Resellers set to benefit from new Dell-Microsoft partnership, claim top UK execs

Vendors announce new era of collaboration which they claim will open up new opportunities for the channel in edge and hybrid cloud

UK resellers are set to benefit from a new partnership between Dell and Microsoft, according to top execs from both vendors.

Dell's SVP and GM for the UK, Dayne Turbitt, was joined by Microsoft UK's Azure business lead Michael Wignall at Dell's new executive briefing centre in London to announce a new partnership between the two vendors.

Turbitt said that the partnership will mean Dell and Microsoft will work together more closely in integrating Microsoft Azure with Dell's infrastructure products.

He said that many of Dell's largest partners in the UK have dedicated Dell practices and dedicated Microsoft practices and the new partnership will put an emphasis on bringing these together.

"We have partners in our ecosystem like Kyndryl and Computacenter and CA which all have Dell practices and Microsoft practices. So I've been saying to the [Dell] Partner Advisory Board that we might want to connect these two," he said.

"There's a massive opportunity for Dell's partner network as well as for Microsoft's in bringing these practices internally. We've already had this conversation with CDW, for example."

Turbitt said resellers can expect to see "more hardware-software combinations" between Dell and Microsoft in the future.

"I'm super excited about the opportunities for the channel," he said.

"I think we will make it easier for [partners]. In the past, partners have been more of a broker, so they'd buy from Dell and buy from Microsoft and stitch it together.

Go back 20 years, they were buying hard drives and motherboards and stitching it together. Now they buy it as a package. That makes life easier for IT professionals; just plug and play and off you go — especially as you push to the edge."

"It's easy when you buy a laptop from Dell and it comes with a Microsoft licence and partners resell it; that's easy. In the future, could it be they buy an Azure component embedded in a piece of hyperconverged infrastructure with Microsoft built in? For sure."

Wignal from Microsoft added that the partnership will "make it easier for the channel to work with us" and mirrors conversations the vendor is having with customers.

He added that he believes Microsoft's 30,000-strong base of partners in the UK have an opportunity to thrive with Microsoft through hybrid cloud and edge solutions.

"We don't see the hybrid and edge technology deviating us from our partner-first model in general," he said.

This isn't the first time Dell and Microsoft have publicly declared a new partnership. In 2019, Michael Dell was joined on stage by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella during its Dell Technologies World conference in Las Vegas.

Nadella's appearance came as Dell was announcing a new partnership between Microsoft and VMware to deliver VMware cloud infrastructure natively on Microsoft Azure.

At the time, the Microsoft CEO said: "What we describe as Microsoft 365 has become the essential tool for communication and collaboration as well as security and compliance. Now being able to partner with Microsoft 365 broadly across VMware and Dell can take what we've done historically to the next frontier."

Dell has since sold its 81 per cent stake in VMware, which was this year acquired by tech giant Broadcom for $61bn.