We are going to build the world's IT infrastructure - Michael Dell

I have always had an interest in EMC and I did think of an acquisition long back said Michael Dell, CEO,Dell in a select press interaction in Austin on the sidelines of the 5th Dell World conference that opened to a packed audience here. Earlier during the day, Michael Dell inaugurated the conference and set the tone for discussions for this year's Dell World : How Dell is going  to reshape the world's IT infrastructure in the days ahead and with the EMC-Dell combo  together with its pre-existing competencies puts in a unique position.  " We are going to build the world's IT infrastructure as we now have more horse power and market power to address complex challenges. We are bringing in the world's  best technology and leading the third platform agenda", observed Michael Dell.

The very fact that Dell has announced its deal with EMC ahead of Dell World indicates its intention to drive home its message to clients and market at large is that how Dell has morphed into an end to end  IT player with footprint across a broad spectrum of tech areas from services to security to cloud to hardware to products. Over the years the spate of acquisitions Dell made has clearly transformed this company from just a PC player to an end-to-end tech giant.

But as we look at the general direction of the industry, its getting increasingly software defined and companies like IBM divested its hardware assets and has become a services and IT products company. Dell interestingly has lot of hardware assets. So how is Dell going to balance out its portfolio so that it can retain healthy margins in hardware and at the same time have an aggressive software play.  Michael Dell told DATAQUEST, " Yes software defined is the norm, but software cannot exist without hardware. In fact we are leading the software defined age with a range of initiatives and no company has done more than  VMware in the software defined world starting from data centers to virtualisation et al."

The overall message Dell drove is the 'Future Ready' theme and how Dell is in the center of disruption and be able to change IT organizations across the world and its game changing deal with EMC.

New Announcements:

Dell also made some significant announcements:

• Announced the expansion of its cloud portfolio with a new hybrid cloud solution, featuring technology (jointly developed with Microsoft )  designed to break down the barriers customers experience on their path to cloud.  Additionally, Dell also is offering an industry-unique payment solution to help customers simplify and minimize risks associated with cloud adoption.

• Announced new solutions and services designed to help large-scale datacenter customers achieve mission-critical business goals faster and more consistently with less cost and downtime. Dell helps customers with infrastructures that can scale easily and adapt quickly now and into the future with new servers designed specifically for the fastest growing datacenter market, new highest-end enterprise storage arrays and hyper converged appliances, next-generation data protection software, and new IT deployment and automation services

• New Edge Gateway 5000 Series purpose-built for the building and factory automation sectors. Composed of an industrial-grade form factor, expanded input and output interfaces, and with wide operating temperature ranges, the Edge Gateway 5000, combined with Dell’s data analytics capabilities, promises to give companies an edge computing solution alternative to today’s costly, proprietary IoT offerings.

• Significant refresh to its OptiPlex commercial PC portfolio in five years ( OptiPlex line of PCs is touted as the world’s most secure commercial desktops) the Wyse 5050 AIO zero client for VMware, and new cloud multifunction printers to meet the changing needs of the future workforce. Considering the needs of a tech-savvy workforce always on the go, these new offerings are designed to increase employee productivity by helping them seamlessly connect to the business critical data and applications they need to get the job done. In addition, Dell Services is investing more in mobility applications and strategies to strengthen the way its commercial customers stay mobile, productive and efficient.

• New big data and analytics solutions and services designed to help companies quickly and securely turn data into insights for better, faster decision-making. These include a new release of Dell’s advanced analytics software platform and new Analytics-as-a -Service offerings for multiple industry verticals such as banking, healthcare and insurance.

• Announced a  full range of security solutions that enable customers to implement a comprehensive enterprise security strategy to protect their organization from evolving threats while strengthening business agility. New future-ready solutions from Dell’s security portfolio include: a new approach to detecting and blocking advanced persistent threats; expanded user security for cloud apps with multi-factor authentication; enhancements to the Dell Data Protection (DDP) suite of data security solutions; management and policy integration across its next-generation firewalls.

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