Dell Technologies’ Q4 numbers, which the company announced a month ago, showed a strong rebound for the company, including the data centre portfolio which had been battered in the first two quarters of the year as companies moving employees out of offices suspended or cancelled planned purchases. Accordingly, the company has just announced some major new incents designed to capitalize on this momentum. They have expanded the PowerStore discounts originally initiated in Q4 to provide additional points on the front end. They have also expanded eligibility for the discounts to Dell EMC Unstructured Data Solutions, otherwise known as Isilon.

“We are thrilled and delighted with our overall performance, which includes a record Q4, and strong engagement momentum,” said Cheryl Cook, SVP, Global Partner, Embedded and Edge Solution Marketing, Dell Technologies. “Globally in Q4, we saw channel revenues grew 10%, and for the fiscal year as a whole it was 3% positive, despite the first two quarters. We saw a rational prioritization of customers in those first couple quarters, when they moved their priorities in moving employees home and supporting them once they were there. Once they realized this wasn’t going to be a short-term thing, they realized that they could no longer keep demand for infrastructure support on pause, and so they began to spend there again in Q4.

Cook noted that revenue from Dell’s client solutions orders (desktops, notebooks and thin clients) through the channel was up 7% year-over-year for the fiscal year, and was up 23% year-over-year in the fourth quarter. She also indicated that the server business was up 11% for Q4, and 2% for the year”

“Teamwork with partners has delivered record performance to us as a company,” Cook said. “We anticipate continued momentum around our client solutions. Gartner and IDC project robust IT spend from a growth opportunity for both us and our partners.”

Cook said Dell’s just-announced incents are designed to accelerate that momentum.

“We launched our new PowerStore midrange all-flash storage offering in the middle of last year, and we have seen amazing results,” she stated. “It is one of the fastest-growing products that the company has ever launched, and is squarely aimed at the largest and fastest growing section of the storage market.  When in the second half of the year, many businesses realized they would be in hybrid remote model for a whole, and the paused projects in infrastructure began to move, storage really benefited from this. In Q4, we launched a program for partners that provided about 20 points in front and back-end discounts. What we have done now is expand that.”

The expanded incent now provides 20 points on the front end alone, plus all the back-end incents the program has provided since it was launched.

“We are making this a compelling and super-differentiated offering, and we think partners will be energized by that,” Cook said.

“In addition, we are also expanding product eligibility for this to Dell EMC Unstructured Data Solutions [UDS] – Isilon,” she added.

“This increase of the front-end incentives, and expansion of the incentives to UDS will have us off to the races in Q1,” Cook stressed. “This will entice partners to lean in more aggressively with Dell. We are very bullish on the near year. We will stand with our partners and both grow together.”