By Paul Kunert
25 September 2008
Dell has finally lifted the covers off Skye Group as its first Certified Partner in the UK who has sat the Enterprise Architecture specialisation.
This finally breaks months of silence from the hybrid vendor who has so far refused to name reseller partners across EMEA since it launched the Partner Direct channel programme in February this year.
The Certified label has not been marketed to customers but Sam Mager, sales director at Skye Consult, brushed off suggestions that the badge had yet to gain value.
“It shows that we have the skills in-house to take Dell products to customers,” he said, “that we are accredited and approved and that we can wrap our value-added services around it.”
Since Dell has come clean about its channel strategy and formalised relationships, selling the vendor’s technology had become “much easier” said Mager as the direct-only mantra had frequently confounded customers that bought from partners.
He said in certain accounts it was working with Dell's channel account team and the direct sales force and the collaboration was developing well.
Last week, Microscope revealed that Dell’s direct sales force will only secure quarterly bonuses if a third of their revenues come through the channel and that their compensation for indirect business will be higher.
Earlier this month, Dell head of channel EMEA told Microscope that it had 15 to 20 Certified partners across the region but that figure is growing weekly and the Skye confirmed there were others in the UK that had yet to be named.
“This is not a completely exclusive club”, Mager revealed
Six sales and three technical staff needed to sit online exams free of charge to achieve the Certified stage and it took a couple of days for each person. The accreditation process took one month from start to finish.
The services offered by Skye Consult range from desktop and network design and implementation to WAN services.
One of the criticisms levelled at Dell recently centred on the processes it has put in place to manage reseller relationships more effectively, which some believed had made the company less dynamic.
Mager said the formal channel strategy was “in its infancy, so nothing will be perfect first time around but we have been very impressed with the way that they have gone about adopting the channel because it’s a big shift [in culture].”
“In the past we found it difficult to get answers [from Dell], to get feedback and get things done… I now have a clearer process on who [in the company] to go to,” he said.
Enterprise architecture is Dell’s first specialisation for resellers, with a managed service accreditation (see Microscope Magazine 23 June 2008), and potentially one for the public sector heading to Europe in the not-too-distant future.
Skye Group holds a number of vendor accreditations, including Hewlett-Packard’s Preferred Partner status. There have been all sorts of suggestions in the industry that rival vendors have done their best to deter resellers from working with Dell.
Mager said he not experienced any issues with other vendors in its portfolio and could not see its Dell relationship infringing with HP or others, “we are completely vendor agnostic.”
Skye IT was launched in 2003 and has projected revenues of £20m this year with in excess of £12m from the services division Skye Consult, £2m from Skye Recruit and the remainder from hardware sales at Skye IT. It will employ 90 staff by the end of next week.
So more than six months after Dell launched Partner Direct, it has named one Certified partner, the question the industry will be asking is when will the vendor name other top tier and Registered partners.
