‘It would be good to see this expand to cover all the datacentre’
Sarah Shields, Group Alliances Director, Computacenter
How did the news initially go down at Computacenter?
Officially we are Dell’s leading partner in Europe and we are delighted to continue working closely with Dell and make this a success for both Computacenter and Dell. It’s good news for the channel.
Are you seeing other vendors move more work to the channel as they downsize direct staff?
Most other vendors have a more balanced channel play, so they don’t have to make this move. I think it makes sense from Dell’s perspective. It embraces everything the channel should bring to a vendor in terms of value add and sales expertise, and also proximity to customers.
It’s extremely good news for the partners that address mid-sized customers.
Dell’s storage sales fell 11% in its most recent quarter. Will making partners the main sales engine for this part of its business help return it to growth?
Supporting profitable business growth through the channel is a good idea. More storage is sold through the channel than direct, so this absolutely makes sense.
It would be really good to see this expand to cover all the datacentre.
Do you think Dell will – or should – roll this partner-led strategy from storage into other technologies?
At a partner level, very few partners will differentiate datacentre sales by product. So having a different approach for server, storage, networking etc adds complexity and I think inhibits progress.
