The announcements being made today at this year’s Dell Summit all revolve around the company’s newer edge and telecom businesses.
Dell’s first half numbers have generally been good, particularly in clients, where the company is having to battle assertions they are looking to expand at the expense of channel partners.
Partners in the quantum market include both traditional VARs, focused specialists from the quantum side, and database-focused partners who are broadening out.
Intel presented a roadmap of process and packaging innovations to power their next wave of products through 2025, which they said will get back to process performance parity – and then leadership.
Intel recently introduced new CEO Pat Gelsinger to partners at the Intel Partner Forum, together with his vision for bringing partner-centric prosperity to all. Intel also provided updates on channel issues, marketing, and core areas of the business.
The TOUGHBOOK S1 is not a replacement for the TOUGHBOOK L1, which will continue to be sold, but it does have higher specs and is aimed at more demanding environments.
Big changes afoot at Dell Technologies in Canada, with Mike Sharun, who had spent the last 23 years at Dell and EMC, announcing he will retire in the spring, with Pam Pelletier named as his replacement.
Panasonic’s top-seller has the same form factor and durability features as before, but performance, flexibility, functionality and security improvements have been made.
Lenovo’s other big commercial announcement this week is the ThinkReality A3 lightweight smart glasses, Augmented Reality goggles co-designed with Qualcomm for either a PC or Motorola phone environment.
Intel announced its plans to modernize its old channel program back in October 2019, and now, with the work of fully integrating their two partner portals completed, it all goes live on Monday.
Dell has unveiled multiple security enhancements which the company is stressing continues improvements being embedded into their technology, with an emphasis here on validating security throughout the supply chain.
The Lenovo Score program is limited to 80 selected partners, 10 of whom will win a $5000 reno prize for exceeding growth targets, while the Lenovo Opt-In program is for non-registered, Authorized and Silver Lenovo partners, and provides multiplied D&H credits on sales to help partners advance in the Lenovo partner program.
HP is touting the newly announced product, as well as new and enhanced services, as critical in a new normal workplace that wants devices that are a better fit with distributed work locations rather than central offices.
The Dell Precision 3240 Compact will compete with the HP Mini and the Lenovo Tiny, at a new low price point – unless a customer opts for the high end NVIDIA Quadro RTX 3000 option, which will be available in October.
In addition to the new tablet, which fills a void in the portfolio, Panasonic is also announcing their Android productivity+ suite of support solutions.
HP announces three new Chromebooks, one aimed at each of three distinct user types.
The big one in terms of thought leadership is VR Classroom 2, although updates of core Chromebook and Yoga solutions and a new Chromebook tablet will put more money in partners’ pockets.
For the channel, major announcements around the X1 Fold notebook and the Yoga 5G will initially be more about showing customers a cutting edge than selling them a product, but some less splashy Smart Office announcements will bring a more direct return.
In addition to a new premium family in Dell’s Latitude commercial laptop line, other commercial market products being introduced around CES include new monitors and an updated XPS 13.
HP announces new financing and leasing options through an expansion of their partnership with HPE Financial Services, and a new partnership with global financing firm DLL Group. They also indicated more financing partners will be added.
