Dell EMC has restored Ingram Micro's EMC relationship in the United States and extended all or part of Dell's heritage enterprise portfolio to Arrow, Avnet and Carahsoft.

Ingram Micro still employs a lot of the talent that drove the Irvine, Calif.-based distributor's success with EMC before it severed ties with Ingram in April 2015, according to Kirk Robinson, Ingram Micro's senior vice president of go-to-market. Ingram Micro plans to shift its existing EMC resources back into place, Robinson said, and hire the certified engineers and other talent to be the dominant Dell EMC distributor.

"When the relationship ended with EMC, they were their 'Distributor of the Year' because they were consistently outperforming Arrow and Avnet," Robinson told CRN. "We're going to build that playbook back out, and we're going to raise the bar even higher."

[Related: Arrow Snags $350M of Channel Business From Competitors, Lands Dell Enterprise Portfolio]

Ingram Micro's go-to-market efforts will initially leverage the distributor's business intelligence capabilities and target new solution providers that are not reselling EMC today, Robinson said. Once channel partners are allowed to switch distributors again, starting in August, Robinson said Ingram Micro will pursue restoring relationships with its former EMC partners.

"Customers have been coming to us and asking, 'When are you going to get EMC back?'" Robinson said. "When the gate opens up, we're going to go back to working with all of the accounts that they were performing with when they were [EMC] Distributor of the Year."

Arrow enjoys a commanding lead in EMC distribution market share in North America, and looks forward to extending conversations with its existing EMC partner base from data center storage and backup to Dell's heritage compute and networking platforms, according to Ben Klay, vice president and general manager of Arrow's infrastructure systems group.

"We think this opens us some new markets to us," Klay told CRN. "It's not every day they get to expand the portfolio like this."

Klay said Arrow had built its dominant market position around EMC by employing a dedicated compensation model, where the distributor's EMC team only got paid when EMC products were sold.

Tech Data no longer enjoys the distinction of being the only distributor carrying Dell and EMC's entire product line in the U.S. now that EMC has restored ties with Ingram Micro.

But Tech Data's comprehensive capabilities across both Dell EMC's value data center and emerging technology practice as well as its volume PC, mobile and entry-level server business are unparalleled in the industry, according to executive vice president and chief operating officer Rich Hume.

"We have strength in both, and they aren't coming from a cold start," Hume told CRN. "The relationship has existed across all of those areas for a good period of time, and they do business with all three Dell Technologies companies [Dell, EMC and VMware] at scale."

That relationship will be bolstered in the next few months when Tech Data's $2.6 billion acquisition of Avnet Technology Solutions (TS) closes, which Hume said will amplify the distributor's capabilities around EMC's security, analytics, and hyper-converged infrastructure practices.

Avnet TS has been an EMC partner for more than 15 years and believes Dell's acquisition of the vendor will open up new opportunities, the company said in a statement. The distributor did not immediately address how it will benefit from adding Dell's enterprise portfolio to its line card.

Synnex will continue distributing Dell's legacy client and enterprise products, and, along with Ingram Micro, had been one of only two distributors offering the vendor's U.S. federal program, according to Reyna Thompson, vice president of product management for Synnex's ConvergeSolv Secure Networking Group.

Thompson said in a statement that Synnex offers a dedicated sale Dell ruggs rep to all 20,000 of its reseller accounts, differentiating themselves from peers who service resellers from the 'next available person' in the queue.

Synnex has a dedicateded computing specialist on staff, Thompson said, and also maintains an exclusive program that offers networking resellers access to MDF, demo gear, asset buyback programs, call campaigns and weekly inventory reports.

Executives from Dell and Carahsoft were not immediately available for comment. Carahsoft had been serving legacy EMC partners exclusively in the U.S. government space and is now authorized to also sell Dell's Compellent storage line to federal customers.

Platte River Networks moved all of its Dell direct business to Ingram Micro two years ago and has benefitted greatly from Ingram's marketing and training funds and continued education offerings, according to David DeCamillis, vice president of sales and marketing for the Denver-based company.

DeCamillis said Ingram Micro's partner community was shocked when EMC dropped the distributor in North America two years ago and isn't surprised that Dell came in and reversed that decision.

"Ingram really knows how to deal with reseller partners," DeCamillis said.

Dell EMC is waging an all-out assault on the storage market with significant investments, storage sales specialist hiring spree and for the first time launching new channel storage sales quotas.

Dell EMC is waging an all-out assault on the storage market, investing $2 billion in the effort, hiring 1,200 new storage sales specialists and offering new, robust, storage compensation incentives for its partners. A trio of executives leading the charge - Scott Millard, Joyce Mullen and Marius Haas - talked to CRN about how Dell EMC is putting the pieces in place to help its partners win big in storage.

'Refuse To Lose': Dell EMC Primes Its Partners For A Storage Revolution
Driving the company's storage sales offensive are new robust storage compensation incentives for solution providers and an influx of Dell EMC sales reps working side by side with those partners.

Dell EMC President Marius Haas On The Company's 'Refuse To Lose Approach' To The Storage Market
Dell EMC's Marius Haas on the Dell EMC's storage push and how channel partners are vital to Dell EMC's success.

Storage Boost: Dell Hires 1,200 Sales specialists To Drive Partner-Led Selling
By hiring 1,200 new storage sales specialists, Dell boosts its storage team by upward of 25 percent with an eye on skyrocketing storage revenue through its partners in 2018.

10 Hot Dell EMC Storage Products
CRN looks at 10 key products in the Dell EMC storage lineup, one that offers the broad capabilities to match the company's position as the world’s largest storage vendor.

Tech Tour: Behind The Scenes At Dell EMC's Storage Manufacturing Facility
CRN recently toured Dell EMC's storage manufacturing facility in Massachusetts which assembles, tests and ships converged and hyper-converged products throughout North America.

CRN Interview: Dell EMC Channel Chief Joyce Mullen On Driving More Storage Sales Through Partners And Her Channel Vision For 2018
Joyce Mullen, an 18-year Dell veteran who is now president of global channels, OEM and IoT Solutions, spoke with CRN about enabling partners to drive more storage sales, the potential integration of VMware into the Dell EMC Partner Program, and her channel vision for 2018.

Dell EMC Doubles Down On Storage Services, Unifying Portfolio
Dell EMC executives are making sure partners have the competencies they need to sell the Dell EMC portfolio as well as their own services.

Fistfuls Of Growth: Dell EMC's Expanded Product Portfolio Paves New Paths For Partners
Michael Dell has emphasized that customers want cutting-edge hybrid cloud tech and they want to buy it from fewer vendors. Here's how three solution providers backed up Dell's assertion with skyrocketing sales across Dell EMC's broad portfolio in 2017.

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