Together we are better placed to do things that we couldn’t uniquely do before: Dell EMC

After the merger of Dell and EMC, Dell’s alliance organisation and EMC alliance organisation have been merged into a team – Global Alliances. From a combined opportunity perspective globally, now Dell EMC Global Alliances has a full stack in its portfolio to to do things that it couldn’t uniquely do before, like providing an end to end solution, from the tablet to compute to storage to all the way to the back up.

In an interview with Mohd Ujaley, Jay Snyder, Senior Vice President, Global Alliances, Service Providers and Industries, Dell EMC said “The value chain is now 100% complete. We can built and deliver the entire stack. Opportunistically, the market share that EMC had with their partners in the overall market was at a level or even greater than the EMC’s core sales team. But Dell had a much lower share of wallet with the same partner. Now, the opportunity that is immediately in front of us is to get equal share of wallet across the Dell’s portfolio with the same exact partners.”

Tell us about the role of Global Alliances?

Today the alliance organisation is about a 550 person. We have specific responsibility for our 17 most strategic global partnership which include both system integrators and outsourcers. We also have responsibilities for Dell EMC global service provider program.

We also have services for our industry team which are folks focused on healthcare, energy, gas, financial, manufacturer etc. Global Alliances is part of the market function of the company. We dramatically changed the organisation about a year and half ago where we previously focused on all the partners but we haven’t really focused on a business plan with our partners so there are couple of big changes for our 17 partners.

We are focused on building a business plan with each of the partners to find a market and strategy and the second thing we have done is we really put a differentiation model in place to try to create solutions around either geography technology or industry. So, in the past we were never industry aligned and today we are much more industry aligned which is a great thing.

How Global Alliances is placed after merger of Dell and EMC?

We combined the two organisations on day one of the merger which was September 7. We brought Dell’s alliance organisation into EMC’s alliance organisation. We folded their team in, we have taken the best practices of their strategy and relationships to be a part of our team. From a combined opportunity perspective globally, and the real advantage for us now is to have a full stack in our portfolio to allow us to do things that we couldn’t uniquely do before, like providing end to end, from literally the tablet through the compute through the storage to all the way to the back up.

The value chain is now 100 % complete. We can built and deliver the entire stack. The strategy and vision has remain consistent. Opportunistically, the market share that EMC had with their partners in the overall market was at a level or even greater than the EMC’s core sales team. So, we are probably 30% to 50% share of wallet with a lot of these partners.

Dell had a much lower share of wallet with the same partner. Now, the opportunity that is immediately in front of us is to get equal share of wallet cross the Dell’s portfolio with the same exact partners and we are actively working on that. It is advantageous to all of us to create an economy of efficiency for our partners and also creating revenue opportunity for Dell EMC.

What kind of impact Dell EMC would have on companies such as Pivotal, Virtustream , VMware, RSA, Nutanix etc?

We have only been together now for few months. There is a lot of aspirational desire to go and work across the portfolio of Dell Technology which include Pivotal, Virtustream, VMware, RSA. We are also focused on creating efficiency in models that allow our partners like TCS and HCL to take advantage of that full technology stack.

We are still figuring some of those things out. Michel clearly has the desire and mandate for us to do that. We are trying for an integrated business plan across all of Dell Technologies with partners. It is the next evolution that is going to give us some of things that you are asking.

Are you planning to launch any new alliance program?

The channel in alliances has always been distinctly different. In the last year and half a lot of the traditional resellers are trying to transition their business to stay current and maintain relevancy. John Burn is the president of the channels for Dell EMC. John and I have spent a lot of time talking about this. We have come out with a single partner program. So, all partners will be a part of the Dell EMC partner program. Within the partner program, we have three branches – channel, service provider, and global systems integrators. All the partners have a similar look and feel relative to tearing. We have four tears, the difference is in their requirements benefits.

There are many products that are overlapping within Dell EMC. How will you address that challenge?

Honestly, I don’t have to worry about that. This is being driven by product engineering and product marketing. Our CTO office is leading the charge. John has been looking over this since a year and they define the future roadmap and future strategy around product. They determine if we are having overlaps and whether it is fine to keep overlaps and where do we want to rationalise the portfolio.

I am consumer of what they built. Personally, I love to see them resolve this sooner and get clearer on the strategic roadmap for all the product line ups. So, I am sure when I am betting on a particular product with my partner it is going to be a long standing viable solution. I do have somebody on my staff so to answer your question who reports to me and also to the Dell EMC CTO, he makes sure that as I am building solutions for my partners, I am aligning up with the overall product road map we have as a company and not investing heavily on something that is going to phase out in 6 to 12 months.

How has been your India’s experience?

We continue to have a phenomenal partner segment in India with HCL, TCS, Wipro, Infosys, Cognizant, Tech Mahindra. We are really excited with the opportunities with these firms. We have done great things and we have more great things to do.

I continue to priorities the partnership in India. At the top of the list are some of the most critical partnership for us for growth in the future and as a means to do that we have done significant investments in taking our engineers who built our products out of our center of excellence in Bangalore and use them to train the technical resources within the partners. We started it six months ago and today we have trained 384 engineers across our 5 partners in India at a very detailed level on product and it goes both ways we trained them how to use the product and they have given us feedback on how to modify the product. It’s been an exceptional two way relationship and we will continue to do that in the year 2017.