Dell has announced they intend to resell Microsoft OCS 2007 products (no surprise) along with Nortel professional services (surprised) in direct competition to other Nortel/Microsoft partners (big surprise):
Ettienne Reinecke, CTO at systems integrator Dimension Data, Herndon, Va., said the partnership with Dell is not a channel-friendly move for Nortel. Dimension Data’s partners include Microsoft and Nortel. “I’d guess they’re trying to establish their professional services and have a channel to take them to market. From a systems integration point of view, we would be competitors,” Reinecke said. “I’m not too sure what this means for us, if it’s significant at all. It will be interesting to see what they’re actually achieving.”
It will be interesting if Dell can actually make headway doing these things. For a small and medium business this may make sense if they can get another integrator to help implement it. For most SMBs Dell is a hardware provider and bulk shipper of PC nothing more.
