Following on from our launch of 12th Generation PowerEdge servers it’s been an exciting few weeks. On my travels I've been meeting many teams and experts and hearing their thoughts on our latest 12th Generation PowerEdge servers. Having already blogged with Thierry Pellegrino, head of our OEM Solutions Engineering teams, I spent an afternoon with the head of our OEM Product Group – Patrick Burns.
Patrick heads up a team of OEM experts and technologists, each with extensive experience in product management, marketing and development. I met with Pat and we talked a little bit of techie talk, and about how customers’ needs and solutions were at the heart of everything OEM Solutions delivers.
Tell us a little bit about yourself Patrick?
Patrick:I've been with Dell 5 years now, and am charged with managing a team focused on all lines of business. We ensure that OEM grade features and solutions are embedded into the portfolio including servers, storage, infrastructure and software. My primary responsibility is to lead our team in developing next generation roadmaps for OEM customers both in terms of product and with core launch responsibilities. And sharing those in a timely way with our OEM customers so they can manage their roadmaps.
Ultimately, my primary goal is to build a portfolio that is OEM driven – a portfolio that the rest of the industry may not have. Yes sure, some white box vendors may say they can build everything and yes they can, but at what cost?
What we offer as part of OEM Solutions is something that is really unsurpassed. We offer global tier 1 quality together with all the services and supply chainsthat enable this. There is technology which we take for granted, but now we've positioned very specific OEM capabilities which give us a unique combination – the best of the custom world and the best of the tier 1 world – which really, I believe, no one else can really match.
How did you work to take our customers feedback on board?
Patrick:We ask every day for customer feedback via many channels. These include and are certainly not limited to:
- EBC visits at a Dell facility
- onsite customer visits with our account teams
- internal sales and engineering teams round tables
- executive level sales management engagements
- social media
Together with our VP of Dell OEM Solutions Joyce Mullen and our global sales management teams, we receive all feedback in a real time way allowing for very fluid and proactive inclusion of all feedback.
This real time engagement allows us to be in market when our customers need us to be.
What are the top requests delivered with this launch?
Patrick:In a nutshell, we are really delivering for our customers. These are my top 4 for today.
XL Program – we've addressed customer requirements around longer lifecycle and improved stabilitywith the XL program. This program is available not only for our Enterprise portfolio but also for a selection of our Precision Workstation systems.
New capability with our OEM Identity Moduleto simplify bios requests to support OEM customers' application development. I've seen a high demand from customers to customize our Dell standard bios to optimize the system level performance of our customers applications. This addresses that need.
We are meeting the needs of the Telco provider market with DC Poweravailable across the main stream portfolio. We now have NEBS Level 3 developed for the first time at Dell within Dell OEM PG.
In addition to the Intel chipset improvements we've also expanded the architecture to also provide more I/O, more memory and more storage capabilities.
Ultimately – Dell OEM Solutions has more performance than ever in our product with I/O, memory and storage and networking enhancements and options.
In one sentence, what gets you really excited about working with our OEM Customers?
Patrick:I’m so excited to learn about all the innovative solutions and applications our OEM customers build, everything from healthcare & medical to industrial automation, where our Dell hardware and services are at the core of mission critical deployments around the world. This truly excites me and I am sure it excites our customers too.
To learn more about how our OEM Product Managers can support your innovative solutions please contact Patrick_Burns@dell.com directly or log on towww.dell.com/yourserver and see how our Enterprise platforms can free you up to focus on innovation.