Ian Heath to replace Rob Tomlin as Dell UK channel business lead

Tomlin leaves Dell UK after five years effective 1 April 2024

Dell UK has promoted Ian Heath to channel and distribution lead, replacing Rob Tomlin.

Tomlin is leaving following five years heading up the UK channel business.

In his new post, Heath will be responsible for driving the strategic priority areas recently outlined in the 2024 Dell Technologies partner programme: growing and modernising the core business, building new market opportunities, strengthening collaboration, and streamlining partner experience.

The recent changes outlined rewarding partners for acquiring new business, modernising core offerings like storage/servers/client devices and building new opportunities in high growth areas like AI, edge computing, and sustainability.

Dell said it would launch new competencies in data science/AI, edge solutions, and sustainability/ESG to help partners capitalise on these opportunities.

The vendor is making partners a bigger priority following its channel-shaking announcement in August 2023 that it planned to lean more on partners and even pay direct sellers more to go through the channel.

The man for the job

Heath's ten-year career at Dell includes managing the UK public sector business and leading the British alliances team.

Most recently, Heath led Dell's EMEA cloud partners enterprise, forging alliances with global and pan-EMEA cloud service and telecom providers, as well as multicloud partners.

"My experience has taught me how essential partners are to our business; it takes an ecosystem of suppliers and solution providers of all types to deliver on the promise of digital transformation," said Heath.

"At Dell, we have an ingrained recognition that when we work together with partners, we innovate faster for our customers."

Alexandre Brousse, head of channel EMEA at Dell, looks forward to working with Heath and the ecosystem of channel partners and distributors within the UK to unleash innovation, drive mutual success and ultimately deliver for customers.

"We have unwavering confidence in the power of partnership and are resolutely focused on collaboration through our partner programme and partner-first strategy for storage.

"Heath's relationship-centric approach and deep knowledge of the UK market will be fundamental to capturing new growth, driving impact, and extending our leadership."