Every year Dell holds its EMEA PartnerDirect Solutions Conference where we come together with our Premier and Preferred partners across the region to share Dell’s strategy and channel plans and, most importantly, to get feedback on how we are performing. The location this year was Barcelona and we were delighted to welcome C-Level Execs from 188 partners. Importantly these are the individuals defining their businesses’ strategies and responsible for putting Dell at the centre of their solutions portfolios. It was exciting to have such a strong turnout! We appreciated the opportunity to share where we are and our future vision and we valued their time and feedback.
The first day was spent talking to Partners about the opportunities they have with Dell. They heard from Dell’s channel leadership and the GM’s of our LE and SMB businesses about the investments being made to help strengthen the engagement we can have together and to drive growth. We also shared our technology and solutions vision and our unique position as one of the few end-to-end solutions providers fully committed to the client and the datacenter. Our acquisition strategy was a very hot topic and partners were interested in the role new IP is playing in solutions areas like Intelligent Data Management. Our recent acquisition of Force 10 was also a key area of interest for many of attendees. Overall, there was a great deal of excitement about what this technology means for Dell’s and its partners’ solutions capabilities, particularly in the area of data management.
On Thursday evening we held a gala dinner where we handed out our Partner of the Year awards – recognising some of the most successful and proactive partners we have in the various countries. The full list of winners is below, with special mention going to SLTN of the Netherlands which scooped the European Partner of the Year Award.
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Austria – Partner of the Year |
MTX Computer Products & Solutions GmbH |
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Belgium – Partner of the Year |
ABSI |
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Denmark – Partner of the Year |
Tech Data |
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France – Partner of the Year |
Serviware |
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Germany – Partner of the Year |
ACP IT Solutions AG |
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Ireland – Partner of the Year |
DNM Technology |
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Italy – Partner of the Year |
CINETICA |
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Netherlands – Partner of the Year |
SLTN |
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Norway – Partner of the Year |
Move AS |
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Poland – Partner of the Year |
One System |
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Spain – Partner of the Year |
Semantic Systems |
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Sweden – Partner of the Year |
Dustin AB |
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Switzerland – Partner of the Year |
Frey + Cie Telecom AG |
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UK – Partner of the Year |
Kelway |
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European Partner of the Year |
SLTN |
A new element of this year’s conference was a channel press track. We invited top channel press from around EMEA to join us at the event and gave them the opportunity to talk to local Dell executives and partners. Here’s some of the early coverage from the event.
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UK – Channel PRO – Dell out to impress VARs
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UK – CRN – Dell gives channel a good vStart
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Germany – ChannelPartner – Dell and the Channel
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France –ChannelBP – Dell plans to double its Channel!
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Spain – Dealer World – Dell reiterates its promises to the channel at Solutions Conference
We feel optimistic about the future for our channel business and our partners. There has never been a better time to partner with Dell and we would encourage any channel organisations that are looking for a reliable solutions provider committed to providing end-to-end technology solutions to contact our PartnerDirect organisation.