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Innovation

Michael Dell touts all-in-one innovation explosion

Michael Dell wants to see Dell Technologies be everything to everyone, all in the one place, when it comes to an organisation's IT transformation.
Written by Asha Barbaschow, Contributor
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Michael Dell

Image: Asha Barbaschow/ZDNet

Michael Dell, chairman and CEO of Dell Technologies, wants to see organisations beef up their digital transformation agenda, touting it as the most important aspect within a business model.

Speaking at the 2017 Dell EMC World in Las Vegas on Monday, the tech giant's chief held no reservations about putting his company forward as the best partner for such transformation.

"Making digital transformation happen, making it real, that's why we created Dell Technologies, combining innovations from Dell EMC, Pivotal, RSA, Secureworks, Virtustream, and VMWare," Dell explained. "This allows us to innovate like a startup with the scale of a global powerhouse."

With a $4.5 billion annual investment in R&D, and the "strongest and furthest global reach", Dell said the company provides the "best innovation with the highest quality and the greatest value" to the market, as the "number one in everything, all in one place".

During his keynote, Dell said CEOs are now beyond needing to be convinced a digital transformation needs to happen within their organisations, noting businesses now see technology as a growth strategy.

"We're at the beginning of an innovation explosion," he added.

"CEOs want their companies to become technology companies.

"You're competing with startups who are more sophisticated at injecting new products into their platform. You need an IoT strategy, a cloud strategy, and a workforce strategy -- as well as security, that's the highest priority of all."

According to the CEO, Dell EMC's position is that cloud is not a place, rather a way of doing information technology.

"We believe it's going to be a multi-cloud world," he said. "If you have a public cloud first and only strategy, I think you're going to find yourself uncompetitive in the long-run."

Joining Dell on stage was Dell EMC president David Goulden, who said the most practical and common sense approach to IT transformation within an organisation was to modernise the datacentre, automate service delivery, and transform IT operations.

With that in mind, Dell EMC unveiled its new PowerEdge 14th generation servers, new SDS products, and additions to its all-flash storage portfolio earlier on Monday morning. The company also made its foray into the lending market, announcing consumption-based models from PC-as-a-Service, through to virtual machines and storage infrastructure.

Dell Technologies Capital, the venture arm of Dell Technologies, also announced its plan to invest $100 million annually in startups.

Disclosure: Asha Barbaschow travelled to Dell EMC World as a guest of Dell EMC.

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