Customer

If you asked most people, they would say that Dell is a hardware company. While that is true – yes, we do make servers, storage, laptops and such – there is much more to the story. Dell is actually in the business of selling solutions: hardware + software + services.

This week, we announced an extension of a solution that is critical to many of our customers: business intelligence or BI. Dell announced the release of Phase III of our BI Reference Configurations – this includes capabilities for 10 TB and 20TB solutions running on Microsoft Windows SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008.

When business data is properly stored and analyzed, BI can deliver the powerful knowledge to enable business decision-makers to react to marketing and business demands. Just ask CareerBuilder.com.

With more than 23 million unique visitors and over 1.6 million jobs, data volumes at CareerBuilder.com have grown significantly since 2007. By using Dell servers and storage systems to power its data warehouse and business intelligence applications, CareerBuilder.com has reduced the processing time for key business intelligence load jobs up to 50 percent, allowing faster access to important business data and same-day reporting for global operations.

CareerBuilder.com is a model for businesses using data intelligently. BI and data warehousing, unfortunately, are often thought to be overly complex, difficult-to-implement and far too expensive for many companies. Most BI solutions cost over $1 million to deploy. The New York Times reported back in December that HP NeoView, HP’s BI appliance, can cost more than $10 million. Dell powered Microsoft BI solutions run in the ballpark of $300,000 – a much more business-friendly price tag, especially in this economy.

Why is CareerBuilder.com using Dell-Microsoft BI? Our Phase III Dell and Microsoft BI reference architecture takes the complexity out of deploying an enterprise class Business Intelligence solution so they can get it up and running quickly. It is built on industry standard Dell PowerEdge Servers and Microsoft's BI suite of application making it cost effective and easy to integrate with existing infrastructure. They are running it on Dell PowerEdge R900 Servers and Dell | EMC storage. This is a solution that our customers appreciate.

Is your business smarter than that of your competition?

Dell is hosting its fifth annual IT executive learning event this week in Austin for nearly 200 CIOs and IT decision-makers.

This year's event, the Dell IT Executive Summit, was created as an intimate IT-to-IT event, designed and presented “by" IT leaders, "for" IT leaders. As you'll hear from Dell's CIO Robin Johnson in the video interview below, this is not an event where Dell does all the talking. Quite the contrary -- a good portion of the time will consist of our customers talking to us about issues they're facing.

As part of the three-day event, Dell will be offering more than a dozen break-out sessions hosted by Dell's top IT executives and key technologists from our Office of the CTO. Customers will be given tours of Dell's Global Data Center and the Americas Command Center, where Dell's services teams monitor customers across the U.S., track weather and storm issues and their potential impact on our field crews, and even monitor traffic issues that would impact a service call to customers in large urban areas.

I've interviewed several of the speakers for the event and will be posting those on this blog later this week. I'll also be at the event and will be live-tweeting from there with sound bites from speakers and reactions from those in attendance. If you're already on twitter, you follow me here (@bruceericatdell).

Let's hear what Robin has to say.

Over the past six years Dell has had the privilege of sponsoring the annual EuroCIO conference. This important event has become a regular fixture on the agenda of the top 100 European CIOs and aims to provide senior IT professionals with the collective means to share their experience and raise awareness of key IT issues.

This year, I had the opportunity to represent Dell in a sponsored roundtable discussion on the impact of the economic crisis for CIOs, the challenges they are facing, the drive towards Green IT and related services. CISCO, EMC and Orange Business Services were also contributing to the roundtable discussion.

What makes the EuroCIO annual conference unique is that it is an event tailored by CIOs for CIOs, with a programme drawn up by a committee of CIOs from Europe’s largest companies. Therefore, the agenda sets out a real picture of the challenges CIOs are experiencing today. A broad range of topics were covered at this year’s conference, including IT governance, cloud computing and IT sustainable development.

It was not surprising to learn that at a time when economic downturn, global warming and higher energy costs have become more pronounced, CIOs are now taking a proactive position on these subjects. With 43% of firms slashing capital and operating IT budgets to stay afloat in today’s economic climate, it is evident that CIOs are now under pressure to cut back on their information technology spending and are still expected to maximize business effectiveness and market expansion.

Discussions on how green (environmental) best practices are affecting IT environments and the associated benefits, made me think about how Dell is already contributing positively. By following the "simplify and save" ethos created by Dell, CIOs can keep their business competitively positioned, focus cost-cutting efforts on basic operating expenses and contribute positively to the environment without cutting new investments altogether. By identifying and addressing hidden IT costs a business can more easily adjust to lean times and position itself for success in boom times.

These times come with challenges, but also opportunities. It is essential that CIOs make informed decisions based on factual data and prepare a plan, on the best approach for their company. Here are 3 guidelines CIOs can keep in mind when it comes to their IT environment:

1. Apply aggressive measures that identify and address unnecessary IT maintenance cost and complexity. Dell has found that 80% of cost reduction opportunity is tied to managing or maintaining legacy IT equipment;
2. Take full advantage of what you already have. Reformat and invest in upgrades and add-ons that will optimize system performance;
3. Create a strategy that will strengthen the IT environment and improve the value that IT delivers to the company. This can be achieved  by making prudent investments in hardware with lower management/maintenance costs and implementing solutions such as virtualization and cloud computing.

Following these guidelines will lead to a ‘recession-proof’ IT environment that will be simple, cost effective and will contribute to the effort of achieving set environmental goals.

Last year alone The European Patent Office (EPO) granted over 54,000 patents, with many of those originating with applications filed online. These figures show how important issues, such as eGovernment, are critical to increasing efficiency and customer experience for the Public Sector. I am delighted to say that the EPO is working with Dell to accomplish what many Public Sector organisations desire -- the ability to provide faster and smoother services to the community and improve employee productivity across multiple offices. This is a great best practice example from the EPO.

We are really excited to be taking this project on board as they have made the decision to simplify their IT infrastructure for the benefit of their employees, the environment and European citizens. There are three main areas that other organisations can learn from.

Firstly, I think it is important to highlight that the EPO, like many public sector IT departments are forced to accomplish a lot with only limited budget and so are forced to reduce the complexity of their IT infrastructures, reduce IT costs, and increase the efficiency of the organization.

Secondly, improved productivity is imperative as public business is facing entirely new challenges worldwide due to globalization and demography.

And thirdly, the problem of IT complexity also affects the public sector. Homogeneous IT landscapes have been more the exception than the rule here. After 20 years of computing, vast hardware and software zoos have accumulated in organizations, which can negatively affect administration and accountability. Working with Dell, the EPO will benefit from Dell’s Simplify and Save ethos, which is a great way to achieve the productivity  and simplicity necessary to pull through these new challenges and become more productive, more effective and ultimately, more successful.

To help manage their IT infrastructure better, Dell will provide Managed Desktop Services for the EPO’s installed base of approximately 9,500 desktops, laptops and personal printers. Dell will be replacing existing PCs with Dell OptiPlex 755 desktops and over 1,000 Dell Latitude E-Series notebooks will be deployed at the EPO’s offices in Munich, Berlin, Vienna and The Hague by the end of this year. The EPO will also benefit from Dell's Custom Factory Integration (CFI) service to suit the EPO’s exact requirements and all new machines will also have the latest Energy Smart configurations and power management settings.

The Custom Factory Integration will result in significant time savings in delivering and deploying new equipment and the Energy Smart configurations will reduce noise and energy consumption levels.  As part of its green IT strategy, Dell will recycle the EPO’s old computers and has provided the EPO with a small tree as a symbol of its promise to plant a tree for every Dell system deployed to the EPO. Not only will this help them meet their own environmental goals and guidelines easily, the deal will also help the EPO achieve its main goal of improving the level of service it provides to European citizens with quality and efficiency.