Dell turns to channel to help showcase its tin

Newly private vendor looking to open innovation hub at the premises of one of its UK resellers

Dell plans to open a demonstration centre with one of its larger UK partners as part of a wider effort to dramatically increase the volume of demo kit available to its EMEA channel.

The newly private vendor opened a demonstration centre at German partner Bechtle's Hanover headquarters in the summer, with help from Intel, and now aims to mimic the initiative in other European countries, including the UK.

Dell already has three solutions centres at its own premises across EMEA - in Limerick, Frankfurt and Paris - but Andreas Schütze, director of EMEA channel marketing at Dell, said kitting up key partners across the region would help it showcase its end-to-end proposition to more customers. The UK is a key country but negotiations with potential partners have not yet begun, he added.

A 500 per cent rise in the demonstration kit available to partners was one of a string of enhancements to Dell's global channel strategy announced last week.

Starting in North America at the start of Dell's fiscal 2015 on 1 February, Dell sales staff will get 20 per cent more commission for selling seven areas of its portfolio via a partner than they would selling direct. Dell is also creating 200,000 channel-led accounts in North America.

These two initiatives are set to be rolled to EMEA at some point in Dell's fiscal 2015 but Schütze said the exact commission structure is yet to be agreed, and may vary by country. The identity of the partner-led accounts here will be determined based not on customer size but on whether Dell feels they would be better-served direct or by the channel, Schütze added.

Dell also last week announced a global partnership with Accenture focusing on delivering cloud, security and application management services to midmarket and enterprise customers and Schütze said the partnership would swiftly become active in EMEA.

"We wouldn't have imagined five years ago when we started PartnerDirect that we would have a joint agreement between Dell and a global systems integrator," Schütze said.