Tech bosses share messages of support with channel partners

Having lost the chance to talk directly to partners as numerous planned events were cancelled due to the Covid-19 coronavirus, leaders at some of the larger vendors have opted to send supportive messages to calm the channel.

Over the past week, Michael Dell, Enrique Lores, Antonio Neri, Yuanqing Yang and Bob Swan have each penned messages to update partners and customers.

The overarching theme has been to reassure people that the large vendors have not yet hit any panic buttons and are navigating through the current crisis.

The CEO of Lenovo, Yang, was keen to stress in his message that the business was looking to maintain product supply.

“We are working hard to continue producing and developing the products that our customers use to address the challenges they face,” he wrote.

“But it’s ‘people’ who are the key to finding the solutions to these new challenges. Putting people first has always been a core value at Lenovo, whether referring to our employees, partners, customers or our communities,” he added.

HP’s president and CEO, Lores, was keen to reassure partners in his most recent message that HP would continue to keep communication with partners flowing.

“As we adapt to new routines in our daily lives, it’s also important that we find new ways to stay connected – both inside HP, as well as with our customers and partners. In the coming weeks and months, I’ll begin hosting a series of virtual forums with HP sites around the world so that we continue to have the opportunity to talk face-to-face despite current travel restrictions,” he stated.

“We are also stepping up communication with our customers and partners to express our support and provide resources they can use as they navigate the current environment,” he said.

Intel’s CEO, Swan, used his message to talk about the work the firm was doing with partners to help get technology in the hands of medical professionals and teachers having to set virtual lessons.

He also wrote about the need to keep technology flowing, which is becoming difficult because of the widening impact of coronavirus.

“We have come together and partnered in many ways to make this happen. That includes working with local and national governments to help ensure worker safety while allowing critical operations to continue,” he said. “And we have collaborated to identify short-term burst shipping capacity across suppliers by working closely to share collective resources, planes and trucks to deliver the best solution for our customers.”

Michael Dell also covered the issue of keeping supply lines open in a blog post penned at the start of the week.

“Our services and sales teams, supply chain and partners are working together to meet our customers’ business-critical technology needs. We are managing the impact on our business and supply chain operations through order lead times. Up-to-date information is visible to customers, partners and our own sales people during the order process,” he wrote.

“All Dell Technologies’ products are manufactured in accordance with our global health and safety policy and undergo rigorous screening prior to shipment regardless of factory location,” said Dell.

Over at HPE, the message from Neri also involved giving some reassurance to those partners that were helping customers concerned about cash flow.

“We know our customers and partners are relying on us to deliver HPE technology and services that will help them adjust to new and emerging needs given the current environment,” he stated.

“We are making it possible for employees around the world to effectively work from home through the rapid deployment of virtual desktop infrastructure,” said Neri. “We are helping our customers address surging demand by quickly scaling operations to provide capacity. And we are providing different ways for organisations to consume and pay for IT as they need it, which helps them manage cash flow.”