August 2009 - Direct2Dell

This kinda snuck up on me. A while back, @DellOutlet quietly surpassed the 1 million follower mark on Twitter. Right now, it’s in the Global Top 100 ranking in at #83. It’s good to be in the company of other brands like @Google, @WholeFoods, @Zappos, @JetBlue and more. Regular Direct2Dell readers know that we’ve blogged a lot about @DellOutlet and the $3M in related sales its earned since 2007. Most folks also know that I attribute much of its success to @StefanieatDell and how she consistently responds to @DellOutlet inquiries from its followers. Stefanie and her team were also the ones that thought @DellOutlet through in the early days. That’s why today it’s still of the best examples of a team that started with a clear objective in mind and have done well on the execution side to reach that objective.

While @DellOutlet continues to be Dell’s breakout property on Twitter, we have many other Dell properties on Twitter as well. Visit www.dell.com/twitter to see what I’m talking about. Dell as a company has historically used Twitter to share news and information about Dell (think RSS feeds for blog properties like @Direct2Dell), to provide support for customers who need it (folks like me and BradatDell and many others) or to sell Dell products and services to customers (@DellOutlet and @DellHomeOffers). There’s also hybrid properties like @Digital_Nomads and @Dell_Mini that are supported by more than one person. Beyond that, we have lots of Dell employees who connect with customers through Twitter.

It’s not all good though—add it all up and it gets pretty confusing to customers. No question there’s lots of room for us to centralize some stuff and to streamline our Twitter strategy. We’re working toward doing just that. One of the first things you’ll see is a redesigned version of the Dell.com/Twitter page that will be coming soon. We also hope to expand it to include an employee page to give you a better sense for who from Dell is online. Lots of work to do, but I wanted to let you know that it’s in the works.

Thanks to all our customers who connect with Dell through Twitter in places like @DellOutlet and beyond. More on the broader topic coming soon.

In regards to @DellOutlet, congrats to @StefanieatDell and others who continue to make it work.

Dell recently announced our Q2 earnings results for FY 2010. Over on the DellShares blog, our CFO Brian Gladden discusses the results.

I have the privilege of chairing the Global Giving Council, the newly-formed executive team here at Dell charged with governing our giving practices.  2008 brought significant changes to Dell giving, as highlighted in our recently released corporate responsibility report.  We established an aggressive giving goal, adopted a new strategy focused on making a global impact, and launched an innovative signature program that is already making a real difference in countries around the world. 

Actively participating and giving back to the communities where we live and work have long been priorities at Dell.  But when we committed to the aspirational goal to increase our giving to one percent of Dell’s pre-tax profits by 2010, things got serious.  We promptly realigned our giving strategy to better reflect who we are as a company.  We decided to focus Dell giving worldwide on youth in the areas of education, digital inclusion and sustainability – because we have seen first-hand the power of connecting children to the digital world and the importance of protecting our planet.

By year’s end we narrowed the global giving gap from .42 percent to .74 percent of pre-tax profits, increasing our giving to $24.5 million ($8 million more than the previous year) – an increase that tracks well with our long-term aspirational goal.  In the U.S., our Dell Foundation continued its good work by awarding $2.5 million in Equipping Youth grants.

We also launched Dell YouthConnect, a digital inclusion initiative that promotes math, science, literacy and technology skills for youth in emerging countries.  It began in India and has since expanded to Brazil and Mexico.  We invested $2.7 million in cash and equipment in 2008 with plans in place to grow the program in the coming months. Our employees are fully engaged on the ground with our YouthConnect partners by helping to deploy and support the technology and volunteering and interacting with the children who participate.

Of course the heroes of our giving initiatives are, as always, our people.  The Dell team continues to rally around charitable causes in record numbers.  Dell employees gave $8.5 million to the charities of their choice during the annual charitable giving campaign.  They also volunteered 28,000 hours to community causes during Global Community Involvement Month. 

Dell Giving is serious business and, as our progress in 2008 indicates, we’re serious about it.  Please share your ideas and feedback.  We are eager to partner with our communities, customers and employees to make a real difference in the world we share.

Twitter's rightfully buzzing with the news today that Jeremiah Owyang will be joining Charlene Li along with ex-Forrester analyst Ray Wang and Deb Schultz at Altimeter Group.

Wow. I agree with Todd Defren on this: Dream Team. In my view, Jeremiah has consistently produced some of the best commentary on the social web and where this stuff is going.  If you have an interest in the evolution of the web, you need to read his blog, Web Strategy by Jeremiah. He continues to shape much of the thinking I try to bring inside of Dell. In short, Jeremiah's a real asset to wherever he goes. (Thanks to Thomas Hawk for the photo in this post).

There's no shortage of consultants these days, but these guys are different. They've lived and breathed this stuff through leading the way in blogging, and engaging through Friendfeed, Facebook, Twitter and beyond. Now they are going to show other companies how to do it the right way. I for one am excited to see what their activities will lead to.

I'm pumped for the whole Altimeter team. Congrats to all—especially you Jeremiah.

If you're not at the show, be sure to follow us @DellatVmworld on Twitter

The VMworld show is next week at the Moscone Center in San Francisco and we've got quite a show planned this year. We'll be there showing how our virtualization optimized solutions can help customers ‘Get More Virtual,’ meaning faster speed time to deployment for new projects and more value out of existing virtualization investments. 

Inside the booth, Dell will be demonstrating solutions for IT consolidation, data protection, disaster recovery, virtual desktops, data deduplication and systems management– All integrated with the latest VMware vSphere 4.0 cloud operating environment. 

The lab environment will include the latest vStorage enabled EqualLogic and CX4 offerings with 10GbE along with the virtualization optimized 11G servers for the efficient enterprise.  New this year will be a full DR site hosted at the Intel Booth (#1602)to show automated DR failover with vCenter Site Recovery Manager and we’ll also be cooperating with VMware on a technology demonstration in our booth of emerging PCoIP and CVP capabilities based on VMware View on Dell’s OptiPlex clients.

Besides all the latest gear, we will be presenting over 40 technical sessions inside the booth presentation theatre over 3.5 days and our Global Infrastructure Consultants  will be staffing the ‘ask-the-experts’ area to whiteboard your solution at the show. And of course, what would a VMworld be without Mini 10 Netbook giveaways every day; it’s a simple as collecting raffle tickets at the Dell Keynote, breakout session and from Dell Reps at the show – the more tickets the better are your chances!

Here’s a few of the breakout sessions that Dell is participating in and gives you an idea of some of the areas of our focus and energy.

• Dell Keynote Presentation: How to Get Ahead in the Cloud With Your Feet Planted Firmly on the Ground (SS5000)
• Amplify the Economic Benefits of Virtualization  (VM5040)
• Data Center Optimization through Virtualization:  Compute More, Consume Less  (VM5560)
• Advanced Data Protection for Microsoft SQL and Exchange Server in a VMware Environment  (BC3387)
• How DELL Uses Virtualization: Paving the Path to Large-scale Distributed Computing (TA3402)

A couple of interesting notes on a few of these breakout sessions.

• SS5000 In the keynote, Praveen Asthana, VP of Storage and Networking, will be discussing how Dell’s efficient enterprise strategy can help you get into the cloud, simply and cost effectively;
• BC3387 is effectively a free hour of data protection consulting from myself and Darren Miller to provide a framework for deploying and protecting your Tier-1 apps in a Virtual Environment.  Due the high levels of pre-registrations, VMware has added a second session! Be sure to come by.

In addition, here are a couple of breakout sessions by Dell customers and partners.

• Building a High Availability and Disaster Recovery Solution with VMware (V12226). This session is being delivered by Justin Lauer from Campbell Clinic highlighting how he is was able to build a highly available and resilient virtualized environment with Dell EqualLogic equipment and vSphere 4.0. For more on his implementation, check out our webcast.
• Protecting the Corporate Infrastructure: Leveraging Site Recovery Manager for Multi-Site DR Protection (BC2760). This break-out features Tim Antoniwicz from Mosaic Technologies, a Dell PartnerDirect reseller, and William Perault from Crane & Co. They will discuss their methodology to implementing VMware’s vCenter Site Recovery Manager on Dell server and storage platforms to provide automated disaster recovery for Crane & Co’s data center.

And of course we’ll have a whole slew of virtualization experts on hand to consult with VMworld attendees.  In fact, there will be presentations on a variety of topics all day long right in our booth.  So please stop by the Dell booth (#1801) and be sure to check your bag insert and show guide for complete details.

And if you can’t make it to the show, our TechCenter has put up a Dell site at the VMworld virtual exhibitor booth so keep tabs on us there. Also be sure to follow @DellatVmworld on Twitter and tune into our YouTube channel for videos directly from the show.