This month marked a major milestone in Dell history. Fourteen years ago I came to work at Dell Financial Services.
Oh! And, as Michael Dell noted on LinkedIn, October also marked the one-year anniversary of Dell once again becoming a private company!
“The energy and clarity of purpose is wonderfully reminiscent of the early days of Dell,” he said.
I joke about my anniversary and Dell’s privatization coinciding in the month of October, but these days I can’t mention the first without someone asking me about the impact of the second. Some of my teammates have put together a great look at the Fiscal Year 2015 State of the Business, and highlights include:
- We gained share in PCs for the seventh consecutive quarter in calendar Q3, according to IDC data. We saw share gains in both notebooks and desktops and in both commercial and consumer segments.
- We maintained our No. 2 share position in the global x86 server market for the second straight quarter and we were the only major vendor to generate year-over-year growth in both rack and blade servers.
- Our software business registered double-digit revenue growth in our fiscal Q2, with strength in security and information-management areas, including data analytics and enterprise application integration.
- Our Services team has acquired significant new customers in key vertical industries like healthcare and finance.
- Strong cash flow during Q2 enabled us to pay down another $1.3 billion of debt — we’ve paid down $2.4 billion in debt this year to date.
But, the answer I always give when asked how things have been different this year compared to the past goes back to the energy noted in Michael’s quote above.
I felt it in the team-member town halls immediately following the shareholder vote to approve taking Dell private. And I’ve seen it since in the speed of innovations such as…
piloting bitcoin as a payment option,
launching an Internet of Things lab in Silicon Valley,
giving sneak previews of products that have “world’s first” as descriptors of the technology in them,
taking a distruptive open approach to networking, that one analyst compared to opening Pandora's box (in a good way),
It’s been a fun year, that’s for sure. But, there’s more to come, so watch this space!