Dell to find perfect partner for SMB

BANGALORE, INDIA: While the impact of the global recession was no surprise, the extent to which small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) were adversely affected was greater than anticipated.

And now the SMBs are gradually recovering from the stagnation experienced during the economic downturn and are moving ahead, hiring new employees, opening new sites and gradually increasing their IT spend.

The current SMB market in India is estimated to have over 7.5- 13.2 million customers. The market employs over 60 million people and accounts for 45 per cent of the manufacturing output and 40 per cent of the exports.

“There are over 13.2 million SMB customers in India, of which 45,000 are mid-sized customers. Dell serves almost 12,000 SMB customers in India and 10 million SMB customers worldwide,” said Satyen Vyas, director, SMB business, Dell India.

According to Dell, it's channel strategy hinges on the promise of making technology more accessible to small and medium businesses (SMBs).

Vyas also added that as part of the partner initiative, Dell is planning to launch a tool - Find a Partner, which helps the companies find a perfect partner to cater Dell's product. The new tool is expected to reach the market by the end of the year.

It also has two new tools namely Campaign Builder and Online Publisher in pipeline.

Vyas reiterated that Dell is currently having 200 partners in India and is planning to recruit 20 more Equalogic partners.

Dell also mentioned about its two partners namely Nestor Infotech Solutions Pvt Ltd. and VSM technologies Pvt Ltd who have been catering to SMB segment.

Nestor Infotech is its key partner in south region and focuses on datacenter solutions, AV solutions and Storage solutions etc.

Santhosh K.S, CEO, Nestor Infotech Solutions Pvt Ltd, said, “We are conducting a partner program in Bangalore on July 21 and in Chennai on 28 of the same month to meet the demands of all our partners. We would showcase an entire range of Dell products namely Equalogic storage box, power X servers, Laptops etc.”

He also added that Dell is going to drive the entire event by providing the content for the program. The program would address the SMB and SME customers.

When asked about the partnership with Dell, Santhosh said, “Our partnership with Dell for almost a year has been good and interesting. They provided us with right support at right time by rendering perfect services to satisfy our customers.”

Sanjiv Khushu, head, VSM technologies, which is a Delhi based venture firm providing IT infrastructure, said, “We have been having a year long partnership with Dell, which has good go to market strategy.”

He added that the opportunities are more because there is less competition when compared to other fields as Dell enterprise customers space is a niche segment.

Dell has almost 50,000 registered partners of which 63 per cent are certified partners. Channel partners contribute 22 per cent to Dell's total revenue world wide. In Asia Pacific Japan region it has over 4000 partners.

So a key task of channel partners is to have the requisite customization ability to provide products and solutions for customers.