It’s that time of year again, coming up on Dell’s first quarter of the new year, and that means that it’s time for the major changes to be announced to the company’s program. The changes this year coincide with a weakening IT economy which has seen broad layoffs in many tech companies, including Dell. Nonetheless, the company thinks the changes will position the company as well as can be expected in the circumstances.

“We are pleased with the level of engagement from our partner community – and that continues,” said Cheryl Cook, senior VP of global partner marketing at Dell.

Cook also outlined the broad strategic conference for this year’s changes.

“We have a few highlights on company strategy and vision, with four key tenets being central,” she said. First is growing and modernizing our four key businesses. Second is building new market opportunities for partners, particularly around APEX. Third is strengthening collaboration around the overall partner experience. Fourth is a nod to Dells purpose, both to innovate technology and pursue ESG goals and objectives that partners can leverage. I think that these are very modest refinements.”

Cook noted that while a few weeks ago, Dell announced new PowerEdge servers, the big offering-related component of their partner enablement this year revolve around their APEX as-a-service offerings.

“In September, we expanded availability into 35 companies globally for APEX,” Cook said. “Now we can sell a broader range of solutions that augment partners’ own services in support of that global availability.

Even more significant is an expansion to APEX enablement capabilities with the new APEX+

“We are enhancing some areas around APEX in APEX+, our new consolidated product category, which includes APEX Flex on Demand offers,” Cook said.

“We are also launching a partner-led deployment capability. Now  we have always had the ability to allow partners to expand and augment our offerings with their own services. What this is is 100% partner services. It will no longer require that Dell Managed Services be an element of the offer.

“We are also launching a new APEX competency to help partners learn how to expand their APEX portfolio, and are mainstreaming that,” Cook added.

Cook also indicated that Dell is launching new a persona based-training track, with three components.

“One is foundational, one is development and another is for technical,” she said. “Last year we had OEM tracks, CSP tracks and solution provider tracks. We found that wasn’t that meaningful, so we have announced this single track with the persona-based serving change.”

Dell is also announcing that their Asset Recovery Services, which they have sold themselves from years, and which include both Dell and non-Dell hardware, will now be globally available for partners to resell.

“This will be available in 36 countries, and they will sell these services in a sustainable and responsible way. Cook said

Partners will earn 7% rebate on these sales.

“We are trying to be customer first, but we recognize that customers are at different levels of sophistication,” Cook said. “in some cases, there may be APEX services that they can repeat or partners who have their own comprehensive managed services. Not all customers are at the same place at same time. If the customer wants CAPEX we can do that – or make the technology available in a modern consumption model – we will see different models co-exist.”