"I believe Dell is getting real serious about the channel," he said. "I like when a company is trying to step up instead of staying in a safe place. I see them willing to make deals and work hard."

Jack Kaiser, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Aqueduct Technologies, a Waltham, Mass.-based solution provider and EMC and Cisco channel partner, said he's also interested in expanding his relationship with Dell.

"I like the message," Kaiser said. "It's what channel executives like us want to hear: More channel business. Marius is a straight shooter. He wants to move in the right direction and grow."

By December, Dell EMC will start rolling out more details of its combined channel program, including how partners qualify for the different tiers in the program, and how those tiers will correlate with the investments partners will make in the program, Haas said.

This also includes clear penalties for Dell sales reps that break the rules that protect partners, he said.

"Within Dell EMC, it is a fire-able offense if you don't honor the registration process," he said. "We are going to be really clear about that. [And] if a partner tries to undercut another partner, and it's not within a fair competitive environment, we make sure the ethics are applied."

Haas indicated that the Dell EMC business incumbency program - which guarantees storage account protection for EMC partners in existing accounts based on a three-year history- could be extended to other areas including the data center."We will go even further," he said. "I might even introduce the whole data center to have that whole line of business incumbency program. We are working through it, but we are pretty close to getting something that we think [the channel] will be very excited about.

Dell EMC partners are also going to benefit from the increased R&D investment and supply chain scale that the $70 billion company brings to bear, said Haas. "Our R&D spend is going to be over $4.5 billion a year, double that of HPE, double that of IBM," he said. "So I would say if you want someone helping drive innovation for you and for your customers, that's a good place to start."

Dell's forthcoming unified channel will feature Gold, Platinum and Titanium levels, Haas said. Dell is keeping its options open for a fourth partner tier, called "Titanium Black." However, he said, the company is deliberately keeping details about that tier secret.

"Think about it this way," Haas said. "You don't know what the criteria are for an American Express Black Card. You don't know, but once you get it you feel really special. There will be some instances where we have a very small group of partners that fall into that category. From a global perspective, they have to have a global ELA [enterprise licensing agreement], something along those lines, to be defined, and we will communicate that."