers.

“We've seen partners really lean into us about how we help them differentiate and differentiate with their services as well. Because that's where a lot of the value and profitability comes from a partner perspective,” he explained.

“We've worked over a number of years to build those capabilities around our technologies to enable that that from a partner perspective.”

Soghomonian said they are currently homing in on the opportunities from AI for partners.

“Partners are engaging us to understand what we are doing from an AI perspective, how we're enabling partners from an AI perspective, and how they are partnering with partners as well to be able to do that,” he said.

He used the example of Dicker Data’s recent AI Accelerator, where they partnered with Dell to build an AI POC facility in Sydney.

“The work that Dicker Data has been doing is a perfect example of that. We've been working with them for a long time, building that AI practice, and then how they take that to market,” he said.

“Similarly with Ingram Micro, we've done a whole lot of work around with Ingram Micro, both at a regional level, in Singapore, where we do have similar proof of concept facilities available as well.”

New role

A few weeks ago, Soghomonian stepped into a new role at the company, where he has been given an expanded scope.

Previously, he was responsible for channel and distribution business for Australian users and now he is responsible for the entire partner ecosystem for Australia and New Zealand.

“It is good because it enables us to have a partner ecosystem strategy, an end to end partner ecosystem strategy here in the marketplace,” Soghomonian explained.

He said this new role doesn’t change Dell’s overall partner strategy, it is more of an internal structural change.

“Partners are critical to delivering the outcomes to our customers. What does that mean? We want to enable our partners as Dell and also utilising our distribution partners to build the capabilities around the outcomes and solutions that our customers are looking for,” he said.

“What this allows us to do with these changes, is to have one partner ecosystem team to engage with that ecosystem to be able to then deliver those solutions to our customers intent.”

How AI can solve problems

When it comes to using AI to solve specific problems, Soghomonian said it will be user case specific and for every customer it will be different.

For Dell, the company has four key objectives that AI has to solve for which is sales, supply chain, productivity, and software development.

“It's got to have clear measurables around the objective, or the ROI, or the ROV, whatever it may be,” he said.

From a customer and a partner perspective, Soghomonian said it is about identifying if the project aligns to the core objectives of the organisation, and does the project have clear value.

“Working with our partners, helping them build those capabilities for them to take out to their customers, to consult to them, engage with them as they're going on this AI journey,” he said.

“As well as them adopt that methodology themselves, because partners themselves around their services, delivery, work, their sales, whatever it may be they have opportunities themselves to adopt AI.

"Utilising this framework that we do with our partners and our customers allows them to utilise it from that perspective.”

Message to partners

Soghomonian recognises that partners are on a continual modernisation journey and wants his team to continue to take them down that path.

“In that traditional, private cloud segment, we made some big announcements with Dell Cloud Platform and Dell automation platform as well, which really fits into helping customers modernise,” he said.

“But also looking at once they've modernised, how can we then take them together on that artificial intelligence journey?”