We live in an exciting world redefined by technology - cloud, security, the Internet of things (IOT), mobility and similar. Dell is addressing these challenges head-on through four areas - transform, connect, inform and protect.
These were the words of Michael Dell, founder and CEO of Dell, speaking at the Dell Solutions Summit 2014 in Brussels this morning.
"Technology is enabling flexibility. Data is our most valuable resource, and represents an opportunity to unlock productivity and efficiency."
He said 2014 has been a great year for Dell. "We have really been innovating our business, and have been working with many great companies, government organisations and suchlike to address our customers' challenges.
"EMEA is a key region for Dell. I started the company in 1984, and launched in the UK in 1987 - the first market outside of the US. By the early 90s, we had expanded all the way to the border of the then Soviet Union. Today we are in 180 countries all over the world, with 15 000 team members in EMEA alone. We also have a thriving channel business, with consistent double digit growth.
"We deal with big organisations with big challenges and we're excited to be helping them," Dell adds. "We look at the world through the eyes of our customers, and see four main areas - transform, connect, inform and protect."
He says Dell has a distinct point of view as it has no legacy architecture to protect. "This week we are bringing out 13th generation of PowerEdge servers. We are also focusing on software-defined storage and networking, as well as developments in Flash to improve performance.
"We also see the data centre changing to converged infrastructure, and virtualisation continuing to run across the entire data centre. In addition, we are increasingly seeing the idea of the integrated appliance ? there are numerous examples of this, such as VMWare Virtual SAN, and the majority based on Dell infrastructure platforms. Dell is delivering huge innovation in this area."
Speaking of 'connect', Dell says this is all about mobility. "We have a great PC business that has seen six quarters of share growth. We continue to invest in this business and are constantly refreshing our product line, with the introduction of new workstations, commercial client products, gaming machines, tablets, two-in-ones and rugged machines. We absolutely believe in the PC business. We're in this, we are gaining share and growing."
The next area, inform, is about the IOT and big data. "It's pretty straightforward. Thirty years ago IT was hugely expensive, there was not a lot of IT or a lot of data. Now the picture is different, with a huge number of devices creating a huge opportunity. Now it's about helping customers use this data to improve outcomes in their business. Dell is evolving its solutions to a data and predictive analytics platform. We have a number of vertical focuses to understand data and bring insights to customers and are working with a broad range of companies to address the needs of customers."
Finally, Dell says 'protect' is about security, which is a top concern for customers. "Of the 40 acquisitions we've made, a number have been in security. For example, SecureWorks, SonicWall and Quest. Dell is currently protecting numerous critical infrastructure and financial services businesses. We see about 80 billion security events per day, and have a huge counter-threat unit that is constantly analysing the bad actors out there and providing intelligence to our customers. We also have significant capabilities in identity and access management, firewalls and encryption technologies, and have the ability to protect data in the cloud. Across the spectrum, we are embedding security in everything we do, which is a huge challenge as the number of devices expands."
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