Dell's chief executive,Michael Dell, was in London this week to
share his views on
green
computing, the web and whether his company's PC sales model is
strong enough to keep the Dell share price buoyant.
Dell is wildly enthusiastic about its green computing
initiatives and had set itself a target to become carbon neutral by
the end of 2008. It reached this goal in August. Keen to extol the
virtues of his company's environmental computing initiatives
Micheal Dell insisted that, "Dell intends to be the most green IT
company on the planet."
Micheal Dell's interview with the IT press was not a solo affair
he was accompanied by the company's senior vice-president for
Europe Middle East and Africa, David Marmonti, who explained how
Michael Dell's re-emergence at the helm of
Dell Computer Corporation some 18 months ago had been a natural
process. Although Michael Dell had been spending a period in a
comparatively "back-seat" position as company chairman, coming
forward to lead the company again as CEO was apparently an easy
process because of his constant proximity to the board.
Dell's green credentials
Passionate pledges, responsibly addressed programmes for
recycling and carbon neutrality notwithstanding, it is true that
Greenpeace rates Dell on a fairly mediocre level for its greenness.
The facts are that in 1992 Dell introduced the world's first fully
recyclable PC and the others have been playing catch-up
environmentally since then.
Dell's vision (the company and the man himself) is focused on
the brave new world of the more "connected era" that we find
ourselves within now. With 500,000 new users per day joining the
internet community. The next billion users will be racked up within
the next three to four years and some estimates put the total
number of devices in usage at about the 14 billion mark by the year
2010. This is an explosion of information, an explosion of access
channels and an upward spiral in the complexity of the data that is
transmitted.
What Dell Computer Corporation is saying is that the new global
marketplace is not just an enterprise-level phenomenon it is also
the case that small to medium sized businesses (SMBs) are crossing
international borders and this is a challenge for CIOs everywhere.
Dell has moved from its direct-only sales model to exist in 13,000
"storefronts" around the world in an attempt to try to soak up
demand.
Michael Dell's company scooped up EqualLogic for £700m in November
of 2007. He says that he wants to use virtualisation techniques
to address the perennial challenge that exists with many servers
still sitting at 15% to 20% utilisation levels. "With EqualLogic
technologies, we will migrate customers to I-SCSI based storage
area networks. We are VMware's biggest customer and we believe that
virtualisation and server consolidation is key to changing the
reality of the situation that exists," said Dell.
"I believe that virtualisation will move and spread right across
the industry from the server to application delivery on the
desktop," said Dell. "Further, I think you will see that cloud
computing will 'intersect' with virtualisation techniques to drive
further efficiencies. But we have a very wide variety of customers
and streaming applications to the desktop will not work for
everyone so I do not want to say that one size fits all."
Another Bric in the wall
Michael Dell believes that much of the next phase of growth will
happen in the so-called Bric countries (Brazil, Russia, India and
China). Asked what he would do now in what market if he had the
option to start up a company again he said, "Storage something in
China something truly open (such as open source) and something
truly disruptive and interesting, possibly in the mobile
space."
Looking deeper into the fact that Dell as an essentially
hardware-focused company is looking to position its line of server
technology with the most currently favoured flavours of Linux, I
asked where the company stood regarding open source technologies in
the wider world of IT.
Marmonti stepped in and said, "We are aligned with all open
standards, products have changed and shipped with different
flavours of Linux over the last few years and many of the moves we
have made have been down to feedback from our customers."
Moving the green agenda
Michael Dell explained that one of the reasons he was in town
was to meet with government officials and British CIOs to discuss
his green initiatives. "We have saved our customers £1.5bn through
green initiatives and we continue to see costs coming down," he
said in reference to his "energy-saving" blade servers.
"Most people will pay a small amount extra to save energy in the
long run," said Dell. "Energy costs have risen radically and
companies now see it as a key factor in the total corporate
planning programmes."
These are difficult times and despite a faltering share price in
recent months Michael Dell was at pains to stand his ground.
"Markets have been very volatile recently, but we cannot manage and
control those factors - all we can do is manage our own company to
adapt to the market. In the first half of 2008 we grew 50% faster
than the rest of the industry - as for the rest of the year, we
will have to wait and see what happens."
Asked whether so-called small form factor "netbook" PCs would be
a significant and key driver for sales in the months ahead, Michael
Dell doubted it would, saying, "I do not think they will be a
massive driver and I am not fond of the term 'netbook' in the first
place. If you look at screen size, 80% of the laptops we sell run
with 14 or 15 inch screens."
His comments on this segment of the market should not come as a
surprise. The company's market split is 18% consumer to 82%
commercial. Miniature keyboards do not perform well at the
enterprise level or make a great deal of unit sales profits,
compared to blade servers and his company's services division which
he would desperately like to make more money from.
"Does IBM have a bigger services division than Dell? Sure it
does. But ours is faster growing. Do we intend to undertake
acquisitions in this space in the way that Hewlett-Packard has to
grow our market share? I would not hold your breath. We prefer to
make smaller acquisitions and grow organically. We have a good
track record with organic growth," said Dell.
Win a
Dell Laptop in our competition>>
Latest Green
IT news and case studies>>