CRN Exclusive: Dell EMC Channel Chief Byrne On 'Significant Investments' In EMC Rebates, Competing Against Cisco And The 'Mystique' Of Titanium Black

#DellEMC Channel Chief John Byrne says the unified channel program that his team is designing will be able to go toe-to-toe with the best programs in the world, including #Cisco 's, and will offer legacy #EMC partners "massive progress" on rebates and MDF. Byrne and his team have set the new program's tiers, and has decided to "status match" partners into those tiers. Partners from the top tiers of the old #Dell and EMC programs will be moved directly into the top "Titanium" tier of the new program, for example. Byrne said that while a lot of progress has been made in combining the Dell EMC programs, there's still much to do in the next six weeks, including evaluating partners that may not be hitting their revenue, training and certification goals. The program is expected to be complete and ready for action in time for the beginning of Dell EMC's fiscal year Feb. 1. "We've done a lot of things just listening to the community, and we made a commitment that, one, this was going to be the most desired and lucrative channel program on the planet," Byrne said. "We also said it was going to be very simple, very predictable and profitable. Those tenets remain firmly in focus of everything we're doing." What follows is an edited excerpt of Byrne's conversation with CRN.

Where we are in the journey, we are right on track. I'm even more excited now than I was at Dell EMC World. The team has done a remarkable job. This team's been together for three months. We know clearly where the channel has been playing. We know clearly the partners we have across both communities. We know the share of wallet we have. We know what our capacity is. We know how we're paying people. We know how we want to pay people. We have a clear understanding of how we want to train people. We have a very nice roll out plan. We've been extremely inclusive, and will continue to do so with the partner community. Where we're moving in software-defined, where we're going in cloud, when I look at CI (converged infrastructure) and HCI (hyperconverged infrastructure), I think what we're building here, we're trying to build a world-class program. The EMC program, while it was simple and predictable, people were just not making the returns on investment that those partners deserve.

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