Michael Dell: Dell is a channel convert

Michael Dell tells CRN that channel is now at core of company as he stops off in UK

Four years after famously declaring that direct selling was no longer a religion for Dell, founder Michael Dell claims the vendor is "fully converted" to the channel.

Talking to ChannelWeb in London today, Dell (pictured) also re-affirmed his company's commitment to the PC space and promised that partners would benefit from further acquisitions.

"Globally, the channel is now close to a third and well on its way to being half of our business," he said.

"Today, our channel business is not billions of dollars, but tens of billions of dollars, so yeah, we are fully converted and spreading the religion far and wide. Because it's such a substantial and fast-growing part of our business we have altered the core of the company itself to become channel centric."

Dell suggested that recent talk of the PC's demise had been exaggerated, emphasising that desktops and laptops will remain an important part of Dell's business.

"Let's remember there are 1.5 billion PCs in the world today and Gartner says there will be two billion in 2014. We don't think PCs are going away," he said.

"We think it is evolving - we believe in a three-device world. If you followed the Microsoft Build conference yesterday you heard about Windows tablets and Windows 8 and we think there will be a lot of very interesting form factors [to come out]."

He added that HP's recent PSG announcements had led to renewed interest from UK partners, eight of whom he met up with earlier in the day.

"If you want to figure out what the implications are it's really easy to ask partners and they'll tell you very quickly. It's hard to see how it's not a great thing for us. We believe the client device continues to be very important we are very committed to them," he said.

Dell will drop in on the CloudForce conference tomorrow before jetting off to France, where he will meet local partners and customers.