Dell wishes PartnerDirect a Happy Birthday

Dell has blown out the candles on the first birthday cake for its PartnerDirect channel programme.

One year ago, the previously direct vendor unveiled its first-ever partner progamme in Europe and announced an aggressive channel recruitment drive (Channelweb, 12 February).

Dell’s foray into the channel has not been a smooth ride, with UK channel sales director Andy Dow leaving the firm last month and questions raised over its commitment to partners (Channelweb, 26 January ), but the vendor has emerged the other side of the storm with a new team in place (Channelweb, 9 February).

PartnerDirect now operates in 19 countries across Europe and in the first year more than 15,000 registered partners have been signed up, with 100 of those stepping up to Certified level partners. Furthermore, an additional 100 partners are in the certification process.

Emmanuel Mouquet, EMEA channel sales director at Dell, said: “Every region in Europe has its own distinctive needs, so when we launched PartnerDirect in Europe we wanted to provide a truly local experience for partners.

“We would not have achieved this if we had failed to listen to our partners, which is why we have consistently sought to take on board their feedback in order to create a straightforward and profitable partner-centric program.

Mouquet said the company had had a great start in 2008 in EMEA, but there is much more potential to expand PartnerDirect.

"In 2009, we will continue to evolve PartnerDirect by accelerating advocacy and collaboration between our direct and channel businesses," he said. " Everyone is aware that the year ahead will be a difficult one given the economic situation and we will be doing everything in our power to make sure that PartnerDirect supports its partners and helps keep them profitable despite the downturn.”

The most recent recruit to Dell’s Certified stable is Upgrade Options (Channelweb, 21 January).

John Kelly, chief operating office of Upgrade Options, said: “PartnerDirect gives us all the support we need to help our customers lower costs and simplify their approach to IT.”