In the 1989 movie, "Back to the Future Part II," actor Michael J. Fox’s character traveled in time to October 21, 2015. And today, October 21, 2015, in his keynote at Dell World 2015 in Austin, Michael S. Dell, founder and CEO of Dell, visited the future, as well, expanding on what it means for organizations to be future-ready, and what Dell is doing to help.
Referring to the recently announced plans for Dell to acquire EMC in a deal valued at $67 billion, Dell said, “I started this company 32 years ago, just a few blocks from here in my dorm room, building PCs. And as I speak to you here today with this agreement in place Dell is set to become an enterprise solutions powerhouse.”
With the combined capabilities of products and technologies such as VMware, Virtustream, VCE, XtremIO, Pivotal, RSA, AirWatch, Nicira NSX, SecureWorks, SonicWALL, Boomi, KACE, and others, Dell becomes a company that has leadership positons in 22 critical market segments, and can deliver unprecedented combinations of capabilities to current and future customers around the world, he said.
EMC has "an unmatched reputation" with large enterprises across the Fortune 1000, and is at the very top tier for architecting solutions. And, Dell has an "unmatched strength" in the mid-market and small business. "We can fuel innovation across our entire portfolio, and across customer segments,” Dell said.
In addition, he added, EMC is "the best company in the industry at incubating technology" and Dell plans to mirror the EMC approach for a strategically aligned family of businesses and that front engine will be backed by Dell’s best in class global supply chain, said Dell. “Think about the scale – an $80 billion-plus revenue business, the world’s largest enterprise systems company, across suppliers, our very important partner network, and R&D and innovation.”
Dell added, “we believe that a Dell-EMC combination offers unique value which is good for Dell, good for EMC and very good for each of you, and all of that under a private company structure, investing for the long-term and not a 90-day shot clock, with complete alignment from our customer-focused innovation and investments in R&D to our leadership in our ownership, 100% focused on you.”
Going private 2 years ago, has allowed Dell to innovate and that same benefit will be afforded to EMC through the acquisition, said Dell. “We have been able to accelerate innovation. Last year, we increased patents filed by 27% over the prior year, setting a company record, and bringing our total patents issued and pending to more than 8,000. This is the result of focused investments in R&D, innovation, and acquisitions totaling some $18 billion over the last 8 years.”
Each day, technology is being driven deeper and further into our lives, said Dell, noting, “Technology doesn’t support the business model. It is the business model.”
With the current pressure for digital transformation there is the need to perform and to effectively manage the operations for the business and reduce cost at the same time so companies can invest and lead the way “for the disruption that is right around the corner, or maybe already here.” Even now, despite all the talk of IoT, he said, IDC estimates that only 85% of devices are connected, “but they will be an a whole lot more of them” meaning that the explosion of devices is just beginning, representing new opportunities to compete based on the ability to process and analyze more information.
During his keynote, Dell highlighted a number of announcements being made by the company at the conference. Product announcements include:
Dell’s Reinforced ‘All-Data’ Strategy with Enhanced Big Data Analytics Capabilities to Help Companies Thrive in the Modern Data Economy
New offerings have been added to Dell's end-to-end big data and analytics portfolio designed to help customers turn all data into insights for better decision making. Advancements to its analytics platform help organizations deploy predictive models by allowing users to run analytics directly where the data lives. Meanwhile, a new package of analytics-as-a-service offerings for industry verticals such as banking, healthcare and insurance enables organizations to embed analytics across core processes.
New Dell Solutions and Services to Support and Protect Scalable, Cost-Efficient Data Centers
New Dell solutions and services have been introduced that are 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 hyperconverged appliances, next-generation data protection software, and new IT deployment and automation services.
Dell Future-Ready Economies Model
Dell released the Dell Future Ready Economies Model, which was developed by IHS Economics in partnership with Dell. The model measures how well an economy is positioning itself for innovation and growth. By studying Future Ready Economies and their attributes, cities, businesses and people can create policies and strategies that will enable their region to prosper and achieve strong economic health. The list of the top 25 “Future Ready Economies” and additional information is available at www.Dell.com/FutureReadyEconomies.
Dell Edge Gateway 5000 Series and New Analytics Capabilities, Expanding End-to-End Portfolio of IoT Assets
Dell announced the launch of the 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.
Dell Reignites the PC: Smaller, Faster and Optimized for the Future Workforce
Dell is defining the future of the connected workforce with the industry’s most secure and manageable solutions. Announcing a newly refreshed OptiPlex desktop portfolio, Dell is bringing smaller, faster and more energy-efficient options to businesses. Dell is also expanding it enterprise mobility capabilities with a variety of services and solutions, including a partnership designed to deliver best-in-class mobile apps and sites; new tools for customers in the mobile healthcare space; and the Wyse 5050 AIO zero client to meet the needs of businesses looking to provide secure delivery of apps and data from the datacenter to the endpoint without hampering productivity.
Dell Extends End-to-End Security Offerings to Protect Customers from Rapidly Evolving Threats
Dell also announced a new range of security solutions to enable customers to implement a comprehensive enterprise security strategy to protect their organizations from evolving threats while strengthening business agility. New technology previews from Network Security include the Dell SonicWALL APT Protection Solution, integrated management of Dell Networking X-Series switches through the Dell SonicWALL firewall interface, and the addition of Cyren anti-virus signatures to Dell SonicWALL Email Security. To enable secure access to all internal and cloud-based web applications, the new Dell One Identity Cloud Access Manager 8.1 adds SaaS-based, multi-factor authentication via Defender as a Service. Additionally, Dell Data Security is announcing three new solutions – Dell Data Protection | Cloud Edition 2.0, Dell Data Protection | Server Encryption, and Dell Data Protection | Endpoint Recovery solution – to ensure data is protected wherever it goes. Finally, Dell Services introduced Dell AEGIS to help enterprise customers identify and assess mission-critical application vulnerabilities, and Dell SecureWorks recently announced general availability of its new on-demand Emergency Cyber Incident Response (ECIR) capability for clients deploying assets on Amazon Web Services (AWS).
For more details about the conference and product announcements, go to http://dellworld.com/live.