Dell Strives For Peak Customer ‘Stickiness’ With Apex Enhancements

‘So we’re taking another big step to enable partners to deliver solutions in whatever capacity makes sense for them,’ Dell Global Channel Chief Rola Dagher tells CRN.

Dell Technologies Global Channel Chief Rola Dagher

To drive more growth for partners and capture a larger pool of customers for its Apex cloud services, Dell Technologies has introduced what it calls “enhancements” around storage, VMware cloud, and its private and hybrid cloud.

“So we’re taking another big step to enable partners to deliver solutions in whatever capacity makes sense for them and the customers of course. Because at the end of the day, it’s all about modernizing how business is delivered and how our customers want to consume it,” Dell Technologies Global Channel Chief Rola Dagher told CRN. “So these portfolios, the updates, they’ll be around the new market access, even bigger and greater opportunities for partners to differentiate and promote their individual capabilities while extending the value of Apex to a broader range of customers.”

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Round Rock, Texas-based Dell is coming off its biggest quarter ever for Apex, reporting that the company’s cloud service achieved $1 billion in annual recurring revenue during its second quarter. Apex enrolled 200 new subscribers in the quarter as well, the company said during its earnings report last month.

The new Apex updates include enhacements to Apex data storage, which Dell is now offering to partners without them having to be a subscriber to Dell’s managed services.

“We’re focused on meeting customers needs’ and increasing the partner stickiness,” Dagher said. “We will now deliver an option to subscribe to Apex data storage services, with or without the Dell managed services. So that way, our partners have the option to add their own services and meet the customer’s demands. It will give them more flexibility, including many, many choices to manage their own day-to-day operation, which is great, because we’ve heard that feedback from the partners and we’re delivering on that.”

Dell also said it would offer partners more flexibility around Apex private and hybrid cloud, including a consumption pricing model that allows customers to only pay for the resources they need.

“They can now deliver their own managed services and incorporate Apex into the broader data center management contracts,” Dagher told CRN. “Partners can also implement the new instance-based approach that allows the customers to only pay for resources they need. So if the as-a-service was out of reach for some customers, partners can now offer a smaller 32-instance configuration threshold. That is opening more growth opportunities for the customers, for the partners to help them grow across the board.”

Dell also said it has expanded the ability for partners to get their dev teams working on cloud services by creating an option that allows them to build cloud-native apps on the VMware stack to help partners modernize applications.

“This is a great fit for the partners to focus on value cloud development and let Dell manage the operational oversight. And again, that’s all based on the feedback we’ve had from our members,” Dagher said.

Scott Winslow, president of Waltham, Mass.-based Winslow Technology Group, a Dell Platinum partner, said the Dell relationship has been key to his businesses growth this year, and Apex represents a great value.

“Our customers are continuing to look for choice, flexibility and value when considering options for their IT infrastructure requirements,” Winslow said. “Dell’s Apex portfolio checks all of these boxes. It’s great to see Dell enhancing the Apex solution set, making it easier for partners to customize and include their own services as part of the offering.”