Michael Dell: “Enormous Role” For Partners In Shaping Multi-Cloud World

“They are an incredible part of our ecosystem. Over 50 percent of our orders last year were through channel partners. So we are all-in to help with that evolution,” said Dell CEO and founder Michael Dell.

As Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell declared that the battle for where to place workloads has ended with a victory for multi-cloud, he said there is an “enormous role for partners” to play in shaping that future.

“They are an incredible part of our ecosystem. Over 50 percent of our orders last year were through channel partners. So we are all-in to help with that evolution,” Michael Dell said in response to a question by CRN during a Dell Technologies World 2022 session. “We’re seeing them actively engaged here. We have an aggressive roadmap of adding features, capabilities and functions to be able to build that out.”

Michael Dell said whether it is through Dell’s Apex as-a-service portfolio or their public cloud integrations, the goal remains to help partners push customers into high value areas and solve their most critical business needs.

“Let’s face it, a lot of infrastructure is below the value line, right?” Dell said. “So if they can buy that on a consumption-basis, as-a-service, in a fully-automated way and move more of their resources above that value line—that’s what they want to do. That’s their objective. There’s enormous momentum for that occurring and that’s what we’re tapping into.”

Dell Technologies World 2022 kicked-off in Las Vegas on Monday with new solutions and multi-cloud partnerships formed including Apex Cyber Recovery Services, Dell PowerProtect Cyber Recovery for Microsoft Azure, and CyberSense for Dell PowerProtect Cyber Recovery for AWS.

[Related: Dell Technologies World 2022: News And Announcements]

During his keynote remarks, Dell said the battle over on-premise versus off-premise is over. “The future is multi-cloud,” he said.

Dell Technologies vice chairman, and co-chief operations officer, Jeff Clarke agreed with Michael Dell in the company’s belief that channel partners will be front and center in the multi-cloud world.

He called Apex a “control plane” that channel partners can innovate upon to bring in their own expertise around applications development, engineering, and value-added services to create customer value.

“There’s an opportunity for channel partners who really want to add value and actually use that control plane, which I don’t believe is accessible to them in the public cloud, and being able to partner with us and help those customers manage workloads,” Clarke said in response to a CRN question.

Todd Belcher, vice president of sales for Converge, a Houston, Texas-based Dell partner, said his company is in the midst of moving away from the traditional model of large capital expenditures, which he says are difficult to install and maintain. Instead, Converge is shifting towards Dell’s multi-cloud product offerings. He said Dell is meeting the channel there with robust, multi-cloud offerings in security and storage.

“We have many practice areas in the cloud, so that is going to pair nicely,” he said. “With Apex, we are still figuring it out. It’s been a challenge to get a handle on that … but overall it’s been good. We’re growing with Dell products.”

For Dell’s recent fiscal year 2022, global Dell channel partner orders climbed 27 percent annually to a whopping $59 billion. Additionally, Dell increased channel rebate payouts by 25 percent year over year in fiscal year 2022.

“We owe our incredible year to our partners,” said Rola Dagher, Dell’s global channel chief in a interview with CRN in March. “In our new fiscal year, we’re keeping our foot on the gas. We’re accelerating the momentum by continuing to invest in the channel.”

Dell Technologies World 2022 runs from May 1 to May 4 in Las Vegas.