It is remarkable to reflect on just since September 7, 2016. In the span of 365 days, we combined EMC’s leading Storage, Data Protection, Converged Infrastructure, Enterprise Services and Support with Dell’s leading Servers, Open Networking, Global Supply Chain, Services and Support to create the powerhouse that is Dell.
Broadly across Dell Technologies – we essentially combined an impressive seven companies to become the largest privately-controlled technology company. In this time, we’ve exceeded many of our own expectations, leading the market in the most important tech segments:
- #1 in all-flash storage for 12 consecutive quarters
- #1 in Storage: High-End, Mid-Range and Unstructured
- #1 in hybrid flash arrays
- #1 in data protection appliances
- #1 worldwide in server shipments
- #1 worldwide in Converged Infrastructure
- #1 worldwide in Open Networking
- #1 worldwide in public and private cloud IT infrastructure
- #1 Mission-Critical Public Cloud
This truly has been a year of innovation at Dell. Our competition predicted disruption and a slowdown in product delivery, but I’m proud to say we’ve delivered a constant stream of major product releases throughout the year, including:
- 14G Dell PowerEdge servers;
- A complete refresh of high-end (VMax All Flash, XtremIO X2 ), midrange (Unity, SC) and unstructured storage platforms (Isilon, ECS);
- An all new Data Domain, which continues to lead the market, and a turnkey Integrated Data Protection Appliance;
- Expansion of our Data Protection capabilities to the cloud, along with native support for VMware Cloud on AWS;
- New Software-Defined Storage (ScaleIO and Elastic Cloud Storage) delivered on Dell PowerEdge servers; and,
- A new OS10 operating system powering our Open Networking solutions.
To add to that impressive list, Dell VxRail, jointly engineered with VMware, is one of the fastest growing products in our history, with more than 14,000 nodes sold since the launch in March 2016 ‒ exceeding 145 petabytes of storage and 150,000 cores ‒ to more than 2,000 customers in dozens of industries across 97 countries.
And if that all wasn’t enough – we’ve executed on a multi-cloud strategy across Dell Technologies to provide our customers with the choices they’ve been asking for. That could be a VMware-powered Enterprise Hybrid Cloud all the way through to the new VMware Cloud on AWS. Or, they could choose Virtustream for mission-critical applications, or Pivotal-powered Native Hybrid Cloud for cloud native applications. And for customers looking at Microsoft for their cloud strategy, we offer the Dell Cloud for Microsoft Azure Stack. All of these options can take advantage of Dell’s new cloud-like consumption models, giving our customers incredible flexibility in achieving their IT transformation goals.
As businesses consider their digital future, the harsh reality is that technology has evolved faster than many organizations’ IT infrastructures have been able to keep pace with. Organizations can’t rip and replace their IT infrastructure, as legacy systems and applications still are often viewed as the bread and butter of a company’s day-to-day operations.
But a swift and thoughtful modernization is becoming increasingly urgent. The enterprise must quickly modernize, automate and transform to stay competitive and relevant. Enterprises must transform their legacy IT infrastructure into a private cloud (with connections to public clouds and SaaS providers) creating a modern, automated platform for their existing applications, while simultaneously building an IT infrastructure to support next-gen ‘cloud native’ applications that will ultimately drive their digital transformation. And the benefits of an IT transformation span beyond innovation to efficiencies that help improve everything from the environment to the bottom line.
Dell recently commissioned Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) to conduct data-driven research to identify the various stages of IT Transformation, overall progress globally among organizations, and the outcomes resulting from transformation maturity. Only 5 percent of the organizations participating scored highly enough to reach a level of transformation maturity – with 41 percent in the “Emerging” phase and 42 percent in the “Evolving” phase. However, those who had reached a Transformed status reported the best results across many key performance indicators (KPIs), including: increased IT agility and responsiveness, enhanced IT spending efficiency, higher levels of funding for new projects and innovation, higher levels of internal stakeholder satisfaction, and improved business outcomes and optimism.
This is where the collective power of Dell can be fully harnessed for IT Transformation.
As I look ahead to the next 365 days, I am inspired by the possibilities that we broadly as Dell Technologies will empower enterprise organizations to fully realize as part of the Internet of Everything through our innovative end-to-end IT solutions, partnerships, expertise, and of course, our unwavering commitment to our customers.
