Dell has handed its entire enterprise portfolio to Avnet, forming a strategic partnership in Australia.
Avnet previously only sold Dell software and thin-client devices from its Wyse brand, but now has access to the entire range - including servers, storage and networking.
The new agreement won’t impact Dell’s channel with Ingram Micro, which was the first Australian distributor to be granted access to the full enterprise portfolio in November 2014, and followed this up with the addition of Dell end user devices in May 2015.
Geoff Wright, Dell's general manager ANZ channels and alliances, told CRN it wasn’t a new deal, but rather an “activation” of the existing partnership.
“It’s not just Dell coming to a distributor, it’s actually Dell and Avnet going to market together,” said Wright.
“We’re on this journey where we started with 3,000 partners buying from Dell a year ago, which represented a small part of our business. You can’t operate like that; what you need is to have focus within your channel, working out who your key partners are and invest in those partners together and build a very strong relationship.
“It really is a value offering to bring those two brands together, so it’s pretty exciting.”
Darren Adams, Avnet vice president and general manager Australia and New Zealand, told CRN that Avnet is all-in with its strategy with Dell. The two companies will go to market together, with Avnet incorporating Dell’s networking products into its 'Powered by Avnet' label.
“When we sell something to somebody, I would describe that as a marketing, sales and engineering conglomerate,” said Adams.
“We want to sell a solution for an ERP environment; we want to sell a high-availability solution; we want to sell backup and restore. Powered by Avnet is where we package up great technology from Dell – servers, storage, network, software, whatever’s really needed to provide a solution to that [customer] – but we use Avnet’s capital combined with Avnet’s services, such as helpdesk services, integration services or asset tagging services, with Avnet’s brand.”
Adams and Wright said that in the 30 days since the new deal was activated, they had already signed “multimillion-dollar” contracts with a customer, though declined to reveal the name.
The deal with Dell follows Avnet's appointment last year as a distributor for EMC – the distie is also leveraging its Powered by Avnet service to bring its financial muscle to the storage company's push for more midmarket customers.
Dell is set to acquire EMC, meaning Avnet and Ingram will go head-to-head across the entire portfolio.
While Dell has in the past been known for going direct to customers, the vendor has been working over the past few years to transform into a channel-focussed company.
“Dell wants to be the underlying technology for those partners’ managed service business,” said Wright.
“Because Dell doesn’t have the channel penetration as other vendors, there’s a lot of net new business out there for both of us.”
The agreement comes as Dell prepares to launch its new AdvantEdge partner program in Australia. The program rewards individual sales partners with prizes for sales, as well as completing certifications. AdvantEdge was extended to cover Dell’s storage product line and products developed with other vendor partners.