Tian Beng Ng (Dell Technologies)
Dell Technologies has overhauled server capabilities to drive edge computing growth via the channel, backed by a portfolio refresh designed to help partners deliver end-to-end digital transformation projects.
In revamping Dell EMC PowerEdge offerings with 17 next-generation servers, the technology giant is attempting to boost workload performance levels to allow “real-time insights” from data irrespective of environment, supported by enhanced security and energy efficiency additions.
“Our channel partners are integral to our overall success in leading digital transformation journeys,” said Tian Beng Ng, senior vice president and general manager of Channel across Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) at Dell Technologies. “The new Dell EMC PowerEdge server portfolio allows our partners to drive profitable growth in their business by delivering an end-to-end, flexible technology for customers looking to innovate and grow in the era of disruption.”
The launch comes as partners selling across the entire Dell portfolio - enhanced further by strategic VMware attachments - generate triple-digit rewards amid an acceleration of cross-sell opportunities across Asia Pacific.
As revealed by Channel Asia, partners selling three line of business items - spanning client, server and storage - plus VMware achieve approximately 124x the revenue compared to providers selling one product item.
According to third quarter data supplied to Channel Asia by Dell, partners selling across the vendor's three offerings without VMware also stand to benefit, creating revenue increases in excess of x11 and x42 compared to two and one product lines respectively.
"We have always seen great value from Dell’s robust and flexible compute solutions," added Phil Dickman, chief revenue officer of Intuit Technologies, an Australian-based managed service provider. “This next-generation Dell EMC PowerEdge portfolio takes this to a whole new level. With PCIe Gen 4.0 and AI-enabled capabilities, these new solutions will help us all embrace the digital era powered by artificial intelligence and edge computing technologies.”
Shaped by a desire to help partners capture “new and sustainable” business opportunities, the new portfolio leverages AMD and Intel processors to manage “computational-heavy workloads” with the portfolio available via "Flex On Demand" packages.
“Infrastructure has long been evolving beyond the data centre, and workloads at the edge are only becoming more complex,” said Patrick Moorhead, founder and president of Moor Insights & Strategy. “Dell’s servers and intelligent management solutions give organisations the compute options and tools to run even the most complex workloads from the data centre to the edge or wherever they need to be.”
According to recent IDC findings, vendor revenue in the worldwide server market grew 1.5 per cent year-over-year to US$25.8 billion during the fourth quarter of 2020, with global shipments declining three per cent to nearly 3.3 million units during the three-month period.
Specific to products, volume server revenue was up 3.7 per cent to $20.4 billion, mid-range server revenue also increased 8.4 per cent to $3.3 billion, while high-end servers declined by 21.8 per cent to $2.1 billion. From a vendor perspective, Dell and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) remain tied for the top position, ahead of Inspur, IBM, Huawei and Lenovo.
"Global demand for enterprise servers was relatively flat during the fourth quarter of 2020 with the strongest increase to demand coming from China," said Paul Maguranis, senior research analyst of Infrastructure Platforms and Technologies at IDC. "From a regional perspective, server revenue within China grew 22.7 per cent year over year while the rest of the world declined 4.2 per cent.
"Blade systems continued to decline, down 18.1 per cent while rack optimised servers grew 10.3 per cent year over year. Similar to the previous quarter, servers running AMD CPUs as well as ARM-based servers continued to grow revenue, increasing 100.9 per cent and 345.0 per cent year over year respectively, albeit on a small but growing base."
