“Dell’s partner ecosystem is coming into full bloom,” says Ravi Bharadwaj

Dell Technologies recently announced financial results for its fiscal 2027 first quarter revealed a record revenue of US$43.8 billion, up 88% year over year. Jeff Clarke, vice chairman and chief operating officer, Dell Technologies said that the record Q1 performance reflects strong in-quarter demand, as well as Dell’s pace of innovation across the full stack of PCs, compute and storage.

“We booked US$24.4 billion in AI orders and recognized US$16.1 billion in AI server revenue. We’re increasing our AI server revenue expectations for FY27 to US$60 billion, which only goes to show the AI opportunity shows no signs of slowing,” he said.

While these are global results, a significant contribution from the results are from the APAC region, with Dell’s channel ecosystem playing a key role in ensuring the tech vendor continues to grow significantly in the region. With increasing AI adoption in Asia, Dell believes partners are essential in bridging the solutions for customers.

For Ravi Bharadwaj, Vice President, APJC Partner Ecosystem, Channel and Global Alliances at Dell Technologies, having partners that are able to bring solutions to the ground faster is imperative as customers are now adopting AI faster. He believes that partners who are able to adopt and deploy solutions faster are getting successful, especially since the market time has gone up significantly.

“We've seen that partners play a critical role in terms of not just coverage, but also solution and end user deployment. That's where the Dell partner ecosystem is really coming into full bloom. If you look at our results last year, we grew double digits in every single line of business, which has been a phenomenal testament,” Bharadwaj said during an interview with CNR Asia at Dell Technologies World 2026.

Bharadwaj also pointed out that customers prefer not to go to multiple partners but instead work with partners that have the capability to support them in their journey. Hence, the partner who is able to bring the solution closer to what the customer wants, on the AI front, is undoubtedly getting adopted faster.

Updating the partner program

With Dell Technologies looking to revamp and enhance its partner program, Bharadwaj said the decision was made to have a clearer focus for the partners in their availabilities and capabilities. Specifically, there will be a new focus area Dell will be bringing in for enhancement for its Dell Accelerator Program, Dell Private Cloud, PowerStore, Z-Network and such.

“It’s an enhancement. So, if a partner sells this, they get more incentive as the base rebate itself goes up. The second element is focusing on accounts for partners that have been bringing in new logos. What happens is, once they bring in a new logo, they get a certain discount and we keep moving on. What we've just worked out, and we'll be announcing in August, is how deeper a partner can go. Because the relationship is already built. So, if they sell multiple lines of businesses, we then incentivize them more,” he said.

He added that Dell has often seen that when the partner sells multiple lines of businesses, the customer not only gets a one-shop stop but also enables the partner to have better coverage and earn more.

“We used to have this program very well covered in the direct side of the business. So now we're expanding it to the whole channel ecosystem. For the under-penetrated accounts, if the partner is able to go and establish this, that's another incremental business that we're doing. The third one is the co-sell incentives for the advisories creating the whole opportunity architecture solution, but the transaction happens later. We are providing another huge opportunity for that as well,” he explained.

With Dell also enabling agentic AI capabilities for partners, Bharadwaj pointed out that Dell has always had a good platform for partners to look at their incentive programs. The enhancement they are providing now in the program is to leverage agentic AI so partners can have better agility.

“Partners can now have just one panel where they can see demand generation or demand signals to deal with registration to incentive rebates, all on one. So, you can actually see how much you want to play, and go deeper into a certain account,” he said.

Bharadwaj also mentioned that conversations with partners on this update has been positive with many already looking at how they can utilize it faster, especially on predicting and dealing with supply challenges.

“AI is now an operating platform. Some of our partners have been pretty aggressive in not just selling, but also adoption. And they are now saying, how can we plug and play? Some of the partners have already started approaching us and asking if they can start integrating systems together. So, we have not reached that stage. But that's a very interesting influx that's happening,” he added.

Looking ahead

For Bharadwah, Dell’s message to partners is going to be very consistent. This means, partners would need to first think of the current situation of demand and supply and how they prioritize that.

“Because you don't want a situation where you're thinking ahead and you're not serving the existing customers. How are you showing up, along with the Dell, in front of our customers, saying that whether it is supply chain challenges for the solutions which they are requiring, or how do we become the front runners and how are we getting in front of each of these enterprises?” he said.

At the same time, the focus should also be on how IT-enabled partners are internally first and then working with them to support enterprises.

“We don't want a situation where a partner is not trained enough, has no hands-on experience or POCs when we meet customers, and especially in the enterprise space, where there is a clear use case that's required,” he said.

Bharadwaj also stated that the focus moving forward is ensuring that all internal team members, including partner sales teams, are trained from a technical standpoint. He added that the smaller partners are also important, and they may be challenged, especially with AI. So, Dell needs to make sure teams are able to support them and not lose out.

Interestingly, Bharadwaj pointed out that some smaller partners are more agile and flexible than the bigger ones as they can adapt and progress a lot faster. This is where partners like SNS Network have greater success. The Malaysian partner, which was selected as Dell’s AI Partner of the Year for the APJC region, was not just able to scale fast and beat the bigger partners but also bring more value for Dell in the long run.