The close of Dell’s $65 billion acquisition of EMC is a milestone for each company, and for the IT industry as a whole. While Dell Technologies’ top brass will undoubtedly spend the day explaining how powerful the combination is, they’ll also acknowledge that creating a more than $70 billion, privately held tech industry behemoth comes with challenges.
Many of those challenges have direct implications for the channel, too. The companies’ partner bases overlap significantly, but their programs are very different. They’ll remain different at least until Feb. 1, when Dell begins its fiscal year, and that doesn’t give channel chief John Byrne much time to iron out those differences and formulate a program that plays to each company’s strength and wins favor with channel partners.
The company will also have to address things like corporate culture, an intense competitive landscape and questions about how well its sales forces will work together. Here are 10 of Dell Technologies’ biggest challenges.