LAS VEGAS–When Michael Dell took the stage to open Dell Technologies World earlier this week in Las Vegas, it was difficult to imagine that the expansive, innovative company he leads started four decades ago selling souped-up IBM clones out of a University of Texas at Austin dorm room. While PCs are still very much a part of what is now Dell Technologies, the company is so much more—the latest PCs sit on the cutting-edge of artificial intelligence (AI) and, working back from client to cloud, now encompasses data platforms, infrastructure, security, services, software, storage, and essentially everything in between.
What’s perhaps even more striking, to me at least, is the clarity of vision and laser focus on operational execution that has been there since the beginning. Dell said in his remarks, “I could never have predicted how far we’d come: our global reach and scale, the breadth and depth of our solutions and our incredible team members, customers, and partners. Above all, what humbles and inspires me the most is the downstream impact that Dell has had over decades—how all of you have put our innovation and solutions to work. Together, we put more power in the hands of more people around the world and it’s been like an age of miracles from the growth and global prosperity to the dramatic increases in public health, welfare and education. From the discovery of far away galaxies to the blueprint of life itself. From subatomic particles to the darkest depths of the seas, human progress has advanced by orders of magnitude across every domain…It’s been one hell of a ride. All that work and investment, the dramatic scale out of computing power and storage and connectivity, automation and intelligence, the instrumentation of the physical world that combined innovation is the foundation for this moment.”
And what defines this current moment for Dell, its partners, its customers and everyone else really? The “generational opportunity for productivity, innovation and growth” supported by the increasing democratization of AI. There was a lot of news out of Dell Technologies World; more than we’ll be able to get to in these pages unfortunately. But the goal here is to reflect on a bit of current, and historical, commentary that highlights how the company’s core values, its DNA, have remained steadfast.
As detailed in his 2021 book Play Nice But Win, in November 1988, following the company’s first go-public, Dell outlined the values that really still serve as the bedrock for the business:
- “Provide high-quality computers directly to end users with a high level of customer service. We are committed to being very responsive to our customers.
- “People are the greatest asset of the company.”
- “Learning always: flexibility, change and responsiveness are the key characteristics that the organization will embody to succeed forever.
- “…Be the best at everything we do.”
To bring that into the present and add a bit of color from my time at the show itself, I can say definitively all of that is still front and center, and seemingly ingrained at every level of the organization. To wit, the latest PCs use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus platforms featuring Microsoft AI tools for professionals and consumers that are marked by all day battery life and powerful CPU, GPU and NPU tech that, in sum, simplifies workflows letting users do more good work faster and easier.
In terms of people…where to start. My point of view as a journalist is maybe a bit unique, but if I need a deep dive on updates to the NativeEdge orchestration platform, Pierluca Chiodelli or Gil Shneorson takes me through it. If I need the historical context on the AI moment we’re currently in, and a reminder that this isn’t an AI hype cycle, rather the beginning of a period of sustained advancement, Nick Brackney is happy to sit with me—and also talk theatrical vs. director’s cut of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. If I’m lost somewhere on the fourth floor of the Venetian trying to find conference room Delfino 4103 (hypothetically, of course), Julie Schneider patiently helps get me where I need to be. Recognizing that maybe I would benefit from some visualization, Dennis Hoffman is happy to take to a whiteboard and essentially sketch out the company’s Telecom Systems Business. If I need to break out of my own personal telco-related trough of disillusionment, Douglas Lieberman’s excitement does the trick. And if I don’t really know what it is that I need but I know that I need something, Jill Rountree and Jillian Kaplan are a text away. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
As for always learning, I had a conversation with Caitlin Gordon, Vice President of multicloud product management, to get up to speed on the latest and greatest in the Apex portfolio. I asked her how the subscription-based approach had evolved since its 2021 launch. “In some ways, nothing has changed because the principles were there from the beginning,” she said. But, at a high level, the product changes because, “We listen to our customers. I just came from an hour-long session with one of our best customers…We spend as much time with customers as possible. One of our core values is to listen.” That should sound familiar.
And being the best…see below.
The process, the product and the playing nice while winning I think speak for themselves. So more on the people, but this time not from me, rather from two of the biggest legends in the worlds of technology and business. Dell was joined during his keynote remarks by NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang and ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott.
McDermott, who is just effortlessly cool, had this to say: “Trust is the ultimate human currency and I can think of no person I trust more than Michael Dell and I can think of no better company than Dell Technologies. Okay, that’s how we roll and that’s in the bottom of my heart…We’re talking backstage about this revolution that’s going on and I think what Dell and ServiceNow do uniquely is we help each other, we help each other help you so we know more about you, we can care more about you and we can do more for you. And that’s the essence of the partnership. But I also want to say this—ServiceNow is not just the fastest growing enterprise software company in the world because of our great software. It’s also because our cloud runs 24×7 as the reliability gold standard in the enterprise on Dell, and that’s a fact.”
Huang took the stage and gave a succinct, compelling description of where the technology industry is going with the maturation of AI. “We now have the ability to generate information…If you take a step back, what has happened is instead of just producing software, we’re now producing intelligence. That intelligence is formulated in the form of tokens that could be then expressed in any information modality that we’d like it to be. And so [for the] very first time in history, we now have the ability to manufacture intelligence. The last industrial revolution was the manufacturing of software. Previous it was manufacturing of electricity. Now we are manufacturing intelligence…Welcome to Dell World. Like I say, ‘It’s Dell’s world.’”
Beyond the show, beyond the tech and beyond the stock price, it’s about those people, that DNA shared across the organization. Back to Dell’s book: “We…want our values to be reflected in our company…And a company’s success, as I see it, means so much more than making money for its team members and shareholders. I believe we can do well by doing good. Dell has always strived to create a benefit for the world—to be a strong force for good in the technological present and future that I’m so hopeful about. It began with making top-quality solutions at an affordable price. From the beginning we helped democratize technology, putting more power in the hands of more people than ever before. That mission continues…We’re constantly trying to be the best at everything we produce, and in the process we’ll help drive human progress on a global scale by spreading incredibly exciting emerging technologies far and wide.”
