Make 'IT' simple, says Dell

BANGALORE, INDIA: 

Agenda: Simplifying IT to reach diverse customer base 

Prime target: SMBs, goverment sector and domestic consumer market to ensure omnipresence of sorts of the brand 

Onus: Innovation streamlined to meet industry standards

Motto: Stripping cost and complexity of IT

This was the holistic approach towards becoming the global market leader with emphasis on India announced by Dell at media meet held here at India R & D Center. Some product launches were also announced on the occasion. The strategy of simplifying IT primarily focuses on reducing complexity and costs for its customers and turn their IT investment into a significant business driver. It will use unique methodology and new tools to measure operational efficiency, best practices, manageability, flexibility and pinpoint ways to streamline how IT is acquired, maintained, and scaled to accelerate business growth, ensure value for customers' money, reduce risk coupled with concern for environment.   

Discussing Dell’s global strategy Kevin Kettler, chief technology officer, Dell said, “The explosion of digital data, proliferation of network devices, varied regulatory requirements along with the need to integrate diverse IT systems all make today’s IT environment very complex. In the next five years the number of IT devices that will connect to the network will equal or supercede the number in the past 15 years. The complexity will prevail in the form of cost, handling the barrage of digital data and storage issues. By simplification, we at Dell, believe IT is a strategic asset and a key differentiator that should not require an army of consultants to implement and maintain”.

In the typical IT spend, 70 percent goes into maintenance and only 30 percent into innovation, implied Kettler. “By turning the discipline of IT into a predictable, reliable and repeatable practice, we are focused on reversing the typical 70/30 percentage to improve returns on the IT investment as a business enabler”, he added. "The idea is Get IT Faster, Run IT Better, Grow IT Smarter", he put it in a nutshell. "The industry is ready for change and so is Dell", he proclaimed. 

Paul-Henri Ferrand, President for the APACS region for Dell said, “Dell simplified the PC, and we will now revolutionize the industry by Simplifying IT. As an IT partner to our customers, we look towards simplification in the entire IT lifecycle - from planning and purchase to installation, deployment, maintenance and support. Our process leverages standards based technology, scalable enterprise solutions and a single point of accountability. It works across the spectrum of industry - for a small business trying to thrive with limited resources as well as a multinational corporation trying to unite its employees across the world”.

Tackling the Mama's shop attitude in India:

Commenting on the "common Indian mentality" of "Let's go for the best available thing at the nearest mama's or uncle's shop", Paul emphasized on making the Dell products easily available at majority of outlets to provide the "best choice" for a wide spectrum of consumers. Paul also touched upon the factor of India emerging as numero uno in terms of corporate growth and Dell's plans of complementing it.   

Rajan Anandan, VP and GM, Dell India said, “Dell is forging a new path to radically simplify IT. As one of Dell’s fastest-growing markets worldwide, we look forward to partnering the buoyant Indian industry in becoming more competitive. With our new methodologies to simplify the IT environment, we are committed to making IT a business enabler and helping our customers re-claim time, money and human resources”.

How HP displaced Dell?

Reacting to a query on HP having displaced Dell from it's number one position, Rajan in unison with Paul said, "So far Dell had focused on the corporate sector more. HP's onus on the domestic market as well, has given it the leading edge. Dell will also follow suit and get back its position."

India the second largest hub for Dell:

Speaking on the growth prospects of Dell in India Rajan said, "As of now the PC penetration by Dell in the hardware domestic market is 2.3 percent and we foresee a tremendous growth by the next decade. In the past two years, Dell has registered a growth of 50 percent in India, which is the second largest hub for the company after Austin Texas".    

What's new in the new Dell products?

On the occasion, Kettler also exhibited some of the new and upcoming products by Dell aimed at simplifying IT:

H2C thermal transfer unit: It uses H2Ceramic (H2C) cooling technology that is a patented Dell technology and supports CPU overclocking. It uses a unique two-stage cooling process that combines a high-performance liquid-to-air heat exchanger, thermoelectric fluid chiller, and control circuitry to optimize CPU cooling with minimal power. H2C extends CPU cooling capacity beyond what is possible with heat sinks and forced-air convection or more conventional liquid cooling systems. The technology is currently available on Dell XPS products and is already being shipped. 

Solid State Disk Drive: It is a data storage device that uses solid-state memory to store persistent data. Laptops fitted with a Solid State Disk Drive offer superior performance and display a much faster boot time as compared to those fitted with a Mechanical Disk Drive in addition to a host of other performance features. The shipment has begun on October11, 2007.

Bluray optical disk drive: It is a high-density optical disc format for the storage of digital information, and offers up to 50GB of write-able storage space. Being shipped since October11, 2007.

Display Port cables and connectors: They are a new display interface to replace VGA and DVI cables, which can serve multiple connectivity purposes. The complete versions are expected to be out by next year.

Storage Bridge Bar: It is a standardized interface for different types of storage technologies.

Dell AC power supply adapter: It is a lot smaller, sleeker and more efficient device compared to the current generation of adapters used to manage power.