HPE made a big play in 2018 around servers in the SMB space, followed up by solutions related to hybrid cloud. While those will continue in 2019, the company is also looking to roll out similar initiatives around simplification around storage and hyper-converged solutions for SMBs.
The new product has been rebranded as SolarWinds ARM, which may confuse some who think SolarWinds has gone into chip-making, but the company is emphasizing that in addition to being a simple tool to manage internal user access, it is also extremely inexpensive compared to the market. It will be sold through SolarWinds MSP as well.
The first Western Digital offering for this space is the Ultrastar DC ME200 Memory Extension Drive, which augments physical DRAM with between 4x-8x in memory capacity. It will be available to all WD channel partners.
Kevin Connolly, President of Commercial Sales at Dell EMC Canada gives his take on why the company had another strong quarter, what’s happening in the market, and where Dell EMC still has room for substantial growth in Canada.
Last year, Sophos brought its anti-ransomware CryptoGuard technology from their Intercept X endpoint solution onto their server product, but now the server solution has been rebranded and fully infused with the full capabilities of Intercept X.
HPE outlined its goals for its channel for the year ahead, together with new and planned initiatives to help them get there.
Dell EMC finally made its long-awaited breakthrough in storage in the first quarter – even though on a year-over-year basis, channel storage business was actually down. It’s seen as more of a statistical fluke, rather than the harbinger of an unwanted trend, and considerable confidence around storage exists going forward.
D&H Canada head Greg Tobin reviews what worked well for the distributor in 2017, and offers some previews for the year ahead.
The Dell EMC channel business overall picked up in the second half of the year – always a good sign.
While in the old Dell EMC converged lineup, a System 1000 would have been a new high-end model, the new VXBlock completely restructures the approach, and integrates all storage types in one offering. It makes this a single-model family with additional flexibility, greater cost efficiencies and simplified lifecycle management.
The new AMD EPYC processors, which were announced last June, make their first appearance in three new Dell EMC 14th Gen servers aimed at more demanding use cases.
Dell EMC is also planning some additional initiatives for later in the new fiscal year around solutions-based competencies.
In addition to the souped-up servers, Dell EMC has also simplified the ordering process by which partners acquire these HCI appliances.
At a partner gathering in Toronto, Byrne recounted Dell EMC’s channel trumps – but also detailed where the company needs to improve, and provided broad hints about upcoming channel changes.
Dell EMC expects to be the first OEM to bring Azure Stack to market on next-generation servers, and believes this offering will be a particularly strong one for channel partners.
The new HPE relationship also brings the D&H HERO program, which provides additional HPE-focused support, into Canada.
HTBASE, a Toronto-area startup that is in the process of moving its main offices down to the Valley, has inked what for them is a huge statement of validation, partnering with Dell EMC.
Connolly acknowledges he will need to work hard to assure Dell EMC Canada customers, partners and staff that a guy coming from the EMC side of the house gets the commercial business, which is mainly legacy Dell.
Stefan Bockhop discusses his new role in the Lenovo DCG and their plans to drive business with new product, new go-to-market, and new channel programs – which include some forthcoming changes to deal reg.
HPE says that ProLiant Gen 10 is not only the world’s most secure Industry Standard Server – but that none of their competitors can possibly catch up.
