Michael Dell on the channel: 'We've earned their trust'

Dell's CEO claims the vendor now has the 'strongest and most stable channel programme in the entire world'

Michael Dell (pictured) has claimed his company has the "strongest" partner programme around and the once-direct firm has "earned" the trust of the channel.

Speaking during a press Q&A at this year's EMEA Solutions Conference in Vienna, Dell's eponymous boss said the US giant has come a long way since it started formally trading with the channel.

"We have been at this for eight years now," he said. "Each year we gained more and more growth and success with partners. We have the strongest and most stable channel programme in the entire world. What's also interesting is if you look at the combination of Dell, EMC and VMware, we may have the largest one also."

Dell said the company made its channel transition at the same time it decided to move into new areas such as software.

"When we started this eight years ago, there were some reluctant partners, and that was understandable given the origins of the company. But over the last few years, it's been nothing but up in terms of the partners.

"I think you get a sense from the number of partners who are here and the excitement we share together in growing our businesses. As we changed our strategy to more of an intellectual property, R&D and innovation-driven strategy, that brought us and the partners closer together. All this started in the late 2000s as we started to go into more software, datacentre and security, and it's been very well received."

Last month US reseller giant CDW, which now owns Kelway, extended its partnership with Dell to include the whole of the vendor's portfolio. Dell used this news to demonstrate how the vendor's perception among resellers has changed.

"There really aren't large channel companies that are not working with us now. One of the more notable exceptions to that was a company called CDW in the US, and we now have a partnership with CDW. It turns out it actually got announced on the same day as we announced the EMC, VMware acquisition so it might have lost a little bit of news even though it was a very significant announcement for both companies."

"[We have had a] very positive response from partners," he added. "We've earned their trust."