>> The Cube presents
Dell Technologies World brought to you by Dell.
>> Okay, welcome back everyone.
Day three of Dell Tech World
Cube's live coverage in L/as Vegas.
We're down on the floor.
Live event, hybrid event as well online,
if you're interested in seeing some of the replays.
I'm John Furrier with The Cube with Dave Vellante.
Next guest, Cheryl Cook, Senior Vice President
Global Channels of Dell Technologies, Cube alumni.
Great to see you in person.
>> Thank you. Great to see you both in person.
>> Hey Cheryl. >> How are you?
>> We had a virtual last year, but this year in-person.
A lot of action, lot of big announcements.
The big story is the Snowflake deal.
You're seeing the new architecture by design,
multi-cloud by design and variety.
Everything cyber is huge.
Now the partners are playing a huge role
so the notion channel and partner value add
is really at all time high.
Could you share your thoughts on where you see it?
Where we are today and where is it going?
>> Thank you, I absolutely couldn't agree more
and I'm an optimist by nature,
but I actually think the timing for the partner community
and the partner ecosystem in large has never been brighter.
So a lot of the themes we've been discussing
is just the inherent complexity
that our customers are trying to navigate
through multi-cloud and multiple business models,
consumption models, that is so uniquely well positioned
for what our partners do.
So our partners help navigate those complexities
for our customers.
They bring a lot of expertise,
in not just infrastructure,
in multiple stacks and workloads,
but also in verticals and industry expertise,
and everything's moving use case workload, industry centric,
and I think our partners are incredibly well positioned.
>> Yeah, the game still remains the same
but the world changes in indirect and partner relationships.
And yeah, we use words like ISV, VAR reseller,
at the end of the day,
they're helping customers with solutions
and the game has changed.
Could you share your thoughts on what's different now?
Because we're seeing a rise of more managed services
plugging into your your relationships
and the value you guys bring.
So it's still the same game value creation,
helping customers, making money.
>> Absolutely and I think the one trend
that we're definitely seeing is
everybody is overwhelmed with the complexity
and I think we all can acknowledge that one size
doesn't fit all, for every workload,
whether it's a deployment model in a public cloud,
on premise, a private cloud,
some customers want to go asset light.
How do put it in a colocation facility?
So customers are in charge right now.
It's actually about their choice
and what we're trying to do with a lot of these partnerships
and announcements is really enable and empower our partners
to be able to meet their needs and offer the right solution
for what they have, where they need to spend it.
And I just think it's an incredible opportunity
and the lines are blurring frankly, in the ecosystem.
So many of these partners are participating
in multiple business models already.
So our notion of an MSP, a CSP, a reseller,
it's kind of yes, they're all doing it.
>> It's called cloud.
>> John mentioned the Snowflake deal,
I wonder if you could talk about that a little bit?
In the old days it would've been Dell going to Snowflake
saying, "Hey your software can run really fast on our box."
>> Yeah. >> You know,
"so we should go to market and do something together."
It's a totally different dynamic now,
can you explain kind of how that deal came about
and what the dynamic was like?
>> Yeah, we're actually really excited
about the Snowflake partnership
because I think it's a fabulous example and an expression
of what the true partner ecosystem can represent.
And what it really showed is
we've got a fabulous piece of technology and so innovative
with Snowflake and their analytics platform
and it was cloud based only.
We have a lot of customers that for sovereignty reasons,
security reasons, policies, what have you,
that have a lot of on-premise on Dell storage,
quite frankly.
So what this partnership enabled was the ability to export
and take data off premise into their cloud
for analytics and get it back.
But as importantly for their customers,
it now gives them the ability to take their IP
and their Snowflake analytics platform
on premise to where the Dell storage is.
And that's an incredibly strong example of how
it's a really strong win-win partnership
between Dell and Snowflake,
but it's a great win for our partners and customers
to be able to leverage the best of both IP,
where it's appropriate.
>> Oh, and by the way,
they run really fast. >> Absolutely.
>> It's a completely different discussion and dynamic
in terms of going into that deal, interesting.
>> Absolutely, absolutely.
>> So that's a good example of the services that are emerging
so also highlights that that didn't exist before that,
that use case.
So as partners come in and want to make more money,
there's tons of margin for them to build solutions
and they're in multiple business models.
Can you give an example of some of the hot trends
as a service?
Is it what models do you see kind of like evolving
as kind of like the lead play for most of the partners.
>> I would say, the reason I think our partners
are so incredibly well positioned
is like some of our strongest partners,
they all have relationships with the hyperscalers too.
So they have practices built around AWS and Azure
and the like, and right now
workloads can't live in one single place.
Partners that are so uniquely well positioned
to advise and counsel their customers
and do all the value added services you mentioned
on where is the best fit in place for that workload?
And what we're aiming to do is empower those partners
and give them consistency in operating experiences,
management experiences,
so that no matter where the data or the workload goes,
those partners' deep investments in their skills
and their expertise is leveragable
and extendable across wherever it lands.
>> Yeah Cheryl, we always have great conscious
around the channel, the relationship and the value,
opportunities for them to make money and serve customers,
but I want to get your thoughts on what's just happened
over the past three years.
The pandemic has really shined the light
on the value of partners.
In a time where everyone's working at home
and COVID's happened with the pandemic,
partners stepped up.
>> Ah. >> And so can you share
what was some of the highlights
and different success trends you saw with the pandemic?
Because they had to move fast with technology,
people who weren't on the front end
had to catch up fast,
but yet were handicapped by the pandemic.
>> Yeah, you know it's really revealed
just so many inspirational stories actually but I think
what we learned and what we saw is
partners are local,
partners are intimate with customers.
They understand their business
and they understand their need,
and then when they leaned into a relationship with Dell,
it was everybody focused on the customer.
And at first it was business continuity, right?
I mean, resiliency, how do we do it?
How do we enable them to get their workers productive
and working remote?
And I think customers just needed help
and they reach local, right?
And the partners that are there
have the expertise as we know,
it's not the first time they've done these deployments
and they had the reach and scale.
And I honestly think some of the joint success
we enjoyed through that crazy phenomenal period
is frankly a testament to,
let's just stay focused on the customer.
I think our supply chain showed up.
Frankly, I think we helped navigate that and be responsive
but the opportunity was incredible.
>> I heard people say the internet and partners
saved companies from going under with the pandemic.
Can you give an example of what's changed for Dell
because US had to rely on partners,
what new learnings and changes came out of the pandemic?
Because they had to solve the problems fast for customers.
Did it change how you operate and how you run your business?
>> Absolutely well, I'll tell you,
I mean, I'll give you a real world example.
What we kind of mobilized real quickly
was all about digital selling and virtual selling
and digital demand creation.
And nobody could hold an event anymore
and that's the way we all build pipeline and drive demand.
And we have learned out of necessity
how productive and efficient virtual opportunities can be.
And we can also learn when,
Michael calls it Zoom airlines, right?
That we were on,
we could take our best experts
and our most technical resources
and engage them in 5 or 10 customer engagements,
we opened that to our partners.
We took our executive briefing center, made that virtual,
and all of that just unlocked the ability to one,
meet the demand.
And then as we've learned,
we were just describing,
I think it's going to be hybrid.
Some of those lessons learned
and how fabulously efficient they were are going to continue.
And we can't wait to get back in-person too
so we're going to do both. >> It really makes
the digital piece really work.
We're calling it Cube Plus Digital on our side,
but we're now integrating digital.
You have to have that first class citizen digital
into your physical operations.
>> Absolutely, we called it digital-first and I think,
we have so much evidence and data
on buyer behavior changing.
The two years we all spent at home,
we're all bringing our online preferences
to our B2B life in existence.
And people want that simplified, elegant,
responsive, experience even where we are now.
And we learned through the pandemic frankly,
that the MDF resources we extended to our partners,
the work we did on digital activities
was far more profitable, efficient, the returns are,
I mean, the evidence speaks for itself so it's phenomenal.
>> Partnership by definition implies a two way relationship.
And so what's your secret to scaling partnerships
and making sure that you can give
all your partners the attention,
maybe not equally, obviously there's tiers,
but what's your trick there?
>> Well, I think,
one size doesn't fit all
and I think that applies to our partner ecosystem.
We've been talking about deployment models
and clouds, et cetera.
And we're going to have a traditional partner program
where we're going to have coverage and resources
and some of our largest partners.
But then we lean into ISV relationships,
distribution relationships that help extend and cascade
the experience with Dell,
our training and enablement, the opportunity.
And I think one of the trends we're also seeing
is we're going to have multiple partners
engaging on single opportunities,
and that's where they're going to play to their strengths
and we're going to continue to have to enable that.
>> That brings up a good point,
just want to riff on this real quick, if you don't mind.
The local angle that you mentioned, partners are local,
partners are servicing, they're changing.
With you look at the Edge,
Jeff Clark was talking about the future,
how the Edge and data is so important.
And new personas like data engineering's emerging,
data as code, Caitlyn was talking about,
you can't get more local than a 5G tower
with boxes there. >> Absolutely.
>> And if you look at the hyperscalers
trying to do these regional areas,
Dell's actually positioned well with their partners
to actually do what you've been doing all your,
the company's history,
deploying solutions, >> Absolutely.
>> at the Edge, >> Absolutely.
which essentially the customers.
Your reaction to that?
>> Well, like I said, I'm so bullish on the opportunity
for partners going forward.
But specific to Edge,
if you look at our OEM business for example,
there's a lot of Edge solutions and deployments
that have been conducted through that business.
Our partners participate in our OEM capabilities
and resale capabilities today.
That I think is only going to continue.
And if you look at almost as a continuum
from all the way to custom design and embedded solutions
that we can do, up to and including just working with ISVs,
where we can help build purpose built
technology around their software,
or the telcos as we've discussed.
That's a great example of where we're going to build
purpose built hardware that actually has commercial
applications that we've opened up more locally so,
I think this Edge opportunity >> And the delivery's there.
>> Absolutely, and it's inherently use case centric.
So when you start talking Edge, you're by default
kind of into an industry vertical conversation.
And the unique opportunity for the win-win in partnership
is really leveraging what we do well,
which is horizontal, consistency, scale,
with their vertical industry intimate expertise,
it's a phenomenal opportunity and a win-win.
>> So you'll bring engineering resources to for example,
a retail opportunity that has a large enough TAM
that you can go after and multiple partners
can add value along the way?
>> Absolutely and because of our strength, our scale,
our market share, our presence,
we're an attractive partner for a lot of ISVs
to partner with.
So when you think of the ecosystem,
partners want to partner with people
that have strong partnerships.
So when we have more Snowflake like partnerships
and we build out capabilities where we're putting services
in AWS and the hyperscalers,
and we have traditional relationships with alliance partners
and resellers, it's compelling.
And ultimately, partners and customers are all trying
to simplify the number of vendors they're working with.
You can come and work with Dell across a large continuum
of both portfolio and services.
>> I think about three years ago,
when we were in person with Dell Tech World 2019,
it was the same message core,
cloud, core, Edge.
>> Yeah. >> And now it's Edge
is everything and cloud's part of that so, interesting.
In fact, Chuck Whitten on his keynote said,
"Multi-cloud by default, multi-cloud by design."
>> Absolutely. >> You might want to add in
your commentary, Edge by default
converting to Edge by design
>> Edge by design I think,
Michael used a statistic that I think it's,
it's selling out of the data center, right?
We've seen this trend on having to sell
to the line of business as opposed to the IT department,
that inherently pulls you to the Edge.
And I think Michael said, even with the hyperscalers,
there's 600 data centers in the world for all of them.
There's 6 million cell towers
and each of those are an opportunity
to have these micro, little, mini Edge deployments.
>> I'm smiling because Dave and I have been saying for years,
"The Edge, data center is the Edge."
And now we have Edges being data centers.
Now you have, data centers aren't going away,
they're actually expanding, multiplying.
>> Exactly, exactly.
>> What's on your mind these days?
What are you into?
What are you watching it in trends?
What's in the network that you like in terms of partners?
What are some of the things you want to share with the folks
out there that you think's important to watch?
>> I think the fascinating thing I see
is this notion of multiple partners engaging,
and how do we get that simplified?
How, what's our role?
How do we help enable that?
How do we help orchestrate it?
Because the market's moving so fast and the need,
frankly, for time to revenue,
time to competitive advantage,
customers need us all to kind of work better together
on their behalf to help solve those sim,
so I'm fascinated with this idea
of what used to be a competitor or a co-opertition
is now a partner and we're all actually kind of looking
at things with a little longer term vision,
and should with the customer's outcome in mind.
And frankly, that is just unlocking so much opportunity
for multiple partners.
So it's less about the traditional landscape of
is it competitive or complimentary?
There's so much opportunity for everybody now.
It's like, how do we just lean on each other
and play to our own strengths
to be able to satisfy the opportunity quickly?
>> It's like a partner operating system,
>> Absolutely, yeah. >> coming together.
How about business performance?
How's the scorecard look for you guys
on the business side, doing well?
>> Oh, we just,
we couldn't be more delighted and humbled.
Who would've that coming out of the last couple years,
Dell would've had record performance?
So when our earnings and we closed our fiscal year,
we're using adjectives like historic,
epic, record breaking,
and the partner performance inside those results
is just phenomenal.
It's growing faster than the overall business
and I think will continue.
So I see incredible consistency globally,
consistency across our whole partner ecosystem,
whether that's traditional channel OEM alliances.
And I'm frankly, just see that continuing.
>> Hundred billion. >> Cause I think
the market's coming to them
>> Hundred billion growing at 17%,
you can't do that without partners in an ecosystem,
impossible. >> Absolutely,
and the partner of business for us right now is $59 billion.
It's pushing 60% of Dell's revenue.
>> It's only going to get better,
I think. >> And [Indistinct] faster,
so I think that's going to continue.
>> Well Cheryl, always great to chat with you.
You're awesome. Glad, I got a insights.
Thanks for sharing the update and the partner
and more. >> Yeah.
>> We'll have you on our digital program this year,
we'll get you back on. >> Absolutely.
>> Follow up. >> Well, thanks for being here
and it's fabulous to be back in person.
>> Great to see you. >> Always great to have you.
Cheryl Cook, SVP of Global Partnerships and Channels
at Dell Technologies.
Cube will be right back with more coverage
after this short break.
(lighthearted music)