Why the Dell EMC Integration Is Great News for Customers

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EMC CEO Joe Tucci (left) shaking hands with DELL CEO Michael Dell.

The Dell EMC integration was a long time in the making, but here we are: Dell and EMC are to become one company. Here are five reasons why this is good news for customers.

It was a great sight at the recent EMC World: EMC CEO Joe Tucci handing over the baton to Dell CEO Michael Dell. Not their first meeting incidentally – they have known each other for years – and certainly not their last. The high point of the presentation was the standing ovations that both Joe Tucci and Michael Dell received from over 15,000 EMC customers and partners.

Let’s get some facts straight first: integrating Dell and EMC creates one of the biggest IT-companies in the world, with approximately 80 billion dollars in revenue. The new company is called Dell Technologies and includes the combined technologies, companies and brands of Dell, Dell EMC, VMware, Pivotal, SecureWorks, RSA and Virtustream. The enterprise business part is called Dell EMC, and is, in itself, a 30-billion-dollar business.

By putting our businesses together, we are effectively creating the best of both worlds for our customers. As Joe Tucci said at EMC World: “This is not the end of something great, it is the beginning of something greater.”

Combining the best of two worlds.
Combining the best of two worlds.

Customer first

As everyone knows who has gone through an integration, company cultures can make or break the success of the resultant combination. When polling employees about the core values that our companies stand for, Dell and EMC personnel not only came up with the same top five in cultural attributes, they ranked them in the same order too, with customer focus taking top spot at both Dell and EMC. As anyone who has ever worked with us knows, Total Customer Experience is where we stand out from the competition. And let me assure you, this will not change in the near or distant future.

Fulfilling customer needs

Customers around the world are embracing the concept of the software-defined infrastructure stack: software-defined storage, networking and computing as well as converged infrastructure. IDC analyst Ashish Nadkarni sees the creation of the combined company as a coming together of “a computing powerhouse with a storage powerhouseDell is a leader in the server marketplace, while EMC is a leader in the storage industry. We can add to that VCE’s market share in the converged infrastructure market along with VMware’s solid position in virtualization. Together, the new organization can holistically address datacenter requirements of enterprise customers, both today and tomorrow.” EMC and Dell have the same vision on where the market is moving, and by combining our efforts and portfolio, we will be able to serve customers even better.

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The merger of EMC and DELL is a coming together of “a computing powerhouse with a storage powerhouse.” Ashish Nadkarni, IDC analyst

End-to-end, today and tomorrow

The breadth of the combined Dell-EMC offering is huge. Our shared vision is for a strategically-aligned family of businesses that bring together our customers’ entire infrastructure – from hardware to services, from the edge to the core to the cloud – so that they don’t have to! Our strategically aligned businesses will be the market leaders in both the traditional technology of today and the cloud-native infrastructure of tomorrow.

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Let the transformation begin!

More choice

When companies are coming together, some customers fear a standstill will come in innovation. Quite the contrary is true in fact, as the large number of product announcements at EMC World has proved. EMC has historically invested a large proportion of its revenues in R&D, and this has not changed. To quote IDC analyst Nadkarni again: “The combined company has a lot more R&D capability and the investment dollars will be substantial.” Both Dell and EMC firmly believe in offering product portfolios rather than one-size-fits-all products.

Besides pairing best-of-breed storage with best-of-breed servers and computing, the combination now adds converged infrastructure technologies, with best-of-breed management software overarching everything. What’s more, EMC’s services organization will likely appeal to the Dell customer base as well.

Strong delivery channel

Michael Dell had a great quote at EMC World: “Our business partners have started the integration long before us. They have been offering the combination of Dell and EMC for years now.” While there is little overlap in the product portfolio, we share a lot of common business partners, such as distributors, service providers and resellers. For customers who work with our channel partners, little will change in their relationship.

Building bridges between companies and customers.
Building bridges between companies and customers.

Our customers support us

Dell and EMC customers believe in this combination, and even our competitor’s customers believe in the integration. At the end of last year, an independent survey by ESG among customers of Dell, EMC or both, found that 92% of all respondents believe that a Dell + EMC combination would benefit (75%) their organizations. 65% of respondents believe that a Dell + EMC tandem will provide more complete and innovative technology solutions. The survey also ranked Dell Technologies among the TOP 3 technology brands IT leaders expect to work with over the next three years.

According to IDC, 99% of IT decision makers are positive (72%) or neutral (27%) on the combined company. IDC also states that 95% of Dell Customers believe that Dell going private had a positive (64%) or neutral (31%) impact on innovation.

Earlier this year, ESG also polled organizations that do not yet purchase from EMC or Dell and concluded that “half of these organizations expect to work with the combined EMC + Dell over the next 3 years,” citing, among other things, technology innovation and end-to-end services and aftersales support as their motivation.

Now that’s a vote of confidence!

About the Author: Jacques Boschung

Jacques Boschung is Senior Vice President of EMEA Global Alliances and Telco at Dell EMC. In this capacity he is responsible for delivering Dell EMC solutions through a channel of Service Providers, Strategic Outsourcers, Systems Integrators and Telco’s. He combines a wealth of knowledge on the unique value of the Dell EMC portfolio with a deep understanding of the European market and an insight in customers’ needs. In previous functions at EMC, Jacques Boschung was Senior Vice President and General Manager of EMC’s Europe West Region, EMC Europe South Lead and Managing Director for EMC Switzerland. Before joining EMC, he was Sales Director Switzerland & Austria at DELL, member of the EMEA Corporate Senior Management Team. Jacques Boschung was born in Fribourg, Switzerland in 1967, where he also lives. He holds a Masters in Physics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and of the University of Lausanne, Switzerland.