Dell Canada has made a significant cloud offering to its channel partners in Canada.
Starting this month, Dell authorized solution providers in Canada can resell and refer Dell Cloud Services, under the PartnerDirect program.
Dell’s plan here is to expand the channel partner offering enabling customers to get more control and flexibility to manage and extend IT resources for private, public or hybrid clouds. Some channel partners have been involved in a pilot program of Dell’s Cloud Channel program since April 2012, the company said. Dell is now launching the program to the entire PartnerDirect community interested in selling cloud services backed by Dell data centers, experts and technologies.
The program offers two ways that partners can get involved in promoting the service: reselling the offer or referring customers to Dell. In the resale model, Dell provisions an instance of Dell Cloud Services for the partner who then resells capacity to customers. In the referral model, partners are able to educate their customers about Dell Cloud Services and then refer them to Dell for purchase and provisioning.
In conjunction with the expansion of its Cloud Channel program, Dell is also extending its channel certification program. In March 2012, Dell’s Global Commercial Channel team launched the Cloud Services & Solutions certification competency for channel partners within the Dell PartnerDirect program. This competency enables channel partners to provide cloud services and solutions to their customers based on Dell and partner technologies. It is comprised of three specialty areas of operation in providing cloud services and solutions:
1. Cloud Builder
2. Cloud Provider (PDF)
3.Cloud Services Enabler
The Cloud Services Enabler identifies, secures and integrates the appropriate set of cloud technologies and services, and operates the resulting cloud for customers through a set of managed services. Dell Cloud with VMware vCloud Datacenter Service is the basis for this certification specialty and is available for partners to resell to their customers.