The gaps are the opportunity: Dell’s Eric Arcese on the AI Factory, VxRail’s evolution, and what’s ahead

Hello and welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel community for the last 16 years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca, and your host for the show.

Dell Technologies World is coming up in May, and for the Dell partner community, it’s the biggest event on the calendar – the place where the direction for the partner program gets set for the year ahead. As we head toward that, there’s a lot for Canadian resellers and MSPs to be thinking about. The partner program has been evolving. The shift from VxRail to Dell Private Cloud is still very much unfolding. The AI infrastructure opportunity is reshaping what customers expect and what partners are expected to deliver. The question of where a Canadian MSP or VAR actually fits into all of that – that’s a real and pressing one.

To help me make sense of it, I sat down with Eric Arcese, Vice President of Global Partner Marketing at Dell Technologies. Eric’s been in the industry for over 25 years, with roots going back to the EMC era, so he’s been watching and shaping how the Dell partner ecosystem operates for a long time. We talked about where partners fit in the AI story, the VxRail transition, the AI PC refresh, and what you can expect from the Global Partner Summit in May.

Let’s get right into it, my chat with Eric Arcese.

Robert Dutt: Eric, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it.

Eric Arcese: Thanks, Robert, for having me.

Robert Dutt: You’re the Vice President of Global Partner Marketing at Dell. Can you give me a sense of what that actually means day-to-day? What are you responsible for, and what does the Dell partner community look like from where you’re sitting?

Eric Arcese: Well, the partner community has been a tremendous growth engine and a critical and existential part of our go-to-market in everything that we do. We have partners around the world, we have some of our very best in Canada, and our partners really bring our technology to life with our shared customers around the world. We can’t do what we do in the market without the phenomenal partners that we have.

In my role leading global partner marketing, that is to make sure that our story resonates, that we’re bringing that value proposition to life for our partners. They have choices, just like customers do, each and every day – who they’re going to invest in, who they’re going to work with, what they’re going to focus on learning, how they’re going to enable their sellers, their pre-sales folks. And we want to make sure that our partners feel really good about working with us, building businesses with us, developing practices with us, and ultimately growing with us in the markets that they serve for the customers that we collectively support.

I love what I do. I’ve been in tech for over 25 years, here at Dell for over 25 years as well, and I could not think of a place I would rather be. Supporting our very best partners in Canada and around the world, and all that we do – that’s a little bit about what I do. I work very closely with my team around the world, and with our regional marketing folks as well, to make sure that that last mile of what we deliver for partners is well-aligned and adds value to partners in the ecosystem. So that’s a little bit about what I do, Robert.

Robert Dutt: I feel like 2026 is a bit of an inflection point for the partner community writ large, and the definition of a Dell partner seems broader than it’s ever been. You’ve talked about partners moving beyond reselling into being architects, advisors, ecosystem builders – all that kind of good stuff. What do you see as the state of the Dell partner community right now, and how have you seen that picture change over recent months, and I guess the last year or two?

Eric Arcese: Robert, you and I have both been in tech for the last couple of decades, and there have been different chapters, different inflection points. What we’re seeing now is a moment like we’ve never seen before. This is obviously all driven by AI, but it puts infrastructure, solutions, integrations, and outcomes at the forefront of everything that our partners deliver and everything our customers are demanding. So we’re in this moment that’s existential in tech and everything that we do, where we need to accelerate time to value with infrastructure.

And when it really dawned on me, Robert – it was a couple of years ago, at a Dell Technologies World; you might have been there too. We had this announcement, and we called it the AI Factory

with NVIDIA. And we had a picture on a slide – like so many of you have seen, with a chevron – data coming in on one side, use cases and business outcomes on the other, but layered through all of that, you had services, AI, software, infrastructure. And there were gaps when I saw this slide, and I was thinking to myself: the gaps, the seams, that’s where the opportunity lies for our partners around the world.

Dell is the infrastructure provider of choice. We are the leader in everything that we provide – right from commercial PCs, to storage, to servers, AI servers – and stitching it all together through the topology upon which we develop those outcomes creates a huge opportunity for our partners. So that’s what gets me really excited about the moment. We’re meeting the moment. Our technology is meeting the moment, our partners are meeting the moment, and we’re working each and every day with those partners to deliver real AI-driven outcomes around the world.

And some customers get it – and those that don’t, won’t be here very long. So there is this urgency, and we see that in our demand across the board. And I won’t go into earnings from last year, but you’ve probably seen that the year that we just posted, we’re seeing that come to life in every market. We’re seeing that in Canada, no doubt about it as well. It’s hard not to get excited about it. This is a very special time indeed.

Robert Dutt: So the AI Factory – definitely been a centrepiece of the story for the last couple of years, as you point out. When I look at it from the perspective of my audience – from the MSP or the VAR serving mid-market and SMB customers – the massive GPU cluster buildouts feel like they’re kind of happening somewhere else. Can you help me fill in the story for the regional partner who isn’t doing hyperscale deployments and where they fit into the AI infrastructure story at this point?

Eric Arcese: It’s a great question. I think that’s a little bit of the elephant in the room, right? The first couple of years, it’s like – yeah, you’re reading about these multi-billion-dollar deals, but where are they happening? And those deals were happening at the hyperscale level. The next question is: when is there enterprise AI adoption? When does a traditional enterprise customer really start embracing AI at every level?

And you know what? We’re seeing that now. The trajectory of that growth is accelerating, and it’s terrific to see. To your point, Robert, those first couple of quarters, first year or two – the question was: what about enterprise adoption? And that’s where our partners are incredibly well positioned to make it real. What are the outcomes? What are the use cases? What are the business processes we’re going to focus on to bring that infrastructure to a place where it’s adding real value? The people in that workflow who make that real – that’s our partners. Dell’s partners.

Because our partners in Canada are incredibly intimate with the industry, the customer, the use cases, the business priorities – whether it’s in the public or private sector. We’re providing that infrastructure at Dell Technologies, but our partners are making it real because they have that intimacy. They’re pressing the flesh, they’re working with customers each and every day, they know what those priorities are, and they can reconcile where those investments need to be made to help accelerate time to value.

So with all of that comes a massive services and consulting opportunity. It’s not just the infrastructure – it’s the value-added services that our partners are building upon that infrastructure. And we’re seeing some terrific practices getting built with our partners around the world. When we work together, we win together, and we’re seeing that each and every day.

Robert Dutt: Can you make that just a little bit more concrete for me? What are the consulting-type services you see partners bringing to bear right now – especially for that partner serving, let’s say, a 500-person financial services firm? Just to set an example of a mid-market-type opportunity where there may be an AI Factory angle, but it’s not the hyperscale wheelhouse.

Eric Arcese: You know, if you think about it – four or five years ago, you and I would be having this conversation and it would be about a cloud-first model, and then we’d probably evolve into hybrid cloud, using public or private cloud based on the right workload. Now the way we think about it, it’s not a cloud-first model. It’s more around data. It’s the data model. Making sure we have the right data on the right workload, because if you plug an LLM or any AI-driven workload or a GPU behind suboptimal data, you’re going to get suboptimal outcomes.

So when we think about where a partner is going to focus – irrespective of the industry, whether it’s public sector, banking, telco, manufacturing – I think starting with a real inventory of what that data topology looks like, and what the business outcome is that we’re looking to achieve. And no matter what industry the customer is from, one quickly realizes they’re all in the data business.

Our partners can, number one, do a great assessment of where that critical data is and where it’s living. And number two, marry that data to the right business outcome in terms of what they’re trying to deploy. So I think it really starts with the data, and building practices that understand the workload, the industry, the vertical, and the data – that is key. And that creates a lot of opportunity. We talk about servers, storage, client, PCs, and networking all the time, but that is where that data is going to live, and we’re going to build that AI practice off of it.

That initial assessment – where an AI practice starts – all begins with data, Robert. It’s really having that data-informed conversation. And then a lot of this is a change in mindset, in terms of what you’re doing with that data and what the expectations are.

Robert Dutt: All right. From one reference architecture to another – talk about the transition from VxRail to Dell Private Cloud. Michael Dell’s been pretty direct about the direction. And I know you have roots going back to EMC, so it might be a bit personal. But for a partner who’s built a real practice, a real business, around VxRail over the last decade – what does that transition actually look like, and where do you see the services opportunity opening up as customers make that move?

Eric Arcese: Robert, it’s such a great question. Because for years we talked about converged infrastructure, hyperconverged infrastructure – packaging, which made a lot of sense. You package a pre-architected and engineered system and you deliver it, to drive an accelerated business outcome. Time to value of infrastructure. The industry, with our partners, built a multi-billion-dollar business and a new market that was very well received.

Then you wake up a couple of years later and now we’re talking about disaggregated infrastructure with Dell Private Cloud. And one may wonder: wait a second – we thought it was all about putting it all together and delivering it with speed. What’s changed?

And I had to ask myself the same question, Robert. What’s changed? Well, the economics of AI have changed. The centre of gravity in terms of what is needed for these AI outcomes has been driven by a huge development – and that development is the GPU. The GPU is the accelerator of all the processing. And sometimes you need more GPU investment than you would need in storage, than you would need in client. You still need them across the board. So when you think about that economic backdrop of AI, the economics lend themselves to a more disaggregated infrastructure where you can dial up storage, server, networking, depending on what is needed for that specific workload, LLM, or AI platform that you’re rolling out.

Also – customers want choice. They don’t want to be locked into one hypervisor. Maybe they want to work with Red Hat. Maybe they want to work with Microsoft. Maybe they want to work with VMware – they’re a VMware shop. Maybe they want to work with Nutanix. Allowing customers to have that choice empowers them, but it also creates opportunity for our partners, to your point, Robert. Because our partners are ultimately going to help our shared customers navigate those choices and reconcile those priorities from a hypervisor perspective, to optimize whatever application they’re rolling out.

So it’s really about customer choice. And for me, the coolest thing to see is how quickly this has evolved. We’re doubling down on customer choice. Partners earn up to 10% incremental incentives. We’ve really built a program to drive profitable practices around Dell Private Cloud and strengthen and deepen those relationships. So we’re seeing this real shift from pre-packaged hyperconverged infrastructure to disaggregated infrastructure that’s truly optimized and tailored to Dell Private Cloud. Very exciting to see, Robert.

Robert Dutt: Pivoting to the device side of things – the AI PC refresh is a significant cycle for the channel right now. For the Canadian VAR or even an MSP selling into the commercial market, what’s the marketing story that you’re giving them to make that conversation land? Especially with customers who are already stretched on IT budgets and might be looking at that three-year-old PC and saying, “good enough to get me through another year.”

Eric Arcese: It might be. But it probably isn’t. And it’s not just the productivity benefits you’re going to see with an AI PC – it’s the security requirements that we’re all going to need. Because AI is terrific for the good, but it has also empowered the bad actors to get to where we work every day.

Last year was all about the tech refresh from Windows 10 to Windows 11. We still have over 500 million PCs running Windows 10, and enterprise fleets averaging three to five years of age. So customers definitely need to act on that – to bring that AI capability to the edge, but also to meet the security requirements we need to protect that edge from reaching into the core.

We started naturally in the data centre in our conversation today, Robert, but that edge – where are you working every day? What are you touching every day? It’s your PC. That’s your workforce. That’s what’s in front of you, whether at work or at home. And there’s just a tremendous opportunity there for our partners.

We’re the number one commercial PC provider in the world, and it starts with what’s in front of you each and every day. We’re excited about that opportunity. That hasn’t gone away. We had a terrific CES, and there’s just more greenfield opportunity for our partners in Canada to win with Dell’s PC portfolio.

Robert Dutt: Bouncing around a little bit from topic to topic here – you guys made some program changes for 2026, as most vendors are wont to do from time to time. The Titanium incentives probably being the most visible of them, but there’s also this broader “simplified, predictable, profitable” philosophy underneath it. From a marketing standpoint, what’s the message you most want partners to internalize about what Dell is committing to this year?

Eric Arcese: One of the things I love about partner marketing, Robert, is the work is never over. And you can appreciate that – you’ve been in the channel just as long as I have. The work of creating a simple, predictable, profitable motion for our partners really never ends, because everything we talked about just keeps evolving.

We want to make sure we have a simplified motion – taking friction out of the system. We want to make sure it’s predictable: you know what you’re going to get, you know how we’re going to engage with you. And it’s profitable: you want to make sure that you’re making money working with Dell Technologies in Canada.

So we’re doing a lot around demand signals – how do we accelerate what used to be a lead, which is now a demand signal, the outcome of many different predictive analytics and data points on the markets that we serve with our partners. We want to make sure we’re simplifying that lead management and fostering seamless collaboration in that motion.

We also want to make sure that from a deal reg perspective, we are managing opportunities together and protecting where our Canadian partners have invested. We want to do all of that to accelerate engagement, simplify processes, and empower our Dell sellers with a smarter and streamlined motion. And then quoting and buying – we want to make sure we are priced to win across the board, and we’re building a modern, partner-centric transaction ecosystem that connects product discovery to order management in one end-to-end platform. You’re going to be hearing more and more about that in the months to come. I think you’ll be at Dell Technologies World with us, so I’m excited to share more there.

That mantra of simple, predictable, profitable – that work never ends. We’re seeing the fruits of our labour here and the success we’ve had in Canada over the last couple of years. And we’re really proud of the work that we’ve done. We’re very grateful and humbled by so many amazing partners in Canada that have really doubled down on Dell across the board, across the portfolio. Because when you have a great program that rewards the right investment, and you have wonderful people – I love the alliteration of portfolio, program, people – there’s nothing you can’t do. When we work together, we truly are winning together in Canada.

Robert Dutt: To your point that it never ends – it just keeps evolving. You rightly pointed out we’re not too far away from Dell Technologies World, and the Global Partner Summit is a big part of that. There’s been some preview of a new integrated partner experience that sounds like it goes beyond a typical program update. Without asking you to scoop your own announcements – although if you want to, please feel free.

Eric Arcese: Ha – I’ll be good. I’ll do my best.

Robert Dutt: What’s the problem you’re aiming to solve for partners with this platform approach? What’s the philosophy behind what we’re likely to see roll out in the near future?

Eric Arcese: What we talked about – meeting the moment – it is a truly special time. And we want to make sure our partners have the speed to deliver what we collectively need to for our shared customers, and the scale to do it across every market, across every part of our portfolio, across every partner type.

What you’ll see at Dell Technologies World – as you always do – is the product of investments we’ve made over not just the year, but over years. From a portfolio perspective, programmatically, you’re going to see how when partners invest and build their practices and businesses on Dell, they will be rewarded. And then you get to spend time with our people who support our partners in Canada and around the world. Not to mention, we have a great time in Vegas, as one always does.

So it’s the place to be. We’re a couple of weeks out and we’re seeing the excitement and anticipation building. We have a lot to share at our Global Partner Summit at Dell Technologies World. Robert, I believe you’re planning on being there – we’re looking forward to seeing you and spending time with you as well. And we’re going to have a great representation not just of Canadian partners but the Canadian customers we work so hard serving each and every day. It’s going to be a blast, as it always is.

Robert Dutt: You touched a while back on some of the day-to-day operational things that partners tell me they feel the most friction on – not specific to Dell, but across the industry. Deal reg, quoting, lead sharing, the need to do all of that faster at higher scale. Is the vision here to make those kinds of operational experiences meaningfully more autonomous and self-serve? Is AI in the partner platform something partners will feel starting in May, or is that still on the horizon?

Eric Arcese: Well, I prefer drinking your own champagne to eating your own dog food – so I’ll go with the bubbly analogy there. But we have very much been, for years now, investing in a very big way in our partner business and the platforms that support those partners. We want to make sure that we’re using an AI-first approach across the board in everything that we do – to take friction out of the system, and to have an AI-first mantra in all we do when it comes to empowering our people and our partners.

I look at the AI that we’re investing in to support our partners as a real force multiplier. How do you get the power of the portfolio to our customers? How do you enable our partners to know that portfolio? How do you make sure that when you’re quoting and ordering, you’re doing that in the most efficient way – so that customers aren’t waiting, they’re getting the right configuration at the right time, for the right workload, at the price that makes the most sense, and we’re delivering value? We want partners to be able to deliver that value, because when they do, they grow – and when they grow, it’s good for our partners, it’s good for Dell, and ultimately we’re driving more outcomes for the customers we serve.

So you’ll see a lot of that AI in what we deliver from a product perspective, but definitely in how AI supports things like syndicated content, quoting and buying, and all of the programmatic platform upon which our partnerships are built.

Robert Dutt: My last question – you touched on 25 or more years in this industry, through the EMC years, through the Dell-EMC merger, and now we’re into the AI chapter. For a partner who’s navigating all of this right now – the infrastructure shifts, the AI opportunity, the evolution of the program – what’s your read on the best opportunity over the next 12 months? Where would you be pointing partners in terms of where to focus?

Eric Arcese: Well, if you’re a partner thinking about which relationships you’re going to invest in – with Dell, you have a leader in commercial PCs, a leader in storage, a leader in services. You have the industry heavyweight in infrastructure. And not only that – in a world where we’re seeing some very complicated supply chain dynamics globally, you have the world’s best supply chain supporting you. You have a proven leader that’s committed to partnering in all that we do. And you have tremendous people in Canada there to support you each and every day.

So I always think of it this way: if you’re building a business, who are those partnerships you want to create? You want one hand to shake that’s accountable to you, that’s invested in you, that’s committed to you – so that you can deliver on what you’ve promised your customer. With Dell, you have that. And we’re really proud of where we are in the market.

This AI moment that we’ve all been afforded is going to create tremendous opportunity – and I couldn’t be more excited about it. Not just for the partner businesses we support, but for the outcomes and problem statements that we’re going to be able to address that we haven’t even fathomed yet. Transformative outcomes across every industry we serve, both public and private. So I’m really excited, Robert. And if I’m a partner, those are the types of things I’m thinking about and why working with Dell is a great bet. And hopefully we’ll all be making that bet in Vegas in May at Dell Technologies World – because that’s what you do in Vegas. You make bets. But it’s an easy one to make with Dell Technologies every day.

Robert Dutt: Great point to leave it on. I look forward to catching up at Dell Technologies World and hearing more of the story there. Eric, thanks so much.

Eric Arcese: Thanks so much, Robert. I really enjoyed our time together. Much appreciated.

There you have it – Eric Arcese from Dell Technologies.

I’d like to thank Eric for his time, and of course, thank you for listening today.

If I had to pull three things out of the conversation for the Canadian partner to sit with, here’s what I’m thinking.

First – the AI Factory framing. Eric described looking at the AI Factory topology slide and seeing the gaps, the seams between the components, as the partner opportunity. The hardware is Dell’s story. The services layer, the data work, the integration, the outcomes – that’s where partners play. If you’re trying to figure out what the AI infrastructure wave actually means to your practice, that’s a useful lens.

Second – the VxRail transition. If you’ve built a practice around VxRail, Dell’s message is: the path forward is clear. The hypervisor choice you’ve made is preserved. The economics of the new platform make sense, and there are meaningful incentives to help you build out a Dell Private Cloud practice. The transition is underway and getting ahead of it matters.

Third – the AI PC refresh is a security story as much as a productivity story. There are still around 500 million PCs running Windows 10, many of them three to five years old, sitting at the edge of the network while AI is making the threat landscape more sophisticated. For MSPs already in the endpoint security conversation with their customers, that’s a more powerful entry point than “it’s a faster laptop.”

And of course – Dell Technologies World, May 18th to 21st in Las Vegas. The Global Partner Summit is the anchor event for partners, and based on what Eric was hinting at around the integrated partner experience and changes to quoting and deal registration, it’s worth watching closely whether you’re going or not.

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Until next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.