Michael Dell takes long view with Dell 2.0
AFP
AFP, ASPEN: His first company became the worlds largest maker of personal computers. Now Michael Dell says he is building a broader technology firm with similar ambitions.
Dell Techno-logies is the result of the private buyout of the original Dell computer firm, bolstered by the massive $67 billion deal for computer storage firm EMC and other software and services acquisitions.
Interviewed at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference Monday in Aspen, Colorado, Dell said the private model allows his firm to take a longer-term focus to grow the company.
Right at the moment we went private, we started gaining (market) share, Dell said. We shifted our focus for more three-year, five-year, 10-year (plans), we invested heavily in RD and innovationswe stopped thinking about the short term as much.
Dell described the new firmwhich some refer to as Dell 2.0 -- as the essential infrastructure company for information technology which can offer an array of business services and products.
The new Dell includes EMC, which was the worlds largest computer storage firm, as well as cloud computing unit VMware and a stake in the software group Pivotal.
While Dell declined to name his main competitors, he said that none of them have the unique set of capabilities or the breadth that we have now. He noted that Dell Technologies can be a key player in a variety of sectors because of its strengths across the boardin data, software and hardware.
Asked about artificial intelligence competitors, Dell said, When you have no data to put in AI, it doesnt do anything. Then you need the computing devices.
The new Dell won regulatory approval last year for the record buyout of EMC, accelerating its move into the cloud and mobile computing market. In 1984, Michael Dell founded the personal computing maker, which struggled amid a shift into smartphones and tablets.
