Dell VMware Doubling Down On Integrations; Partners ‘Thrilled’

“The more advantages and the more integrations that Dell and VMware have – that’s a major competitive advantage for us,” said Rick Gouin, CTO at Winslow Technology Group.

Dell and VMware’s joint innovation engine is now full throttle as the two companies launched a slew of tightly integrated solutions at Dell Technologies World which partners say will be a major competitive advantage in the sales trenches.

“The more advantages and the more integrations that Dell and VMware have – that’s a major competitive advantage for us,” said Rick Gouin, chief technology officer at Winslow Technology Group, a Waltham, Mass.-based Dell Titanium partner. “As far as I’m concerned, partner up. Make the experience with VMware on Dell better than anyone else’s and that makes our job easier. I’m thrilled about all the new solutions.”

At Dell Technologies World this week, Dell unveiled arguably its biggest cloud news in recent memory with the new Dell Technologies Cloud Platforms and Cloud Data Center-as-a-Service offerings. Both solutions were jointly engineered by combining Dell and VMware hardware, software and services capabilities.

Additionally, Dell and VMware launched their breakthrough Dell Technologies Unified Workspace, an open and flexible end user computing platform with features including lifecycle management solutions, built-in security and automation to streamline operations from all devices from a single console.

[Related: Dell EMC Partner Program Reborn As Dell Technologies To Drive Channel Sales]

Dan McCormick, executive vice president of Davenport Group, a St. Paul, Minn.-based Dell EMC and VMware partner, said the joint engineering between the two companies will not only help partners win sales in the market, but provides customers with a more consistent and seamless IT experience. He said that although both Dell and VMware will have their own individual business and build partnerships with vendors who may compete against other individual families within Dell Technologies, the assurance of a tightly coupled Dell-VMware solution can’t be matched.

“What we’re seeing with these announcements is the delivery of being really able to orchestrate that integration which is a huge improvement to what our customers get to experience. And as a channel partner, the assurance that we can bring and stand in confidence with our customers knowing that what we’re delivering to meet their business goals is going to work because Dell Technologies has all of that in their ability to prioritize, organize and orchestrate,” said McCormick. “Similar capabilities can exist outside of the Dell Technologies family, but there’s a huge advantage for Dell Technologies and their partners in their ability to do that.”

Not only is Dell making tighter VMware integrations to help the customer, but the Round Rock, Texas-based company is enabling Dell EMC partners to now buy, engage and sell VMware solutions more easier than ever before with the new Dell Technologies Partner Program.

At its Global Partner Summit on Monday, Dell EMC announced that it will terminate the company’s current Dell EMC Partner Program immediately to be replaced by the new Dell Technologies Partner Program. Dell partners can now seamlessly procure and sell VMware solutions through the new program. Purchasing VMware products will also count toward their tier status and tier revenue requirements in the Dell Technologies Partner Program. Partners in the new program get the same benefits when buying and selling other products inside the Dell Technologies family of businesses as well, which includes Boomi, Pivotal, RSA, SecureWorks and Virtustream.

“There’s a ton of untapped potential across Dell Technologies,” said Gouin. “We want to be able to build out entire solutions that include parts of the portfolio or every part of the portfolio. The easier they can make it for us to do business for those separate lines of business, VMware being a major one, the more we’re going to sell.”

Dell owns an 81 percent stake in VMware, stemming from the company’s $67 billion blockbuster acquisition of EMC in 2016. Last year, the $91 billion infrastructure giant was able to bypass a traditional IPO route to becoming a public entity through a unique VMware stock swap deal.

Partner are expecting even more new Dell VMware jointly engineered and integrated solutions to be unveiled this week at Dell Technologies Word 2019 in Las Vegas.