For years, the old HP basked in the glow of a very dominant position: it was the undisputed Big Kahuna of enterprise computing.

HP was the only company that could deliver end-to-end solutions, from mobiles to big iron, and with supercomputers thrown in.

It was even involved in the design of chips with partners, for which Intel Itanium comes to mind.

No longer.

HP broke off into two major parts, and HP Enterprise, the former enterprise division of the larger firm, has continued to shed subsidiaries and departments that do not, or no longer, fit into the vision developed for the company by HPE CEO Meg Whitman and her board of directors.

Into this breach, you will find Dell Inc.

And I must tell you, Dell has stepped up!

A few years ago, Dell was taken private by a group led by its founder Michael Dell, and just ahead of last week’s Dell EMC World, it closed a deal to by EMC Corporation.

Now, Dell rules the enterprise hardware space.

Not only that, Dell has assembled a group of firms with a rather delectable ownership of envied computing hardware under the Dell Technologies banner. These range from EMC, SonicWall, Virtustream, Pivotal, VMWare, RSA Security, Secureworks.

I attended the inaugural Dell EMC World, as part of a renewed interest, and focus on Dell products, and I have to admit that I came away impressed with what Michael Dell and his group have put together.

The new Dell is bigger
Without a doubt, the new Dell has doubled in size, both from a revenue, and from a headcount perspective.

Dell should be able to leverage this scale to wring out better deals and saving from everyone involved in their supply chain, enabling it (Dell) to compete better.

The new Dell is broader
The new Dell has a breadth of offerings* that can’t be matched by anyone else in computing. This is the position HP enjoyed before it basically, de-conglomerated.

From desktops to outfitting datacenters, Dell is now able to be the vendor of choice for any other firm.

*Strike mobiles from the list. Michael Dell himself emphatically said Dell – the company will not be doing mobiles again.

The new Dell seems more nimble
Starting with going private, Dell seems to make choices, and pivot faster.

This is evident in the pace of new laptop and server offerings which harness the latest and greatest componentry seemingly coincident with those innovations. Their current pace is impressive. Moreover, they have discovered the power of smart, functional aspirational design as a vector in improving their brand.

The new Dell is energized
Very evident, and very palatable was the energy around Dell employees – Dellians? Dellites? Dellicians? – at Dell EMC World, and indeed, at all the Dell events I have attended.

They publicly, and privately applaud the new scale they have, the lack of the need to appease and do the quarterly dog-and-pony shows for Wall Street, and the ability to define success over a larger time horizon that allows them to be marathoners who win it all, not sprinters.

The new Dell wants to win bigly
This, they do.

And it is starting to show.

For instance, according to both Gartner and IDC, Dell is not the market leader in x86 servers, dethroning HPE.

Though this new ranking comes with the caveat that HPE’s numbers are diminished by HPE’s relinquishment of a controlling interest in a Chinese joint venture or subsidiary, the fact remains that by the crucial metric, Dell is now The Server King.

I really hope Dell is now trying to use that sales crown as both a carrot and a cudgel to cajole component manufacturers and partners alike into

However, caveats remain. Namely…

M&A digestion or indigestion
This could go either way.

So far, Dell seems to have sidestepped the issues some tech companies face when it comes to acquisitions, especially acquisitions of any largish kind.

Only Cisco systems seems to be rather adroit at closing, and absorbing, acquisitions. This makes Dell’s EMC buy a huge quod erat demonstrandum.

The cloud
For an enterprise hardware company, especially one with very tangible assets in servers, storage, and virtualization, Dell could be in a world of hurt if the clouds, especially the currently hapless consortia forming for open standardization of standards around the cloud expand from their foothold with the major cloud providers to the larger enterprises.

Debt Hangover
The 800-kilo Huttese-speaking lump in the room.

Managed adroitly, this could be as easy as pie, or as deadly as Jabba.

However, as we were told, Dell’s cash flow easily covers all debt obligations.

As I see it
Dell has bulked up. It can now offer most enterprises a one-stop experience from clients all the way to HPCs, with storage and services thrown in.

It has a fully engaged CEO, and an attendant army of employees marching lockstep with him to [hardware] computing Olympus.

Importantly, Dell – the man and his eponymous company – can now envision projects with long gestation period without having to dance to the waltz of Wall Street.

This makes Dell not just a formidable company, but a very dangerous one to all other hardware OEMs.

© 2002 – 2016, John Obeto for Blackground Media Unlimited

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