Microsoft Loses the #1 Spot

If you’ve been following the vibes around the SMB partner community you already know: Microsoft has lost their spot as the most partner-antagonistic company in the world. Ironically enough, they lost it to Dell.

Over the past ten years, Microsoft has held the unquestionable dominance over the title of the worst company to partner with and they earned that reputation by strongarming hardware partners, abusing their monopoly powers to dictate distribution and entering virtually every area of digital electronics. The concept of embrace (free software, free development tools, free training and developer incentives) and extinguish (enter with a 1.0 product, give it away for free, crush the segment) has definitely earned Microsoft a lot of enemies. To be fair, Microsoft has really improved over the last 2-3 years in terms of local reach, open standards, partner promotions and customer incentives but they have a long road ahead of them in establishing trust among the SMB solution provider base.

Now on to Dell. Dell first crushed the SMB “white-box” makers nearly a decade ago with cheap and reliable, depending on who you ask, PCs. Over the years Dell went into servers, network equipment, network storage, branded appliances and electronics including monitors, printers, handhelds, projectors and more. Suddenly, Dell’s direct model, reliable fulfillment and easy ordering made them the defacto winner in the SMB solution provider space. It was hard to go wrong with Dell.

But, Dell went after the “VA” in “VAR” and has clearly decided to also “direct” the “value add” of the “value added reseller” – the services. Recent acquisition of Silverback, large helpdesk that had nearly eight years to work out the kinks, low price, large portfolio and most importantly: the knowledge of who the partner is. It is no secret that if you fill out a Dell quote for a customer they will contact them directly and try to undercut you. However, with Dell having a huge OnForce and Unisys connection, the “foot army” that VAR’s seem to represent may be soon facing the challenge.

So, it may not be a surprise to soon hear “Dude, you’ve been served by Dell” and its certainly no surprise why Dell is clearly the #1 most partner antagonistic company in the world and one that you should have a very thick shield against in your current accounts.