Dell has kicked off 2024 by revamping its global channel leadership and reporting lines, appointing EMC veteran Denise Millard as its Chief Partner Officer.
Here are four things you need to know about the new Dell channel supremo.
1. She’s an EMC veteran
Millard originally joined EMC as a Training Specialist in 1998 (according to her LinkedIn profile).
She swiftly climbed the ranks at the storage giant, ending up as its Vice President, Chief of Staff ahead of its acquisition by Dell in 2016.
Millard then held various partner roles at Dell before she was promoted to SVP, Global Alliances, Industries, Partner Strategy and Programs in October in the wake of Dell Channel Chief Rola Dagher’s departure.
2. Promotion comes amid wider channel revamp
Millard was yesterday elevated to the pinnacle of Dell’s global channel business, reporting into President of Global Sales & Customer Operations, Bill Scannell.
At the same time, Dell’s global channel sales teams will now report into their respective regional sales leaders, working closely with Millard’s partner strategy and programme team.
This follows the decision by Dell’s Global Channel Sales leader, Diego Majdalani, to leave the vendor at the end of March.
“With this move, Dell is more closely aligning its channel and broader sales teams to best support partners within the regions and further integrate partners into our go-to-market activities,” the vendor explained.
3. She leads a near $50bn empire
Dell may be known for its direct-selling heritage, but Millard is nevertheless taking charge of one of the world’s largest IT channel businesses (perhaps only Microsoft’s and Cisco’s are larger).
“Partners are pivotal to our success – over the past four quarters, they contributed approximately 50% of Dell’s net revenue,” she stressed.
“I look forward to accelerating that momentum by continuing to unite the strengths of our team with the strengths of our partner ecosystem.”
4. Change is afoot
Millard’s elevation comes following Dell’s decision to move to a ‘partner-first’ strategy for storage.
This saw the vendor quadruple the number of accounts available for storage Partner of Record, with more than 99% of Dell customers and potential customers now being considered partner-led for storage.
Dell partners are beginning to see the strategy bear fruit.
“What we’ve seen in the last couple of months is a trickle down of requirements coming through where Dell are coming to partners like us and saying ‘we’ve lost a load of skills in this area; we need you to come and help us win business here’,” Foiz Ahmed, COO of Constor Solutions told IT Channel Oxygen last month.
Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen
