How Dell's partners can make the most of APEX, according to its UK channel boss
Rob Tomlin speaks to CRN about the launch of APEX and how he sees partners benefitting from as-a-service
Dell's vice-president of UK channel has outlined the key areas where partners can benefit from its new as-a-service offering APEX.
APEX was originally introduced as a project last year but was fully launched at this year's Dell Technologies World and brings together all of the company's existing cloud and as-a-service offerings under one name and console.
Dell claims the platform will provide "additional opportunity, partnership and profitability" for its partner network, which includes "new revenue streams".
And while partners have expressed optimism that APEX could bring the increased opportunity Dell mentions, queries were raised by some as to how exactly partners would be able to benefit, along with questions about the opportunity to resell.
But speaking to CRN, Rob Tomlin said that partners will have the chance to resell through APEX as well as refer customers to its services like those included under Flex on Demand, Dell's custom solutions service which is already up and running in the UK.
He also clarified that the 30 per cent incentives surrounding APEX, which Dell highlighted at Technologies World, is a referral fee for those on-demand services, with the possibility in the future for further rebates and incentives as the APEX rollout continues in the second half of the year and beyond.
"Over the coming months, we're going to be spending time with all of our partners, educating and training them, getting them capable of taking this to market when it properly launches in the UK in the second half of the year," he said.
"We're on a transformation here, things will launch step by step.
"But APEX is already here. We already have APEX offerings that we've had now for a number of quarters, specifically the Flex on Demand offering which are our consumption-based datacentre solutions.
"We announced that there's a 30 per cent margin that partners get for referral business around the Flex on Demand offering. Prior to the Dell Technologies World event there was a 20 percent referral fee, post-event there's a 30 per cent referral fee.
"Simply, the partner gets it as a finder's fee for passing that opportunity to us. We jointly work with them and get the deal contracted together, so it's still a joint collaboration to close the business together and the partner would then get a finder's fee.
"That's the way it works today on that and there are certain partners who can also resell it as well if they choose to. But a lot of partners, particularly the services-focused partners, are super happy to get a referral fee and work in that model.
"The beauty of APEX is the kit can be in the customer's data centre, in a managed service provider's or reseller's datacentre, or it can be in an Equinix datacentre with the partnership we've arranged there.
"But obviously in the kind of hybrid model, all the non-Flex on Demand will become, in the second half this year, a resale model where resellers will buy and sell through the portal and add their services and work to it."
The move towards as-a-service offerings is being seen across the industry, with Dell's rival HPE also recently announcing that its Greenlake offering would include storage as-a-service.
Data storage forms a key part of the APEX platform, which features a new partnership with data provider Equinix, along with Dell's cloud services and custom solutions which are all under a "single, unified console" that provides "self-service access to the catalogue of APEX services".
And Tomlin says there will be increased opportunity for partners to make more money as APEX develops.
"I think it's going to become its own industry segment. It's going to give the customers their choice in the way they want to consume infrastructure and their IT," he added.
"You've got some customers that are super happy to stay and do what they're doing today. They need to do it like that, because their customers are asking them to have on-prem datacentres.
"We want to help those customers when they do want to move but that model will stay, so Dell will continue to support those customers."
Tomlin said that it has become generally accepted that most companies will use at least two public cloud vendors but will also potentially use some on-prem infrastructure at the same time.
"The opportunity there for partners, who are absolutely crucial to this, is to be able to support the traditional business that will be on prem, but then to be trained up and skilled up and enabled to be able to help design and construct the hybrid APEX solutions that will sit out of Equinix and out of our APEX cloud solutions.
"I think the services opportunity is where the partners will really make their money. They will really make their money on doing the data transformation, around the migrations, around constructing the services, and then the managed services as well.
"That's a big opportunity, as well as of course supporting customers as they want to burst to cloud."
Dell's APEX launch at Dell Technologies World came just after the company announced it was selling of its stake in both software manufacturer VMware and cloud platform Boomi.
And as the channel adapts to vendors continuing to move away from a more traditional model and down the as-a-service route, Tomlin suggests Dell's partners invest time in understanding the changes in order to make a success of it.
"My advice would be to spend time understanding what we've announced, then to sit down with their partner account managers and their technical partner account managers to understand how they get themselves up to speed with what they can sell today, which is Flex on Demand," he explained.
"And then start to consider how the differentiate themselves around the services offerings that will set them up for the years to come around this area."