Joyce Mullen comes over from the OEM side, but brings her old responsibilities with her. She also indicates that no serves in the policy established under John Byrne should be anticipated.

Last week, Dell EMC announced that John Byrne, who has led the company’s channel program since its relaunch a year and a half ago is being promoted to head up Dell EMC’s North America Commercial Sales. His replacement is Joyce Mullen, who has run the Dell OEM business for the last five years, and whose most recent job title was head of OEM and IoT Solutions. Her job is also different from Byrne’s. She retains the responsibilities of her old role, and her new job title is president of global channels, OEM and IoT Solutions.

“I was a little surprised [to be offered the position]” Mullen told ChannelBuzz. “However, we have structurally organized this this way before —putting the channel together with the OEM business and the IoT business.”

Mullen said that the development of Dell’s channel business since that point makes the integrated strategy a logical one at this point.

“With the birth of the Dell EMC partner program, we aligned the OEM program with it,” Mullen said. “A lot of the OEM business goes through the channel today, so it makes sense. It also gives me a bit of a head start.”

Mullen said that she worked closely with the Dell channels team in its past iterations.

“I worked with Cheryl Cook, and Greg Davis before the EMC integration, when we included software and distribution as part of a supply chain strategy,” she said. “There is a lot of similarity in building solutions for customers, and building them with the channel. It’s a little more nuanced and more complex than direct, which is always fun for me.”

Mullen said that the heavy lifting of integrating the Dell and EMC programs has been completed and that partners should not expect any significant shifts under her leadership.

“The foundation is incredibly solid, and the design and structure is incredibly good,” she said. “You should not expect any change in terms of that. There are still many things we can do to improve the simplicity and predictability of the program, and make sure that partners make good money. We will continue to listen to what’s happening in the market, in order to help our partners. I would expect that you will see more focus on some of the solution sets.”

Normal updates to the program can be expected with the beginning of the new fiscal year in February, but that they won’t include any drastic changes.

Mullen also indicated that getting partners to out more emphasis on the Internet of Things would also be a priority.

“When you take a really long lens, around IoT, you have to be listening to what everyone is coming up with,” she said. “There is a huge size, scope and scale, and an opportunity to shape some of that change. The Internet of Things is the new wild west. There’s no doubt that ten years from now, environments will be much different from today. So will be revenue streams. There’s no doubt at all. But between here and there, there are lots of analytics to build out, helping customers and partners wade through all that. We are in a pretty great position to help shape some of that.”