After a fairly long hiatus, distributor D&H Canada has rekindled their relationship with Dell. While D&H and Dell had been going their separate ways for some time, the two companies have once again teamed up in a new relationship. D&H Canada is now fully authorized to carry award-winning endpoint solutions from Dell, as well as Dell PowerEdge servers. Partners can also utilize Dell’s professional services to accelerate business transformation. Storage is not yet in the agreement but Dell and D&H are talking about it, and the odds of Dell storage being added to the D&H line card are reasonably good.
There was an earlier period, back in 2013, when D&H was fully authorized to carry solutions from Dell. Under the 2013 North America-wide agreement, D&H had access to Dell’s Inspiron, XPS, and Alienware notebook and desktop lineups, as well as Dell’s Android and Windows tablets, monitors, projectors, accessories, and imaging products. That deal lapsed, but now a new one has replaced it.
“We are really excited about the relationship with Dell moving forward,” said Chris Ralston, Executive Director of Vendor Management at D&H Distributing, who is responsible for clients. “We are expanding our line card and it’s the right time to onboard Dell. All conversations when we agreed to partner with them were very positive.”
“Dell has pivoted to being a more channel friendly organization,” said Dan Reio, Director, Modern Solutions BU at D&H, who handles servers. “Customers have been asking to work with Dell.”
Expanding the D&H line card is key for the distributor.
“We want to give our partners choice, and Dell has a good brand in the marketplace,” Ralston said.
“It’s the same thing with servers,” Reio added. “We already have HPE and Lenovo servers. Resellers tend to have their own favorites. This is about expanding our line card and giving our customers choice. Dell PowerEdge servers are a new item for us, which we haven’t carried for many years. They are asking for it in the data centre portfolio.”
D&H is also undergoing a name change which is seeing the part of their business that contains the server business given a new title. What was previously the Modern Solutions business unit is becoming the Advanced Solution Plus unit.
“We are in the middle of rebranding,” Reio said, “The data centre portfolio is changing its name to Advanced Solutions Plus. It becomes a specialized business unit which will eventually contain servers, storage, networking and power computing. Advanced is a better term because it is more accurate and more descriptive. It will also help us add to our focus area in servers, where we are seeing positive momentum, especially on the small business and midmarket side of the fence. Dell just adds to that, and will assist us with the objective of helping our resellers grow our business.”
“We have a dedicated team to support Dell, which is ready to go and looking forward to the relationship,’ Ralston stated.
“Some of our vendors no longer have the resources to touch and enable the way that they used to,” Reio said. “They have pivoted to have us enabled to do that for them.”
The old Dell notebook portfolio, which at one point consisted of Inspiron, XPS, Alienware, is also being rebranded.
“It was more consumer, and we have focused on commercial devices,” Ralston said. “Dell Pro and Dell Pro Max are the new naming convention. There are lots of changes, and the idea was to simplify the portfolio and get away from feeds and speeds.” On the device side, Chrome laptops, Pro monitors and PC accessories will also be available through Dell.
In addition, Dell professional services are available to D&H partners seeking customized server solutions that fit individual client needs.
“We are fully authorized for the full suite of services, although storage has an asterisk because we haven’t launched it yet,” Ralston said.
“We can also augment their services with our own,” Reio noted.
Storage, of course, is the missing link, but that may not last for long.
“In the near future, we intend to launch a formal storage practice with Dell, as well,” Ralston said. “It’s all being worked out now, but the goal is to have it ready some time next year. The data centre focus right now is on servers.”