Dell Direct Managed Services Pricing, Customer Targets Undermine Partners
Dell's expansion of its direct managed services offering to the New York metropolitan market may be the beginning of a betrayal that fractures the company's relationship with its channel partners -- after less than a year of trying to win them over.
One of Dell's PartnerOne advisory council members reports that during a Q&A session at the recent advisory council meeting, Michael Dell was asked about the long-term managed services strategy. Dell told the partners present that the company would not target companies of fewer than 500 employees when it sold direct managed services.
Yet the New York direct managed services offering is going after businesses with from five to hundreds of employees, according to Dell. Pricing for the program also hits square in the middle of where partners are typically pricing their services.
Pricing falls into three tiers: Alerts, Resolution and Management. For Alerts only, the price is $9 per desktop or laptop per month and $59 per server per month. For Resolution, pricing is $39 per desktop or laptop per month and $199 per server per month. For Management, pricing is $59 per desktop or laptop per month and $299 per server per month.
Dell provided a typical scenario of 50 PCs, five servers and five network devices (at $89 per month) at an annual price of about $40,000 for the Resolution level.
"That's right in line with what we offer," the non-New York-based PartnerOne advisory council member and MSP said.
Comments (1)
I’m reading Jessica Davis’ post above with amusement, as there are several contradictions between this post and the article she wrote Monday.
As a Managed Service Provider, my company had a great relationship with SilverBack that has continued through the Dell acquisition. Dell has consistently communicated in a variety of venues that they’re taking managed services direct —at the SilverBack conference in January, in an email to partners around the enhancements to the Managed Services Certification and their Dallas direct pilot in April, and in the many articles I read about yesterday. They are not alone in this—as many large telcos and IT providers are also targeting this market.
My company is in Rhode Island, so Dell's direct Managed Services for Small Business isn’t available in my region yet. However, adding deal registration for managed services and protecting my current accounts is a great program addition and consistent with the feedback we as partners have been giving Dell. I expect Dell’s offering to be available in my market soon but I feel better knowing I have these protections. I also think Dell entering managed services further validates the value of these kinds of services, and I have been positioning this and my status as a Dell Certified partner to help accelerate the growth of my business.
On another point, I’d also love to know the name of the anonymous partner Jessica spoke with. I was at Dell’s Partner Advisory Council in May. The comment that was made in reference to a statement by Michael Dell regarding Dell's involvement in the SMB space is just not true. Dell has been nothing but honest about their intent in this space since the day they acquired Silverback.
Finally, she refers to Dell's PartnerDirect program as PartnerOne, which is the name of HP’s channel program of which I am also a member. Seems this post needed a bit more homework in order to be credible.
Tim Hebert, CEO
Atrion Networking Solutions
Posted by Tim Hebert | September 18, 2008 5:14 PM