What Dell is up to with SilverBack:

Reprinted with permission:

I just met with my Dell Account Executive who was in town today and
addressed some small concerns I had. Here are a couple of notes from our
meeting that might be useful:

1. By late 4th quarter, there will be an official “Dell
Authorized Reseller” program that you can be part of as a Channel Direct
provider. This will allow use of the Dell logo on website, etc. There
is no firm details on if you’ll have to have a minimum sales volume or
not. My rep said it may be $200k/year, but that it could

2. The only calls end user customers of Channel should get
are for warranty renewals. There should be no direct solicitation of
customers. Dell wants to increase channel sales from 10% now to 30% in
the next few years.

3. Though the Solution Provider agreement says otherwise, the
channel program will accept up to 5% of total sales/year in returns if
it is crucial to you.

4. Regarding Silverback, my AE is being told by his
supervisors that the main focus will be on enterprise customers in
assisting with diagnosing hardware issues. I asked about soliciting my
customers, sending brochures to small biz customers with ads for “free
managed services” etc and he said that wasn’t in the plan. He said the
most we should see is an app preinstalled on a desktop similar to Dell
Support app that you can uninstall if you wish. Also, he said we might
see it as a system config option just like you do for installation
services when configuring a machine now. I ignore that box as do my
customers when configuring a machine because they know they want us to
do the work. That sounds ok to me.

My concern was that they were going to get brochures that offered
Managed Services at a huge discount, and then my client would come to me
and ask what the skinny was. Then again, I’ve surveyed my clients and no
matter what, they like dealing with us as we are their trusted advisor
that they rely on. So take the above for what it is worth. It could be a
load of crap, or maybe this whole conspiracy “Dell wants to take over
the world” thing is a little overblown. I guess we’ll find out, right?

This came courtesy of one of my partners that met with his Dell Account Executive. I heard similar stuff from Judd Spence whom I am hoping to shame into starting a technology blog.