5 Ways Dell Technologies Partners ‘Are Going To Win More’ With PowerStore

In an interview with CRN, 20-year Dell EMC veteran Scott Millard breaks down everything Dell Technologies is bringing to the table with PowerStore.

Dell Technologies kept partners top of mind as it was developing the new PowerStore midrange all-flash array, which is aimed at driving channel storage sales to new heights.

“PowerStore is containerized, 100 percent programmable, has scale-up and scale-out capabilities, you can swap and upgrade controllers in and across families non-disruptively. There’s [also] differentiated VMware integration, industry-leading performance and efficiency—when you think about all those things, that’s what the partners are asking for,” said Scott Millard, senior vice president, specialty sales, global channel, alliances and OEM at Dell Technologies. “There are absolutely no competitors who can deliver all of those things.”

In an interview with CRN, the 20-year Dell EMC veteran breaks down everything Dell Technologies is bringing to the table with PowerStore.

PowerStore Is Part Of All ‘Existing Channel Storage Acceleration Programs’

PowerStore is going to qualify for all of our existing channel storage acceleration programs including our Competitive Swap incremental incentives, where we had a record year last year in qualified competitive swaps. Also for our New Business incremental incentives, our Partner Preferred account incremental incentives as well as our Tech Refresh incentives, these are all incentives on top of our partner base rebates. If we look at Tech Refresh alone, that’s where we are providing partners qualified leads for modernization and then we’re paying them incremental dollars when they convert those leads. Last year we had a record year, close to $2.5 billion in partner Tech Refresh, so that one program alone is delivering more leads in revenue to our partners than many of our competitors’ total revenue.

More Partner Incentives, ‘Smart Bundles Priced To Win’

One area we do need to improve on is at the lower end of the midrange market. So for entry and low-entry midrange, we’re launching some additional partner incentives that include simplified product positioning and ‘Smart Bundles’ priced to win. For a partner with a deal registration, [it includes] deeper discounting and price advantages over both direct and a non-deal-registration partner. We’re streamlining deal registration to sub-eight hours.

New Tools Help Partners Automate ‘Entire Migrations’ Directly From PowerStore Manager Wizard

We’re offering more ways to migrate than ever including new native tools that let you automate entire migrations directly from the PowerStore Manager wizard. Customers can complete a nondisruptive array-to-array transfer from existing Dell EMC midrange offerings ... in less than 10 clicks. PowerStore can be deployed as a stand-alone appliance and will also be available for our PowerOne autonomous infrastructure and the Dell Technologies Cloud platform. The new storage platform is covered by our Future-Proof Loyalty Program, which provides choice, predictability and investment protection, as well as our Dell Technologies On Demand program that offers flexible pay-per-use options.

‘Thousands’ Of Partner Enablement Activities On Tap

If we look at the marketing tools that we’re providing partners with PowerStore available from our Digital Demand Generation Center, we have our digital activation packs, which include partner-branded emails, partner-branded social media, web content and partner-branded campaign building. We have thousands of partner enablement activities scheduled in May. Partners are going to be able to earn credentials toward their Dell Technologies Partner Program tier status as part of our virtual training. We’ve never really done that before. So the virtual training we’ll be driving in May will allow partners to earn credentials toward their tier status in the program.

Through our Partner Academy training program, we leverage the same sales and presales enablement content for our partners that we train our own sales and presales teams on. It’s called Dell Technologies Sales University [DTSU]. We’re taking the same badges and training content we use in DTSU and making that available in the Partner Academy for PowerStore. Last year, over 10,000 partner system engineers participated in our Heroes technical events. PowerStore will be featured in our Heroes events globally starting in May.

New ‘Co-Delivery’ Offering Highlights Importance Of Services To Partners

We know how important services are to our partners’ profitability and relevance with their customers. So we have our architecture and deployment certifications available as well as co-delivery, which is a relatively new offering. It allows our partners to sell our deployment services but actually deliver those services themselves using our tools and automation. Partners then get reimbursed and get paid rebates for delivering those services. Partners are going to win more with Dell. We’re bringing a product to market that they really designed with us, aimed squarely at the fastest-growing part of the storage array market—midrange and all-fl ash. We’re excited to get these training sessions, demand generation and pipelines started.