Life After Dell: Return of SonicWall, Quest Software

It sounds like Dell's pending sale of SonicWall and Quest Software to private equity firms will be finalized around November 2016. Both SonicWall and Quest Software are ramping up quickly to begin the next stage of their businesses as independent companies.

SonicWall confirmed plans for a new partner program during the company's PEAK16 partner conference this morning in Las Vegas. Company officials hinted multiple times that the SonicWall sale to private equity investors will be official in November 2016. The SonicWall business will have an arms-length relationship with Dell, but SonicWall officials stated multiple times that the company will be free of any potential channel conflicts going forward,

Meanwhile, less is know about Quest Software's partner program strategy once that company becomes independent. I'm not even sure the official company name will be Quest Software -- though I'm 95 percent sure Quest will be at least part of the moniker. Poke around and you may notice that Quest's portfolio includes all sorts of IT management and application management tools -- many of which may appeal to midmarket MSPs, ChannelE2E believes.

Why Dell Sold Quest Software, SonicWall

Dell decided to sell both Quest and SonicWall in order to strengthen the company's bottom line ahead of the massive EMC Corp. buyout, which is expected to become official within days or weeks.

Under Dell's ownership, Quest and SonicWall both performed reasonably well though there were complaints about channel conflicts. Also, Dell's decision to kill PacketTrap -- which offered RMM and PSA capabilities -- upset hundreds of MSPs in 2013. More recently, several PacketTrap veterans have launched NinjaMSP to focus on MSP-oriented management tools.