Dell has renewed its commitment to developing scalable technology solutions that meet the needs of organisations of every size, in order to better serve the small and medium business (SMB) market.
Speaking at the Dell World conference in Austin Texas, Marius Haas, president of Dell Enterprise Solutions, asked: "How do we bring together not just a solution that is specific to one customer but how do we make it scalable to a whole set of customers both small, mid-size and large?"
The answer, according to Dell, lies in providing integrated, end-to-end products that combine hardware, software and services.
"Some of the things that we’re doing are thinking about solutions on the back end that are converged storage, server and networking – that allow you to do on-premise VDI for smaller customers, as an example, and doing it at the price point that really drives interest and productivity," said Haas.
"The other things we’re doing are bringing together integrated, pre-installed solutions of server, storage, networking with a single management solution that goes not just for Dell IP but also allows you to integrate into a broader set of heterogeneous data centre solutions."
Dell said that, in times of economic change and uncertainty, it is critical for organisations to be able to solve short term needs while keeping an eye on long term challenges and opportunities. Scalability allows companies to expand resource capabilities and cut back while remaining flexible to adapt to future challenges.
The company’s end-to-end philosophy also applies in other areas of the business. John Swainson, president of software, said that in the BYOD device area, Dell has a cloud-based and an on-premise initiative to allow SMB customers to manage PCs, laptops, iOS and Android devices.
"It’s an extension of what we’re doing with our thin client environment, it’s an extension of what we do with our KACE environment, and it really gives customers the ability to manage some of these things together," said Swainson.
In the security space, Dell is also doing a lot of work to tie the front end of the network together with its security monitoring service, so that customers can get advanced warning of what is coming across their firewall and understand what threats are hitting them before they really happen.
Meanwhile, Jeff Clarke, vice chairman and president of Global Operations and End User Computing, said that the company has been working to provide an end-to-end solution for client cloud computing.
"We are really looking at the distribution of user types in the enterprise, small business, medium business, large business, and trying to understand the work they do so we can begin to help customers securely manage their information," he said.
Other measures designed to support SMBs include promoting open innovation, giving customers the ability to combine in-house and outsourced IT services and offering the choice to buy directly from Dell or a channel partner.
The company also announced the launch of a new centre for entrepreneurs, that aims to provide access to knowledge, solutions and opportunities for growing businesses.
"Dell as a company had a rather rapid rise doing one thing that people could understand in a relatively straight-forward way, and now we have a broad set of capabilities," said founder and CEO Michael Dell.
"How do we bring all these pieces together and change the conversation with our customers from providing a potential ingredient in a solution to solving larger problems is an opportunity and a challenge for us."
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