Mark McKeever, partner at Tempe, Ariz.-based solution provider MicroAge, after Dell Technologies and Salesforce announced a strategic partnership that puts Dell's salespeople and partners on a unified CRM platform that could go a long way toward relieving deal registration difficulties that have bedeviled Dell partners in the past.

"It definitely speaks to the importance of the digitization in businesses where technology is used to bring standardization of process across organizations. Well thought out process standardization enables organizations to generate greater speed as information more readily flows from person to person. There's certainly a lot of potential here if it's implemented well."