In challenging economic times, channel partners are looking for every source of revenue, and at internal costs. This podcast features Paul Shaffer, a Director in Dell's Global Channel group. It focuses on ways channel partners can increase profitability -- even in a difficult economy -- by streamlining operations and simplifying their channel vendor relationships.

For more than a year, Dell has been talking about the need to simplify IT, and has released many solutions around this strategy. But many channel partners ask how simplified technology will help them stay profitable in challenging economic times. Dell Global Solutions Strategist John Dietrich talks about simplified IT and what it means in the channel.

As credit markets tighten, channel partners might be scrambling to find new or different sources of financing. Michael Buck, European Marketing Director for Dell's PartnerDirect channel program, discusses the market, trends and financing options, as well as the impact different compensation strategies have on partner profitability.

America's Channel lead Greg Davis talks about How Dell's Channel strategy is better for partners in challenging economic times, and how this simplified strategy makes it easier to make money.

High availability is important in any enterprise and for any application in an IT infrastructure. But there are some applications – email for example – that are even more missions critical. With its release of Windows Server 2008, Microsoft has added some features that improve high availability clustering. But for some organizations this is all still a mystery. So Dell has worked for several years in close partnership to simplify the deployment and management of HA clusters. Featured are Kevin Guinn, lead engineer for cluster engineering and Shabana, senior engineer for the high availability clustering solutions team at Dell.

Blades are the fastest growing segment of the server market. While they are relatively new to many organizations, it might seem funny that we’re already talking about the future. But if you understand where blades are going, you can make better decisions today. With us is Mike Roberts, product planning manager for blades at Dell. Mike will talk about where blades have come from, where they are today, and where they’re going.

This is the second installment in our series on simplifying the deployment and management of High-Performance Compute Clusters (HPCC). As the cost of the hardware comes down, the smaller and smaller organizations are able to take advantage of the raw power of HPCCs. Find out what Dell is doing to simplify HPCC to make them affordable and manageable even for smaller organizations. This podcast features Tim Carroll, Senior Manager HPCC at Dell.

There has been a real surge in the use and deployment of blade servers – it is the fastest growing segment of the server market. But as blades get brought into a data center infrastructure there are real issues with connecting them into the existing infrastructure, especially a storage area network infrastructure. So what is Dell doing about it, and what does Brocade have to do with Dell’s solution? Listen to Nelson Stewart, Product manager for Blade I/O products as he discusses these issues.

How hard is it to manage your image? Not your personal image, but rather the one on your computer. Everyone in IT knows that a client image includes everything on the system: the operating system, networking, software and settings. IT also knows how difficult it is to manage system images in an IT environment. So how do you simplify this complex process? Listen to Chris Harding, Senior Manager for Services New Product Development at Dell, as he talks about Image Direct, a simple online tool available free to Dell customers.

While High-Performance Compute Clusters were once only thought of as 1000-node super computers, today we’re seeing them used for smaller applications and in smaller organizations. But traditionally getting the raw power of HPCCs came with some complex issues – design, deployment, management, cost, and many others. This podcast is the first in a series featuring Tim Carroll, Senior Manager HPCC at Dell. Join us as we learn what the issues are, and more importantly what Dell is doing to simplify HPCC to make them affordable and management even for smaller organizations.