There's no more doubt Dell is going retail for its consumer PC business and indirect/through the VAR channel for the enterprise products (about 85% of Dell's business). Today, Dell CTO Kevin Kettler confirmed what Michael Dell said Monday on in an interview with channel magazine CRN.

We are looking at broadening how we historically supply products to our customers. And we have been in retail before: we have Dell stores that we opened up and tested the waters with those and we liked what we've seen so far... [...] as well as looking at potential partnerships to distribute products back out to retail.

Going direct to indirect easier than vice-versa

Dell is only direct, it is a sacred part of our model" mentality is not the case at all [anymore]. If you are indirect, to add a direct model is a much more difficult thing than if you are a direct company adding indirect. Because, as a direct company we have the customer touch. We're just oving to a different channel to allow our customers more convenience but with the same amount of customer knowledge. For example, any machine that we sell [could be at Costco, eBay or Dell's own stores] have a service tag that is your connection back to a personalised web site at Dell with the machine configuration, the drivers' level, what updates it might need, offers to buy additional peripherals, etc.