“D&H has a unique ability to reach underserved customers and partners. Their nimble team has strong partner ties and a proactive, ‘get-it-done’ attitude … They recently added our server portfolio based on partner feedback, and the early results have been very positive,” Gregg Ambulos, Dell’s senior vice president of North America channel sales, tells CRN.
With D&H Distributing moving upmarket to take on enterprise customers through its Advanced Solutions Plus initiative, the company is filling out its product line card with Dell Technologies servers and soon storage products as part of the transition.
D&H Distributing Co-President Dan Schwab told CRN that as Dell moves towards a distribution-first model doing business with D&H — where its employees have an average tenure of 10.3 years and undergo training on vendor programs three to four days a week — made sense.
“When you think about the level of complexity today with trying to deploy security practices, when you’re trying to lever new AI solutions and take those to your end users, that’s a much more complicated thing than saying, I need 50 printers or 50 switches. What’s your price?” he said. “It’s a different type of transaction. So we’re much more consultative in nature. And I think that’s the other reason Dell came to us.”
D&H’s revenue grew 27 percent last year to $7 billion, with $2.5 billion of those sales coming from the midmarket and enterprise. Schwab said the Harrisburg, Pa.-based company quietly launched sales of Dell’s top lineup of servers about 90 days ago and business has taken off. But he said D&H has its sights set on the entire Dell portfolio.
“We’re exceeding expectations. Hundreds of partners. They’re thrilled with our initial launch,” Schwab said. “We wanted to launch servers first as a foundation because to sell storage, it’s a little bit more of a complex solution. So right now, we can sell anything in this server portfolio.”
Gregg Ambulos, Dell’s senior vice president of North America channel sales, told CRN that D&H employees and the relationships the company forges in the channel are great differentiators.
“D&H has a unique ability to reach underserved customers and partners. Their nimble team has strong partner ties and a proactive, ‘get-it-done’ attitude,” he told CRN. “Over the years, D&H has excelled in the client space, and now they are scaling into the enterprise segment. They recently added our server portfolio based on partner feedback, and the early results have been very positive.”
Schwab is now training D&H’s sales force to sell Dell’s storage lineup, which he said the distributor will carry in the early part of 2026. The company’s seller network spends 71 percent of its time making outbound calls in the company’s mission to win deals on behalf of its partners, Schwab said.
“They are constantly being trained on the vendor programs, not just the products, much more about the programs, the differentiators, the value propositions, all the things that the manufacturer would talk about. And then when D&H talks to the partner, our secret sauce is we’re doing that from a solution sales standpoint. We’re not just selling them Dell. We’re selling them security products from SonicWall and Cisco. We’re selling them the total solution. And we’re able to evangelize why we think these two together makes sense.”
Ambulos said D&H’s value to manufacturers is apparent through its decades of goodwill built in the channel, which Dell could potentially leverage across its portfolio.
“We prioritize strategic distribution to drive shared wins and avoid market overlap,” Ambulos told CRN. “D&H’s deep partner relationships unlock new opportunities for enterprise infrastructure solutions and we trust they will execute, backed by their proven track record. As we track results, we’ll explore expanding our offerings to accelerate growth together.”
Schwab said he recognizes that storage is one of the key priorities inside Dell and he wants to get it right.
“Their focus on distribution-led hasn’t changed,” Schwab told CRN. ““I think sometimes you could argue that you can lead with storage as a differentiator and server as part of the solution as well, versus just selling the server technology, and I think that’s part of what Dell would tell you is their value proposition. And we would agree.”
Michael Dell, Dell Technologies’ CEO and founder, recently took to LinkedIn to celebrate 95 consecutive quarters of Dell’s No. 1 position in enterprise storage by revenue share.
At Waltham, Mass.-based Cambridge Computer Services – No. 233 on CRN’s 2025 Solution Provider 500 and five-time winner of Nvidia partner of the year — David Miketinac, vice president of strategic initiatives, said the relationship between the firms has been solid in the two years the two have worked together.
“D&H has always been known for its strong relationships with SMB-focused partners,” he said. “They provide high levels of service. They pick up the phone quickly. They’re very flexible. They allow you to customize.”
Cambridge Computer won Dell Technologies’ 2025 North American Partner of the Year and is known for its ability to deploy complex solutions to the enterprise. Miketinac — who spent 25 years at Dell, leaving the company as vice president of North American distribution — said D&H has been growing into the enterprise market with carefully placed moves that are in step with selling the top of Dell’s lineup.
“We’ve seen D&H strategically expand into the enterprise segment,” Miketinac told CRN. “We’ve worked with them for more than a year, and they’ve provided support to us on highly technical solutions. It allows us to scale. I told you what we did: HPC, AI and machine learning, our dance card is pretty full.”
Miketinac said Cambridge Computer is crafting solutions for some end customers that are so large and complex that only Dell products have sufficient support and resources behind them to make the deal happen.
“Leveraging Dell helps us scale. So for us, we’re looking to leverage their servers, their storage, their networking, their services,” he said. “The capabilities that they bring supplement ours and makes them a tremendous force in the market. And we’re excited that D&H is actually partnering up and expanding their line to do that.”
Michael Haley — chief business development officer and co-founder of Alpharetta, Georgia-headquartered Edge Solutions, a longtime D&H Distributing partner — said the announcement with Dell is a long time coming.
“Dell is basically hiring D&H,” he said. “They’re hiring them to educate new resellers to understand the Dell product line, so that they can uncover new opportunities, whether it’s the SMB space or the or the enterprise space. And D&H does a really good job at that.”
Haley said D&H’s value-add to the channel is an ease of doing business from its account executive to the company’s co-presidents, Dan Schwab and Michael Schwab, all of whom typically pick up the phone on the first ring.
“They are a fun company with whom to do business, and it starts at the leadership level. I’m not kidding, from Dan and Michael down to our inside sales rep, or the woman who handles events,” he said. “I tested this out today. I’ve always told people at D&H what I like most about them is they answer on the first ring, or they text you before the phone goes to voicemail, saying, ‘I can’t take the call’ or “I’m in a meeting.’”