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Two biggies, Dell and EMC, merged to provide customers horizontal solutions. Gaurav Chand, Global Vice President of Marketing, Dell EMC speaks about Dell-EMC merger, upcoming technologies, cyber-security and more:-

To start with, tell us about the Dell-EMC merger and how will it change things internally and externally?

We finished the merger and started off as a merged entity on September 7, 2016. So, we have completed our one year anniversary. I will start with the consumers’ viewpoint because that’s the most critical aspect for us. The reception from customers has been phenomenal. We are witnessing a lot of customer interest in what we offer. The biggest reason being, IT (information technology) is getting complicated, there are new skill sets coming up, machine learning, artificial intelligence, software development and others. It’s difficult for a customer to go to different vendors to put the entire stack together. One of our best parts is that a customer sees so many offerings under one roof with one single point of contact. So, we enable our customers to adopt industry-leading technologies in a smooth and hassle-free manner.

Things have been evolving with upcoming technology, so, how do keep pace with these?

It’s one of the biggest factors around our roadmap. Today, we spend around $4.5 billion on R&D. There are companies that are not even the size of our R&D budget and the reason we do that is because these emerging technologies will provide a completely new experience to our customers. Staying at the forefront of technology and availing them to our customers is our top priority.

With technology, comes vulnerability. So, what’s your strategy to counter cyber threats that come with these emerging technologies?

This is something we take really very seriously. Therefore, the umbrella of Dell technology covers both RSA (Rivest–Shamir–Adleman, crypto-system used for secure data transmission) and secure works. We think about security in three different ways. One is your entire infrastructure has to be secured, the second is a customer has to own its own security destiny and the third is matching IT and business risks. Since IT is becoming more prevalent and a core competitive advantage for the businesses, the risk arising out of IT is becoming equal to the business risk. Thereby, IT and businesses should come together to assess the risk, so, that they have the right security in place. For instance, take Uber, the most critical aspect for them is their mobile app, as once the app is breached, they will start losing on their revenue. So, given the cyber threat scenario, it’s imperative for IT and business to come together. We don’t believe in building an infrastructure and then securing it but securing an infrastructure while building it. We provide a holistic security approach to our customers.

A recent report by Thycotic says that firms compromise with their cyber security metrics globally. Do you feel so?

I don’t have a perspective on this but we need to understand that the way we work today has changed. The office is not the only place where we work but today, millennial are working on the go. So, as you go mobile with your office tools for more productivity, there is a potential risk of breach as well. So, customers are struggling with this and that’s where Dell-EMC come to secure and protect the customer’s entire ecosystem.

How is Dell technology taking things forward with the IoT technology coming in?

IoT is an incredibly critical subject for us but we think that there are three key aspects of digital transformation and IoT is one of them. IoT gives you the data; you put that data in a repository to give you insights, this is number two and the third is the software development in the cloud-native environment. We are doing huge investment in IoT, in fact, in November this year, we will conduct an event where we will show the things that we are doing in this area.

How has the organizational structure changed with the Dell-EMC merger?

It hasn’t changed very drastically. We have two separate groups, the first being client solution group and the other being infrastructure solution group. We also have a sales team across the enterprise sector. We didn’t change much because both EMC and Dell had the winning organizational structure.

What difference will your client feel with Dell and EMC coming together? How does Dell-EMC have an edge over other players?

The difference is the kind of capabilities that we can bring under one roof. Now, we can offer an absolute end to end story. We are witnessing an amazingly positive feedback from our customers as they don’t have to go to different vendors; we provide a one-stop to them. We have the best in class products in every category; our closest competitor is three times lesser than us. We are more cost-effective than others. There’s no point in bringing world-class technology at a price that a customer can’t afford. At Dell-EMC, we believe in the notion of practical innovation.

Do you also cater to start-ups?

We do. We supply to 98 per cent of the Fortune 500 companies but we have an extremely strong MSME (Medium and small-scale enterprise) base as well. That is why we two factions of our sales team, the first faction takes care of the biggest accounts of the world and the second one caters to the MSMEs.