I always jump at the opportunity to engage with Dell’s amazing partner community, which is why I’m off to Peak Performance EMEA 2015, which takes place today through Wednesday at the Maritim Hotel in Berlin. I’m excited to join this stellar international gathering of more than 300 Dell partners that all want to help customers address emerging security risks.
Nearly every day I get to speak with a Dell customer about how they’ve turned to us for help in solving a tough security problem. Dell partners play an extremely important role from the frontline in the fight against advanced persistent threats. Our global security partners are among the best experts in the world, with decades of experience and vast domain knowledge across an ever-changing, complex environment.
Bringing our European partner ecosystem together at Peak gives us a chance to talk about our latest product and Dell PartnerDirect program updates. My Dell Software channel colleagues will share our regional channel momentum, which has grown our software business by more than 60 percent!
The channel is critical to Dell’s business, so we’re always eager to hear directly from our partners. That’s why we conducted a pre-event partner poll to get a stronger sense of what’s taking place within customer accounts. According to the survey of more than 100 partners attending Peak, advanced persistent threats continue to rank highest on the list of customer concerns. Still, budget constraints prevent many from implementing their desired security solution. And, reactive measures continue to trump proactive planning, with 40 percent of customers waiting until after they’ve had a breach to implement a security solution.
As a result, partners are changing how they approach differing customer needs and priorities, which have enabled 96 percent of those surveyed to see uplift in security sales in the last year. More than a quarter of those polled experienced sales increases ranging from 21 to 40 percent, which reaffirms our belief that security remains one of the most sought after solution areas for customers—and a top business priority for partners.
My favorite part of Peak Performance is hearing directly from partners, so I’m really looking forward to leading an informative Q&A session with three of our EMEA security partners: Stephane Gillot, manager of commercial infrastructure at Prodware France; Nicolai Landzettel, CEO of Data-Sec in Strausberg, Germany; and Durgan Cooper, director of information security and cyber risk at UK-based CETSAT.
During this interactive discussion, we’ll learn firsthand what’s driving their businesses as well as how their roles are expanding as they help customers cope with the spike in security threats over the past year. In particular, I’m curious to hear if there’s been a shift in decision making among their customers, especially as awareness grows about the importance of security and the need to mitigate risks. Are security discussions being elevated to the boardroom? If so, what’s the best way to guide higher-level interactions about proactive, strategic security planning?
As we gather over the next two days, there will be ample opportunities to share insights and swap stories. One that Nico will likely talk about involves Serviceplan Group, the largest privately owned advertising firm in Europe. With 2,000 employees and big-name customers like BMW and Lufthansa, Serviceplan takes security very seriously. The company also has to address a lot of complexity in its environment, due to the variety of big data Serviceplan creates on behalf of its clients, as well as the need for BYOD security for employees and freelancers.
(Please visit the site to view this video)
In seeking a more robust security solution, Serviceplan worked with Dell and Data-Sec to deploy Dell SonicWALL SuperMassive firewalls to increase security levels for both Internet and internal network traffic. As the video explains, Stefan Reitmeier, senior network administrator for Serviceplan, chose Data-Sec as a strategic security advisor because of the company’s expertise to help a fast-growth company stay ahead of the technology curve.
This is a great example of the power of the Dell channel community, which we plan to reinforce over the next two days at Peak with more customer stories, partner perspectives and Dell insights. I can’t wait to get started! Follow the conversation with our conference hashtag #DellPeakEMEA.
Drop me a line at Dave_Hansen@dell.com with your favorite partner story.