Transformative Innovation is a Trendsetter in IT

Over the last year, I’ve shared my thoughts on what I believe is part of a winning strategy.  Staying focused, committed, determined and working as a team to deliver on your plan – these attributes and a bias to action set up any organization for the win. How you jump and clear hurdles running full speed ahead — that makes all the difference.   It’s what keeps your strategy on track.

We at Dell Technologies play an important role in ensuring our customers have what they need to be resilient through the dramatic technology shifts under way – and take on Digital Transformation notably as their biggest asset, data, holds the keys to their ability to derive a competitive advantage through unlocking the power of that data.

Today, I reflect once again on the power of a winning strategy and the power of a team that works with speed, resilience and determination to deliver nothing less than the best.  Our Storage business has yet again, delivered its third consecutive quarter of revenue gains as reported for Q3 FY19.  And now, as reported by IDC’s latest 2018 Worldwide Enterprise Storage Systems Tracker, our Storage business has delivered its third consecutive quarter of year-over-year share growth. IDC reported a 31.3% revenue share in external storage for Dell, Inc. – representing +23% year-over-year revenue growth and +2.6 points of year-over-year share gain.

I have a favorite saying…two dots make a line – three dots make a trend.  The trending growth in our Storage business demonstrates that Dell EMC is delivering innovation that best meets our customers’ needs in a world awash in vast amounts of structured and unstructured data – driving new requirements in data storage, protection and analytics – at the edge, in the distributed core and cloud.   And that innovation is being broadly lauded across the ecosystem – with PowerMax 8000 and Dell EMC Unity 650F both taking home CRN 2018 Product of the Year awards; and Gartner recognizing Dell EMC as a “Leader” in its 2018 Magic Quadrant for Distributed File Systems and Object Storage for our Dell EMC Isilon and Dell EMC ECS platforms.   AND, our SC Series 5020 midrange array secured further recognition for Dell EMC Storage with the 2018 Editor’s Choice from Storage Review.

There’s way more to celebrate here and Dell EMC’s Storage President Jeff Boudreau does so in his latest blog.  Amazing work from the best Storage team in the industry.

Also trending is our growth in Servers and Networking – where again, we saw our eighth consecutive quarter of year-over-year revenue growth in Q3 FY19. Our Data Protection team’s Purpose-Built Backup Appliances (PBBA) gained share year-over-year for its second consecutive quarter in Q2 according to IDC, and our HCI business hit 14 consecutive quarters of year-over-year growth in Q2 CY18.

Further, our PC business continues to emphasize that the PC is very much alive and well — 23 consecutive quarters of year-over-year unit growth according to IDC[i] – talk about a trend! Through the first three quarters of 2018 we saw 7.1% growth, which is way higher than the paltry 0.8% growth of the industry as a whole.

These accolades and innovation are proof positive that we know what our customers need to be game-changers in their own rite.

So as I look ahead to the next year, I’m more optimistic than ever about our opportunity and more importantly – the opportunity for our customers to take advantage of what’s possible through Digital Transformation – arming their workforce with incredible innovation and services that keep them engaged, productive and resilient, and ensuring their IT strategy has them set up for nothing short of success and a strong competitive advantage.  We do this through our commitment to deliver innovation at the edge, notably as our customers prepare for 5G; leadership in Multi-Cloud flexibility as part of our continued and deep collaboration with VMware – enabling customers to achieve the right on- or off-prem, public AND private cloud strategy that works for them;  and, by advancing the capabilities throughout our entire IT portfolio with AI and Machine Learning for intelligence and automation.

Our strategy is working and that’s a trend worth paying attention to.

i Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Distributed File Systems and Object Storage, Julia Palmer, Raj Bala, John McArthur, 18 October 2018

ii IDC Worldwide Quarterly Purpose-Built Backup Appliance Tracker, CYQ218

iii IDC Worldwide Quarterly Converged Systems Tracker, CYQ218

iv Worldwide Client Share Summary based on IDC CY18Q3 data

About the Author: Jeff Clarke

Jeff Clarke is vice chairman and chief operating officer for Dell Technologies responsible for running day-to-day business operations, shaping the company’s strategic agenda and setting priorities across the Dell Technologies executive leadership team. Jeff directs the Services, Infrastructure Solutions Group and the Client Solutions Group, and manages Global Operations including manufacturing, procurement and supply chain. Jeff is also responsible for setting the long-term strategy and leads planning for technology areas such as AI, Multicloud, Edge and Telecom. Jeff joined Dell Technologies in 1987 as a quality engineer. Since then, his remit has grown to lead the company’s biggest transformations that resulted in Dell Technologies No.1 worldwide share positions in many of its core infrastructure and PC products. He’s also passionate about Dell’s social impact agenda and plays an active role in advancing Dell’s diversity and inclusion initiatives, employee resource groups and 2030 moonshot goals. Prior to joining Dell Technologies, Jeff served as a reliability and product engineer at Motorola, Inc. He serves on the College of Engineering Advisory Council for his alma mater, the University of Texas at San Antonio, where he earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1986.