>> Announcer: Live, from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Dell EMC World 2017. Brought to you by Dell EMC. (techno music) >> And welcome here on theCUBE to Dell EMC World 2017 live from the Sands Expo, along with Keith Townsend, I'm John Walls, and good to have you with us here on day three of what has been a fantastic show here for Dell EMC, mega show. 13,000 plus attendees, a lot of great announcements, and a lot of great guests we've had here on theCUBE. One of them joining us now, John Byrne who is the president of Dell EMC Global Channels, and a cover boy, I might add. This month's edition of CRN. John, you should have been in pictures, man. You look great on the cover, so congratulations on that big news. >> Thank you very much. >> Good to have you with us here on theCUBE. Tell us about your journey here, in the past couple of months. You watch the partners program, you bring Dell on one hand, you bring EMC on the other, bring it all together, how's it going so far? >> Well, like I said, the reaction has been spectacular. You know, almost extraordinary. When you think of our channel business now. Our channel business is some $35 billion. When you frame that, it's bigger than Facebook, bigger than Starbucks, bigger than Nike, growing faster than the market, the broadest portfolio in everything. You hear us talking about, we want to be number one of everything all in one place, and we have this wonderful partner ecosystem that is primed and ready to take advantage of this opportunity. So we set up a brand new team, and new strategy, new program, and our partners couldn't be more excited. The program is launched, based on three tenets, being simple, predictable, profitable, and you know, we're very, very pleased and very humbled with the momentum we've had. And look here, this has been built for our partner, but actually it's been built with the partner community in mind, and they can feel this and we're on a tremendous journey. Super exciting. >> Yeah, I like the fact, too, that, I mean you made no bones about it, profitable is not a dirty word, right? It's a very good word and a very real word. But back up a minute, you said new strategy. So you've been a channel guy basically your whole professional life. What experiences did you bring from 6that into this endeavor that you think have given it its own stamp, or its own unique distinction? Yeah, look, I remember running my own channel companies as if it was yesterday, and I remember I always had choices. And I wanted to work with people who were going to win, and people who you wanted to work with. So when we traveled the world to find what are partners like about heritage Dell, heritage EMC, what did they not like, more importantly,6 what was the best of breed in the planet? They were very consistent on three things. They wanted the program to be very simple. An annual program, take advantage of EMC's world class training capability. Take cost and friction out of my selling motion, i.e., one portal, one deal registration, automation of rebate, so I can see every week what have I sold, what are my earnings?6 'Cause I remember when I ran my own comp6any, I wanted to continually invest in the skill sets and the certification, but more importantly on the people. So having that consistency was something that came through loud and clear. Predictability of engagement. Ultimately, where do we want our channel partners to play, and how will we protect their investment, knowing that they have choices. And we spend a lot of time on our dealer registration. The third thing is, you're talking to a Scotsman, and profit is important. >> Scotsman? I thought it was a Texas accent. I wasn't sure-- >> Honestly, you sound like my father talking about my accent, John. But you know, we invested significantly in marketing development funds. We invested significantly in the rebate program, and our partners now can make anywhere between 1.5x to eight times what they made historically, based on the right behavior. So bringing my background and knowledge,6 those three things are critical, what we're doing. And of course, like our differentiation is going to be in execution, and the team is making great progress. >> So John, a lot of the angst and excitement, rather, between the merger of Dell EMC was with the channel. What was going to happen with the channel? What was going to happen with the channel? You guys have seemingly executed, seamlessly, rather, but a question around the relationship with the channel. One throat to choke versus the competition. The competition is shrinking, getting smaller, getting less complex, is the marketing term. How is the channel reacted to the new size of Dell EMC versus the competition shrinking? >> Yeah, that's a great question to ask there. That's the biggest endorsement that we could possibly have. Of course it was concern at the very beginning. They didn't know what was going to be the strategy. Both companies had done phenomenally well, and the channel, well the strategies look similar, but actually very different in detail. When you think Dell had many thousands of partners. EMC had hundreds of partners. The criteria on EMC's program from a revenue perspective was significantly more than it was in Dell. So a lot of concern. But the first thing we did, Keith, is l6ook, I pride the salesmen, we pride the sales6 on having big ears, and we travel the world. We travel the world and we listened. And then we came together very quickly. I think we only were born in September '16. Four weeks later, we announced, here's our vision, here's our strategy. Here's the team, here's the program. We're going to be implementing in February and we over-communicated with our partners. And as we were building this, or tweaking this and tweaking this, and it's amazing, you think we came together as one go-to-market motion in February. Within 90 days under our belt, like when I look at the leading indicators, how's the numbers? How's pay plane? How's the training? How's the self-indications? How's our services capability? How's our acquisition? And when I started to see those scoreboards light out green, the partners can see line-of-sight to it. the feedback from the partners is, like, they cannot believe that a 35-billion channel business moving at this speed together and executing the way we are as one team, is taking a lot of the noise out of the system, and they can see line-of-sight to money. >> So wait, I wanted to drill down on that a bit. $35 billion channel business. Next biggest competitor is, I think, a company called HPE. Their market cap is only $30 billion compared to your revenues. What's the significance of that from a customer and channel perspective? >> Look, it's not for me to talk about the competition. You know, I think when I look at the hand that we have, I think taking us private, allowing us to invest significantly in the future has helped us greatly. I think expanding $4.5 million in R and D, which is double the competitor you just mentioned, to allow us to have a product portfolio that dominates Gartner's magic quadrants, to allow us to invest in the business. Look, this is only going to go one way, however, I want to be very clear, we're the dark horse. Don't let $35 billion scare people. Like we only have low double digit share, but with a portfolio, with the partner community, with the program, look this is going to be like a skyrocket and the partners can feel it. >> So on that, yeah, I mean, you bring dark horse, we all know that the conventional definition of dark horse, right? Long shot, no shot, but $35 billion, it's pretty hard to fly under the radar, honestly, right John? >> Yes it is, it is. But I also want to include, that we have big visions. We have big dreams. We want to be the number one channel put in the industry. We want to be the number one, the biggest, and the best. Not the best, not the biggest, not the biggest, not the best. We want to be the biggest and the best. When we're talking to our partners right now, look, we've had them here, would you believe, it's been four and a half thousand partners here this week? We had a Global Partners Summit. It was standing room only, with the four and a half thousand. Actually, we had to go overflow rooms to get our partners coming in here. And those partners are feeding back to us, I'm almost scared to mention the number, how big this could be, but a discussion we're having with partners is not how do we grow up market? Or how do we grown a little bit above market. The discussion with the partners is how do we double? >> So with that said, Michael has talked an awful lot about the small overlap between Dell, Dell EMC, 20%, only 20% overlap, has the channel realized a new opportunity because of that limited overlap? >> Again, the leading indicator is look, we asked the partners for four things, as we build this program, and it's a rich program, and intentionally done so. We asked them for four things, we want you to grow your top line. We want to be aggressive and attack the market, however, I also wanted to make a lot of money. Profit is important. From our company to the partner community to the distributors. The second thing is, we want them to sell much more of our portfolio. You heard I'm sure, the past couple of days the four transformations. Building the modern data center. Our partners have the capability to sell much more lines of business than they are today. The third thing is, we want to be aggressive and acquire new customers, acquire new lines of business, and also attach services. Like if we spend a lot of time talking about hardware, but you're also hearing us talk about our services capability. That is a pot of gold for our partners if they do this, it's going to light up. So does our partner see this opportunity? Are they leaning in at getting more training, more certifications, oh, absolutely. >> So, let's talk about training because that's the critical part. Dell EMC is mind-mindbogglingly huge. So when I'm a channel, if I'm a channel engineer and I look at the portfolio, and I go onto a customer's site, how do I wrap my arms around just the size of it? I'm not in the mothership of Dellenium, see I don't have all of the, well, in theory, I don't have all of the back channels to the solutions. How do keep, how do you keep the channel up to speed? >> Yeah, great question. Actually, I'll give you some data points. Would you believe that at Dell Technologies, we have 40,000 sales makers who are trained and certified to sell our portfolio. That's quite a startling number, right? However, when you look at our partner community, who also do the same training and certification, we have 129,000 people trained in our partner community. That is a sales army of 169,000 people, trained and certified to go on attack, not only today but attack the future transformations. So what we've done, is we basically led a training that our own team does, our partners do it. We've also centralized all of our training. It's all on one portal. Clearly articulating, if you want to go by product, here's a by product, if you want to go by transformation, here's a by transformation. You want to do it by services, here's the services. And look, I think the other thing they're finding is it has real equity to the person doing the training. It's developing their career. You go to the LinkedIn, the explanation, we are Dell EMC certified trainers. That is exciting, to sell the products portfolio on the planet. >> So this is the program you launched early February, right? So, as you said, 90 days in. With any new program, though, you're going to hit speed bumps along the way, right? You're going to find some wrinkles, you're going to find some things you need to, what would that be in your mind? You said, okay, this is something, it's all going well in one respect, and it sounds great, but there is some polish that we still need. Where would that be right now? >> Oh, no question. Are you kidding me, 90 days in? >> All right. >> What the team and the partner community have done in 90 days is extraordinary, I mean, truly, truly extraordinary, however, they recognize we're going at tectonic speeds. But we have to. The channel is nimble, it's agile, it's got a different pulse, it's got a different heartbeat, but we're being very authentic on the journey. So when we brought the four and a half thousand, we talk about, look at some of the wins that are already on the board. And I'm telling you, we could have spent a full 90 minutes just talking about the wins that we found the first 90 days. The program has launched fantastically well, but with the bums in the road. But our partners understand that because we're being very authentic, and you know, they're part of the team, they're part of the family. What will define us is not that we're going to make mistakes, we will make mistakes, in life you make mistakes, in business you make mistakes. What will define us is how we react to those mistakes. Are we always there? Are we being true to our commitment? Are we staying very consistent. And the feedback from the partner community has been, yes. And the progress we're making, and look we are definitely not done. I mean, you think 90 days in, then fast forward, we are now full strength coming into the program. We spoke about consumption models coming in, flex on demand, cloud flex, PCs and service, VDI complete. They also asked us to simplify our MDF gate lanes. Done. So, you know, we're moving at the speed of light, and it is a lot of fun. >> Well, it makes sense. I mean, easier, simple, predictable, profitable, and I think you certainly hit a home run with that mantra, and obviously with the program, as well. So, congratulations on that. >> Thank you. >> Thanks for being with us here on theCUBE. >> My pleasure, John. >> It's always nice to add a different accent, don't you think, Keith? >> Thank you Keith, thank you very much. >> Yes, sir, thank you. >> John Byrne from Global Channels and Dell EMC, and we'll be back with more from Dell EMC World 2017, live in Las Vegas, right after this. (techno music)