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Dell EMC is realigning its engineering teams to focus on four primary storage product lines as part of a broad restructuring aimed at accelerating product innovation, sources said.

The changes focus the Dell engineering teams squarely on a single product line for each market segment moving from low end to midrange to high end and a separate product for the unstructured file and object storage market, the sources said.

The $80 billion Round Rock, Texas digital transformation infrastructure behemoth is currently developing a new midrange product and a new unstructured file and object storage product as part of the restructuring, sources said.

For the high-end market, Dell will focus on its new all-flash PowerMax product unveiled this month, sources said. Dell's PowerVault product line will be the go to offering the entry level and SMB market, according to sources.

The sweeping changes mark the first major redrawing of the storage product roadmap since Dell's blockbuster acquisition of EMC in 2016 for $67 billion.

[Related: 10 New Dell Channel Programs, Incentives And Competencies Designed To Drive Partner Sales Growth]

The storage charge is being led by 30-year Dell veteran Jeff Clarke, vice chairman, products and operations for Dell Technologies, who took over the company's Infrastructure Solutions Group in late 2017.

Partners said the new storage battle plan solves what has been one of the biggest obstacles in Dell EMC's battle to maintain storage dominance: namely a product line from the Dell EMC merger that had a lot of overlap, creating confusion for both partners and customers.

Kent MacDonald, senior vice president at Long View Systems, a Calgary, Canada-based solution provider and Dell EMC partner, ranked No. 87 on CRN's 2017 Solution Provider 500 list, said he expects the new storage product line to accelerate storage innovation at Dell EMC.

"With that streamlined, simplified product set, I think it just allows the innovation to be driven across that product portfolio which is challenging to do when you have five of six different product sets," said MacDonald. "Streamlining and putting the innovation around a smaller portfolio I think is what customers have always wanted."

MacDonald said the new strategy also clears up once and for all what are the top products that Dell is betting on for the future."When you have five models, you don't want to buy the one that's going to not be around in a year or two, or the one that isn't getting the innovation," he said. "This will be well-received by the partner community for their end users."

Even though Dell is redrawing the product road map, the company is not going to end of life any current products in the market today such as its SC, Unity, XtremIO, Isilon or ECS storage product lines, sources said. Dell declined to comment on the matter.

One top source with knowledge of the simplified storage road map said the restructuring is geared toward making it easier for partners to "sell and position" the Dell EMC storage portfolio.

"It's an opportunity to focus on a smaller set of offerings with four product lines that pull forward the best features, functions, use cases and workloads for today and into the future," the source said. "Dell EMC is pulling forward the best-of-breed capabilities across its four primary platforms for this next-generation strategy."

Clarke is one of the driving forces behind an all out storage sales charge investing more than $2 billion, hiring 1,200 new storage sales specialist and initiating for the first time channel storages sales quotas.

Over the last several months, the company has launched multiple storage sales incentives for partners, including its new MyRewards Program which provides up to 3x bonus payout and enhanced rebates around driving new business, storage refreshes and attaching Pro-Support Plus to storage sale. This week, Dell EMC announced that its Unity storage platform has reached $2 billion in cumulative bookings with more than 22,000 Dell EMC Unity systems having been shipped.

Dell EMC is waging an all-out assault on the storage market, investing $2 billion, hiring 1,200 new storage sales specialists, and initiating for the first time channel storage sales quotas aimed at driving big share gains in 2018 through partners.

Leading Dell EMC’s storage charge is a trio of tech veterans: Marius Haas, president and chief commercial officer for Dell EMC (pictured, far right); Joyce Mullen, the company’s recently minted global channel chief (pictured, center); and Scott Millard, an EMC veteran who is now vice president of global channels specialty sales at Dell EMC (pictured, far left).

Dell EMC is determined to stop storage share losses with a new aggressive ’refuse to lose’ sales strategy, Haas said.

[Related: Dell EMC Ups Its Storage Game]

’We are saying, ’Enough is enough,’’ said a fired-up Haas in an exclusive interview with CRN. ’It now needs to be real clear that they expect their team members and their partner ecosystem to really rally around the storage business. There are competitors out in the market and for some reason, in some cases, they have done better than they have. So we’re taking an approach around, ’Hey, we’re going to take a ’refuse to lose’ approach in the business.’

At the heart of the storage sales offensive are new robust storage compensation incentives for solution providers and the Dell EMC sales reps working side by side with those partners.

Hopkinton, Mass.-based Dell EMC plans to grow in the neighborhood of 5 percent to 10 percent above the market in its high-end and midrange storage business during fiscal year 2019, which begins in February, Haas said. The growth will ’no doubt’ come at the expense of competitors including NetApp and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, according to Haas. ’We clearly need to make sure that they have the right resources to go in the right depth, to have the right architecture conversations that also enable their partners to sell the full breadth of the portfolio into all markets aggressively, from the high end all the way down to the low end,’ he said.

Dell EMC has hired 1,200 new specialty sales personnel dedicated exclusively to storage, including data center partner managers and channel specialty sales executives focused on the partner-led selling motion around storage, converged infrastructure and data protection.

The company also has a parade of new storage products set to be rolled out in its new fiscal year. Those products stem from the massive $2 billion the company spent on storage-specific research and development in fiscal year 2018 in preparation for the storage charge.

Dell EMC is counting on channel partners, who account for about 70 percent of Dell’s midrange storage business, to drive the share gains. The company is incenting partners to attack the $14 billion midrange market in 2018 by implementing, for the first time, a storage-only quota for partners. In the past, Dell had a combined storage and server quota, but that’s no longer the case.

’We are getting real precise around the expectations of their sellers to say, ’Storage is critically important. You’re going to be driving it.’ They got a phenomenal storage team that came to us with the EMC acquisition. Now what they want to do is turn that into an engine that is just going to drive extremely hard,’ said Haas. ’We’re also going to create training programs, enablement programs, MDFs and back-end rebates commensurate with their ambition to clearly have an aggressive share gain plan next fiscal year.’

Dell EMC is counting on channel partners, who account for about 70 percent of Dell’s midrange storage business, to drive the share gains. The company is incenting partners to attack the $14 billion midrange market in 2018 by implementing, for the first time, a storage-only quota for partners. In the past, Dell had a combined storage and server quota, but that’s no longer the case.

’We are getting real precise around the expectations of their sellers to say, ’Storage is critically important. You’re going to be driving it.’ They got a phenomenal storage team that came to us with the EMC acquisition. Now what they want to do is turn that into an engine that is just going to drive extremely hard,’ said Haas. ’We’re also going to create training programs, enablement programs, MDFs and back-end rebates commensurate with their ambition to clearly have an aggressive share gain plan next fiscal year.

Michael Thomaschewski, CTO of hybrid infrastructure at Long View Systems, a Calgary, Alberta-based Dell EMC partner ranked No. 87 on the 2017 CRN Solution Provider 500 list, said the rejuvenated storage charge and new resources undoubtedly will boost Long View’s bottom line.

’Adding 1,200 employees is nothing to sneeze at. That’s an astronomical investment on [Dell Chairman and CEO] Michael Dell’s part and his organization,’ said Thomaschewski. ’The doubling down on this is really sending a message to the market: ’We are not going anywhere and storage is still something everybody needs, and they see a huge growth opportunity in it.’ That’s a key way of driving the market toward a particular direction that I think they’ll be successful at.’

Dell EMC began the storage offensive in earnest in November with new all-flash versions of its midrange SC Series, giving partners one SKU and all-inclusive software. The company also recently enhanced its Dell EMC Unity product line offering to include deduplication, cloud-tiering and online data-in-place upgrades.

’The product set is on fire,’ said Thomaschewski, adding that Long View’s Dell EMC storage sales were up nearly 10 percent in 2017 compared with 2016 with a large spike in all-flash sales including XtremIO and Unity.

In addition, Dell EMC recently added its 14G PowerEdge servers to its hyper-converged appliance, VxRail, along with specialty pricing for partners. Dell EMC is reducing the standard price for VxRail and Unity for partners by ’double digits’ with the goal of ’getting partners to a winning price faster,’ said Dell EMC’s Millard. ’It’s priced to win. They are looking to signicantly increase their volume and win rates in midrange with their partners,’ Millard said.

Dell EMC plans to accelerate the storage innovation march in 2018 with signicant new investments in next-generation ash technology for its SC Series and Unity product lines, said Sam Grocott, senior vice president of marketing, storage and data protection at Dell EMC.

One of the big bets for the new year will be in the form of game-changing machine-learning technology. ’We’ll have new technologies and products that double down on not only having better intelligence around the data, but being able to automate action around that information and be more effective, more secure and more efcient in how they provide value to their customers storing their data,’ said Grocott.

Dell EMC also is planning to continue to advance the integration of both SC Series and Unity into the cloud. ’Being able to natively tier into the cloud and being able to provide insight into your data that’s both on-premise and off-premise will be a big focus of ours as well as they move more to a hybrid cloud world,’ said Grocott.

Although Dell EMC’s server and client business has been on fire, the company’s worldwide enterprise storage business was flat year over year during the third quarter of 2017 with sales of $2.2 billion, according to research firm IDC. Dell’s external enterprise storage sales fell 4 percent during the third quarter to $1.6 billion. However, Dell EMC still holds a commanding leadership position in the global external storage market with 28.8 percent share, followed by NetApp at 12.5 percent, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise with 11.4 percent, according to IDC.

To combat the flat storage sales and turn up the heat on the the competition, Dell is doubling down on partner programs and incentives to drive channel profitability, aiming to displace its rivals.

The company’s new #GetModern program provides partners with the same assessment and proposal tools used by Dell EMC’s internal sales teams to facilitate data center sales. In the U.S., partner reps and sales engineers can earn up to $10,000 each for selling all-flash arrays or converged infrastructure, as well as 1.5 percent of the deal value if it includes a competitive swap of up to $30,000. Dell EMC also is paying $500 to partner reps and sales engineers for proposal and registration, and $1,000 for demand generation, even if the solution provider fails to close the deal.

Over the past few months, the program already has led to $750 million in the pipeline for the channel, according to Millard. ’We are really putting their money where their mouth is with regards to the key programs we’re driving with their partners,’ said Millard. ’These midrange announcements around new programs and products are just the beginning of a wave of announcements you’re going to see over the next six months.’

One partner reaping the benefits of the #GetModern program is Waltham, Mass.-based Winslow Technology Group.

The program’s tools and proposal templates have helped the solution provider generate a total of 105 new proposals around all-flash products like Dell EMC Unity, SC Series, Isilon and VxRail.

’That’s 105 customers getting proposals. It’s no coincidence that, as a company, we’ve already hit their storage target for the quarter after only six weeks. They are right now blowing out their storage number,’ said Scott Winslow, president of Winslow Technology Group. ’Our salespeople and their solutions architects are being incented nicely to put those proposals together, so now it gets the activity going. It’s a win for the customer because they get a nice package that they can sell internally, but then their salespeople get additional compensation for it. That’s extremely effective.’

Another program driving channel storage sales is Dell’s new Future-Proof Storage Loyalty Program, which includes a customer three-year, satisfaction guarantee; trade-in credits toward new Dell EMC storage products; a storage efficiency guarantee; all-inclusive software; and one year of built-in Virtustream Storage Cloud for new buyers of Dell EMC Unity storage products.

Millard said Dell built the Future-Proof Storage Loyalty Program to be the top storage partner program in the industry ’It doesn’t cost anything extra for a partner. So there’s no additional cost and if you look at competitors’ programs, their return policy is typically 30 days—ours is three years,’ he said. ’So right out of the gate you can see the uniqueness of the program.’

Dan Serpico, CEO of San Francisco-based FusionStorm, ranked No. 46 on the 2017 CRN Solution Provider 500 list and one of the ultra-exclusive Dell EMC Titanium Black partners, said he is seeing ’considerable pressure’ in the storage market. Although his Dell EMC server, networking and client sales were all up in 2017 year over year, storage sales were generally flat.

Market trends like direct-attached storage and softwaredefined technologies are having an impact on FusionStorm’s ability to continue to scale at the same pace as it could in the past. Pressure is also coming from Dell EMC storage competitors like Pure Storage and NetApp, he said. Although market pressure is mounting, Serpico is ’bullish’ about Dell EMC’s strategy and ability to recognize and solve storage challenges in 2018.

’Dell clearly has recognized that the market is challenged and they’re putting significant resources in attacking that market. Some of that is in the form of incentives, which they think are very important and have value, and some of that is their investment into the market itself and working in partnership with us in the field,’ said Serpico. ’The market is challenged, there’s no doubt about that, but Dell’s got the right approach. They’re investing heavily in it. Attacking it. They want their disproportionate share. That’s certainly encouraging to us.’

Tasked with driving partner enablement and profitability is Mullen, who replaced the hard-charging channel advocate John Byrne. Byrne is now Dell’s North America commercial sales leader.

Mullen, an 18-year Dell veteran who previously led Dell’s OEM and IoT business and added the global channel chief role at the end of November, said a big focus area in fiscal year 2019 will be on storage enablement and training for channel partners.

’We want their partners to be every bit as smart as their smartest storage specialist around their capabilities and their offerings,’ said Mullen. ’Just like their storage certified are extraordinarily well-versed in matching up the right kinds of solutions with the problem the customers are trying to solve, they want to make sure their partners do the same. Making sure their partners are completely enabled is critically important for us.’

The storage blitz comes on the heels of the completion of the integration of the Dell and EMC teams. Dell Technologies became the world’s largest privately held IT firm after completing its $67 billion acquisition of EMC in September 2016. The integration process was moving full-throttle throughout 2017, said Michael Dell.

When asked to name his biggest accomplishment of fiscal year 2018, Dell said it was the completion of the complex integration process with EMC.

’We completed one of the largest and most complex integrations in history, and the company is functioning right now as one company. They have one face to the customer and they didn’t break anything. A lot of stuff that could have gone wrong didn’t go wrong,’ said Dell in a recent interview with CRN. ’We’re off to the races. I would say it is kind of like the end of the combination and integration, and it’s the beginning of the beginning. So they are just starting their new year as a relatively newly formed company with a lot of the integration behind us and great momentum from their customers and partners.’

Solution providers say their overall Dell EMC sales exploded in the second half of 2017 with the complex integration of the merger complete.

’We just had a record third quarter and are now surpassing that in their fourth quarter,’ said Winslow Technology Group’s Winslow. ’The Dell-EMC integration has taken hold and become more mature. The second half of 2017 has been incredible for us. Now that the eld sales teams have become more stabilized and have a better handle on how they’re going to go to market in the field aligning the legacy Dell and EMC teams, we’re very bullish that growth will continue in 2018.’

Winslow Technology Group’s Dell EMC storage sales were up 10 percent to 15 percent in 2017 compared with the previous year with plans to ’hire aggressively’ this year to support Dell EMC’s storage charge.

Michael Dell said his company is still focused on gaining market share in the server industry, but it is now expanding its efforts around storage.

’We’re adding resources in terms of storage specialists, increasingly creating more and more appliances with converged and hyper-converged, and helping their customers realize the hybrid cloud opportunity,’ he said.

Storage success in fiscal year 2019 will be measured by Net Promoter Scores from customers, partners, employee team members, as well as market-share gains and nancial performance like EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortization) and cash flow, according to Michael Dell.

On top of all the storage-focused programs, incentives and new products rolling out to help the channel drive sales, Dell EMC is urging partners to leverage the company’s massive portfolio to win new deals. Dell EMC executives said the breadth and depth of the portfolio is a clear market differentiator that partners should utilize to their advantage.

Robert Keblusek, CTO of Sentinel Technologies, a Downers Grove, Ill.-based solution provider ranked No. 117 on the 2017 CRN Solution Provider 500 list, said customers are now asking what more can they leverage inside the Dell Technologies portfolio unlike ever before.

’In some cases, they might have never had EMC or had EMC before and went in another direction, but now they’re relooking at it and saying, ’Hey, it’s now part of the overall Dell. Can Dell really meet a lot more of my needs?’ I just met with a university that was in a very similar situation,’ said Keblusek. ’They see the broader portfolio now with EMC giving them a lot of depth as far as storage, hyperconverged and data protection go, which gives us an opportunity to go in and solve more problems for customers than they previously could.’

With a healthy balance sheet of $18 billion in cash and investments heading into the new year, Michael Dell said he’s ’very optimistic’ and feels that there’s ’nothing but great opportunities ahead.’

’When you compare us to the other large companies in their sector, what you find is they are larger, more profitable and growing faster,’ said Dell. ’It’s a good combination.’

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