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With Enstratius Acquisition Dell Cloud Services Strategy Enters New Stage in EMEA

Nick Hyner — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:00:00 GMT

Following our recent acquisition of Enstratius, Dell has announced a number of strategic changes to our global cloud strategy. As leader of the Cloud Services team in EMEA, I want to explain what this change in strategy means in our region, where the Cloud Service market is naturally more complex than in the US. With more than forty countries potentially using Dell Cloud Services in our region, we are faced with a large range of local market preferences and regulatory restrictions. Fundamentally, this strategy change better enables Dell to meet these requirements by offering increased flexibility in delivery models and cloud platform choices.

Dell globally will phase out its current ‘in-house’ multi-tenant public cloud delivery capability. Instead, Dell will deliver public cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) through an ecosystem of strategic certified Global Service Delivery Partners. Dell will also discontinue further development of an OpenStack public cloud and Storage as a Service (StaaS) public offering. The decision to change the delivery model of public cloud is an expansion of our existing strategy in EMEA where - with the exception of the UK - Dell’s cloud delivery model already predominantly uses partners to deliver Dell public and private cloud services. However, by solely focusing on partners to provide public cloud delivery infrastructure in EMEA, Dell can accelerate its cloud business more effectively geographically while lowering operating and capital costs. In terms of its partner approach in EMEA, Dell will leverage the global cloud partners where relevant and we will establish partners through our newly announced Dell Global Services Provider Program in key countries. This program includes cloud providers that have selected Dell technology to build their own public clouds and using them in Dell’s Cloud Services supply chain will enhance our reach and increase the range of offerings.

As stated above, Dell’s newly acquired multi-cloud management platform Enstratius will help customers further by managing both single and multi-cloud environments and can help integrate partner offerings into Dell’s end-to-end cloud solutions. Enstratius currently supports more than 20 public and private cloud platforms including OpenStack, VMware, Rackspace and Windows Azure, with the additional flexibility to easily add new clouds.

Regarding Openstack development, Dell remains committed to the OpenStack platform and community with offerings such as the Dell OpenStack-Powered Cloud Solution and the Dell-led open source project, Crowbar.

As the number of cloud services providers grows, Dell continues to improve and develop its Cloud Services offerings especially in private cloud and leverage partner delivery models to ensure we are right at the centre of this fast growing market.

Need a vacation? “Converged solutions” can mean more fun in the sun

DELL-Debra S — Fri, 17 May 2013 20:22:00 GMT

“Convergence” is getting quite a workout these days. For example, the local “Dog and Car Wash,” “Accounting and Auto Repair,” “Attorney-at-Law and Catering,” “Pizza and Wedding Chapel” combinations are popping up all over. Seems like everyone is hanging out an “open” sign, promising to solve all my problems at once.

These (real) retail combinations may sound funny on initial read, but if you’re too busy running errands in your all-too-brief “time off” to actually take time off, converged solutions like these could mean the difference between a weekend of work and a weekend of play.

In fact, convergence can help us do a lot more than get through errands. If your life is anything like mine, it has a lot in common with sprawling, aging data centers and legacy communications silos: Too much to do, too little time and money and nothing fits like it used to.

Fortunately, Dell teams with Microsoft to provide converged solutions that help solve these data center and communications problems for both business and IT managers.

For Business Managers: Dell helps you save time and money and hone a competitive edge by simplifying, streamlining and enriching anytime, anywhere communications and information access for faster action, better responsiveness and more informed decisions.

Unified Communications and Collaboration (UC&C) solutions are flexible, secure, efficient and reliable and can help your workers quickly access people and information using a laptop or other mobile device. UC&C converges instant messaging; conferencing via audio/video/web; telephony, screen sharing; and document filtering, search and management capabilities. While employees will be glad to have access to communications richness while carrying fewer devices, you should be able to reduce the number of invoices for separate communications services.

For IT Managers: Comprehensive, integrated UC&C solutions from Dell help you enhance communications services delivery, quality, security and data access and governance, while lowering costs and preparing your data center for the future—by combining intelligent infrastructure building blocks, powerful software tools and unmatched service expertise with Microsoft® Exchange, Lync® and SharePoint®.

To demonstrate these concepts, Dell engineers have published an innovative Design and Implementation Guide for Microsoft® Exchange, Lync® and SharePoint® Server 2010 on Dell™ Active System 800v, in which they detail creative approaches used to consolidate server roles and components, while preserving application best practices and ensuring high availability. This guide illustrates how Dell can help you deliver the tools that IT and business users demand to accomplish their work more efficiently, in a modern datacenter infrastructure that is agile, efficient and helps deliver high quality services.

Learn more about these converged solutions at Dell Enterprise Forum. Attend the session on “Implementing Unified Communication and Collaboration with Dell Active Systems” on Wednesday, June 5 at 11:20 a.m. and stay tuned for additional converged news coming from the forum.

P.S. With efficient UC&C solutions from Dell, you should have plenty of time to stop at the Bait and Ice Cream store on your way to the beach. It’s one of those places that everyone leaves happy.

Your chair is waiting. Enjoy!

Debra Slapak, Dell Enterprise Solutions

Incident Response: How Healthcare Security is Like a Television Crime Drama

DELL-Keith T — Thu, 16 May 2013 18:46:00 GMT

Television's true-crime drama “The First 48” always begins with the statement: "For homicide detectives, the clock starts ticking the moment they are called. Their chance of solving a murder is cut in half if they don't get a lead within the first 48 hours." The idea being the longer you wait to figure out who the adversary is and to assess the damage from a crime, the harder it is to solve and prevent further attacks. Like murders, with cyber-attacks there’s a critical window of opportunity to respond. Often this window is 72 hours or less before serious costs begin to accrue.

In healthcare, where patient data is paramount and strict compliance measures are in place, it’s critical to have a sound incident response plan in place. Those healthcare organizations without one fall short of responding to incidents quickly and effectively. In a recent HIIMSS survey of IT professionals in healthcare organizations, less than half of respondents reported that their organizations have tested data breach response plans; and more than half are still spending three percent or less of their overall IT budget on securing patient data. With advanced threats and increasing theft or loss of data, incident response plans allow organizations to limit the damage of a breach, by containing it quickly and reducing recovery time and costs.

A recent white paper by TechTarget quoted the Ponemon Institute’s findings in its 2011 Cost of a Data Breach Study, "Outside consultants assisting with a breach response can save as much as $41 per compromised record.” This equates to $1.2 million in savings (based on an average 28,349 records per breach) for a typical security incident, according to the institute. Not only is prevention the best cure, so is planning ahead.

Innovative Students Showcased At Dell Social Innovation Challenge

Kari Sherrodd — Wed, 15 May 2013 21:31:00 GMT

Seeing the creativity unleashed by students from around the world at the 2013 Dell Social Innovation Challenge this week was certainly a high moment. The brilliance of each of the students and the socially good projects they created were showcased and the winning projects were announced. Needless to say each of the finalists plus others who submitted their ideas to the Challenge were incredible but only one could be the grand prize winner. Dell named Solar Conduction Dryer the grand prize winner of the 2013 Dell Social Innovation Challenge.

Solar Conduction Drying is a solar energy based initiative for agro-processing, leveraging local knowledge & resources. I’m eager to follow along this team’s journey as their work is sure to benefit many people including women. It is also set on the right course to improve the economy for Indian farmers. You can read more about Solar Conduction Dryer and see the complete list of finalists that competed for the grand prize over at Tech Page One.

One of the highlights while the students were in Austin this week was the Dell Social Innovation Think Tank. Issues impacting social entrepreneurship were discussed among the small group of students and other entrepreneurs including the role and intersection of entrepreneurship and education. Check out the highlights here.

Congratulations again to all of the finalists and this year’s winners!

Dell Reports First Quarter Financial Results

Robert L Williams — Thu, 16 May 2013 20:04:00 GMT

Today Dell announced fiscal 2014 first quarter results. Revenue was $14.1 billion, down -2% Y/Y and sequentially. Pricing adjustments that affected gross margins and continued acquisition-related costs in the quarter resulted in GAAP earnings of $0.07 per share and non-GAAP earnings of $0.21 per share. Though we saw some growth in parts of our business, we have taken actions to improve our competitive position in key areas of the business, especially in end-user computing, and it has affected profitability. We’ll also continue to make important investments to support our strategy and drive long-term profitability.

As previously announced and discussed here on DellShares, we realigned our global operating segments to our end-to-end solutions portfolio: Enterprise Solutions Group, Dell Services, Dell Software Group, and End User Computing Group. The realignment reflects our strategy to be the leading provider of end-to-end scalable solutions. Our strategy is based on three points of differentiation: practical innovation, where we provide innovation and personalized services focused on turning customers’ IT challenges into a business advantage; efficient and affordable solutions, making the complex simple and delivering premium capabilities at a value price point; and our superior customer relationship model, based on a multi-channel approach whereby customers can engage with us on their terms – online, channel, direct.

Our focus is on our customers and helping them achieve their goals by integrating and optimizing the enterprise, simplifying and securing through software, and accelerating and innovating with services. We can see this taking hold as our enterprise business experienced solid growth with revenue from Enterprise Solutions, Services and Software growing 12 percent year over year to $5.5 billion. Over the past few years you have seen us continue to improve our solutions capabilities in areas like scalable storage solutions, application migration and software through acquisitions. We will continue to invest in additional strategic capabilities as evidenced by the recent announcement and close of the Enstratius acquisition, which enables our customers to more effectively manage and integrate their cloud environments. We now have an expansive portfolio of hardware, software and services to offer that come together as scalable solutions designed with the customers’ needs in mind.

Our End User Computing business, focused on connecting end-users around the world, includes desktops and thin client, notebooks and tablets, third-party software, and client-related accessories. This segment delivered $8.9 billion of revenue, down 9 percent compared with the first quarter of last year. We continue to expect relatively weak demand in this business and continued market competitiveness. These dynamics reinforce the importance of our cost-out initiatives for EUC, where we are targeting greater than $1B in savings by the end of fiscal year 2015. In addition, during the quarter we increased our investment to improve sales coverage for key areas of the business. As we discussed last quarter, this business continues to be a key component of our strategy and we are investing in acquiring new customer accounts that will benefit our long-term profitability and cash flow.

We strongly encourage you to review our press release and associated materials, including our GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliation; and listen to our earnings conference call, which can be found on the Investor Relations web site.

Dell Q1FY14 Earnings Presentation from Dell Inc

As always, we encourage you to ask questions or leave comments on DellShares.

Best,

Rob

Non-GAAP Financial Measures:

This blog includes information about non-GAAP earnings per share (collectively with non-GAAP operating income, non-GAAP net income, non-GAAP gross margin and non-GAAP operating expenses, the “non-GAAP financial measures”), which are not measurements of financial performance prepared in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles. In the tables following the press release, Dell has provided a reconciliation of each historical non-GAAP financial measure to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure under the heading “Reconciliation of Non-GAAP Financial Measures.” Dell encourages investors to review the reconciliation in conjunction with Dell’s presentation of these non-GAAP financial measures.

Special Note on Forward Looking Statements:

Statements in this blog that relate to future results and events are forward-looking statements and are based on Dell's current expectations. In some cases, you can identify these statements by such forward-looking words as “anticipate,” “believe,” “could,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “confidence,” “may,” “plan,” “potential,” “should,” “will” and “would,” or similar expressions. Actual results and events in future periods may differ materially from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements because of a number of risks, uncertainties and other factors, including: effects of our proposed merger; intense competition; Dell’s reliance on third-party suppliers for product components, including reliance on several single-sourced or limited-sourced suppliers; Dell’s ability to achieve favorable pricing from its vendors; weak global economic conditions and instability in financial markets; Dell’s ability to manage effectively the change involved in implementing strategic initiatives; successful implementation of Dell’s acquisition strategy; Dell’s cost-efficiency measures; Dell’s ability to effectively manage periodic product and services transitions; Dell’s ability to deliver consistent quality products and services; Dell’s ability to generate substantial non-U.S. net revenue; Dell’s product, customer, and geographic sales mix, and seasonal sales trends; the performance of Dell’s sales channel partners; access to the capital markets by Dell or its customers; weak economic conditions and additional regulation affecting our financial services activities; counterparty default; customer terminations of or pricing changes in services contracts, or Dell’s failure to perform as it anticipates at the time it enters into services contracts; loss of government contracts; Dell’s ability to obtain licenses to intellectual property developed by others on commercially reasonable and competitive terms; infrastructure disruptions; cyber-attacks or other data security breaches; Dell’s ability to hedge effectively its exposure to fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates and interest rates; expiration of tax holidays or favorable tax rate structures, or unfavorable outcomes in tax audits and other compliance matters; impairment of portfolio investments; unfavorable results of legal proceedings; Dell’s ability to attract, retain, and motivate key personnel; Dell’s ability to maintain strong internal controls; changing environmental and safety laws; the effect of armed hostilities, terrorism, natural disasters, and public health issues; and other risks and uncertainties discussed in Dell’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its Annual Report on Form 10-K for its fiscal year ended February 1, 2013. Factors or risks that could cause our actual results to differ materially from the results we anticipate also include: (1) the occurrence of any event, change or other circumstances that could give rise to the termination of the merger agreement; (2) the inability to complete the proposed merger due to the failure to obtain stockholder approval for the proposed merger or the failure to satisfy other conditions to completion of the proposed merger, including that a governmental entity may prohibit, delay or refuse to grant approval for the consummation of the transaction; (3) the failure to obtain the necessary financing arrangements set forth in the debt and equity commitment letters delivered pursuant to the merger agreement; (4) risks related to disruption of management’s attention from the Company’s ongoing business operations due to the transaction; and (5) the effect of the announcement of the proposed merger on the Company’s relationships with its customers, operating results and business generally. Dell assumes no obligation to update its forward-looking statements.

Additional Information and Where to Find It

In connection with the proposed merger transaction, the Company filed with the SEC an amended preliminary proxy statement and other documents relating to the proposed merger on May 13, 2013. When completed, a definitive proxy statement and a form of proxy will be filed with the SEC and mailed to the Company’s stockholders. Stockholders are urged to read the definitive proxy statement when it becomes available and any other documents to be filed with the SEC in connection with the proposed merger or incorporated by reference in the proxy statement because they will contain important information about the proposed merger.

Investors will be able to obtain a free copy of documents filed with the SEC at the SEC’s website at http://www.sec.gov. In addition, investors may obtain a free copy of the Company’s filings with the SEC from the Company’s website at http://content.dell.com/us/en/corp/investor-financial-reporting.aspx or by directing a request to: Dell Inc. One Dell Way, Round Rock, Texas 78682, Attn: Investor Relations, (512) 728-7800, investor_relations@dell.com.

The Company and its directors, executive officers and certain other members of management and employees of the Company may be deemed “participants” in the solicitation of proxies from stockholders of the Company in favor of the proposed merger. Information regarding the persons who may, under the rules of the SEC, be considered participants in the solicitation of the stockholders of the Company in connection with the proposed merger and their direct or indirect interests, by security holdings or otherwise, which may be different from those of the Company’s stockholders generally, will be set forth in the proxy statement and the other relevant documents to be filed with the SEC. You can find information about the Company’s executive officers and directors in its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended February 1, 2013 and in its definitive proxy statement filed with the SEC on Schedule 14A on May 24, 2012.

Consolidated statements of income, financial position and cash flows and other financial data follow.

Dell is a trademark of Dell Inc. Dell disclaims any proprietary interest in the marks and names of others.

Dell Q1 FY14 Earnings Results

Lionel Menchaca, Chief Blogger — Thu, 16 May 2013 20:05:00 GMT

Dell today announced Q1 revenue of $14.1 billion and non-GAAP earnings of $0.21 per share. You can tune into Dell’s Q1 Earnings Conference Call at 3:45pm Central Time, or follow @DellShares or #DellEarnings on Twitter.

For more insight about the quarter overall, click over to read Rob Williams’ post over on the DellShares blog (or click on the image below):

Introducing the Smallest Towers and Most Powerful Rack Workstations

Neil Hand — Thu, 16 May 2013 04:01:00 GMT

Today, we are excited to announce our expanded Dell Precision workstation portfolio that will help redefine the boundaries of workstation computing for our customers. At Dell, our goal is to give customers the power to do more through secure, manageable and reliable solutions as well as through cutting-edge technology, which is why I am even more excited to present the new Dell Precision workstations.

Note: Click on any of the images in this post to see larger versions. Visit the Dell Precision T1700 and R7610 Workstations album on Dell's Google+ page for many other detailed images.

The new Dell Precision T1700 small form-factor (SFF) and T1700 Mini-Tower (MT) are the smallest and lightest workstations in their class - approximately 30 percent smaller than competitive systems. This means easy deployment of an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) certified workstation without worrying about limited space.

The T1700 SFF and T1700 MT offer next generation Intel workstation-class processors, NVIDIA and AMD professional grade graphics and expanded ISV certifications to do more, faster. While these nimble workstations are designed and certified for engineers, architects, finance professionals and students working with 2D and entry-level 3D simulation.

Complementing the T1700s in the expanded portfolio is the next generation Dell Precision R7610, the world’s most powerful rack workstation. The R7610 rack features significantly more power, an enhanced remote experience and new virtualization capabilities for engineers, designers and other professional users that demand the best.

And with the power of our flagship T7600 tower workstation in a sleek 2U rack form-factor, it is the perfect solution for professionals to share resources, leverage their worldwide talent pool and centralize, secure and manage data.

Further, the R7610 leverages our Reliable Memory Technology, a Dell patented code that eliminates virtually all memory errors. This technology ends the need for extensive full memory tests and mitigates the frustrating IT support calls and memory DIMM replacement, something our customers are sure to appreciate.

Finally, in addition to our best in class 1:1 remote computing model, we are now enabling our customers to give four users access to one rack workstation without sacrificing performance, resulting in increased access and better utilization of their assets. The new R7610 achieves this via GPU pass-through and certifications with Citrix XenServer® 6.1.0 using Citrix XenDesktop HDX 3D Pro, which allows all the resources of a dedicated discrete graphics card to be uniquely shared with multiple users in a hosted-shared environment or made available to a single user or virtual machine in a virtualized environment.

The R7610 is equally at home on an oil rig or factory shop floor - or comfortably deployed in a data center with flexible remote access. Our customers in oil and gas, finance and media and entertainment have been asking for high performance virtualization solutions for some time and we are really pleased to deliver this to them and the many benefits it provides - increased security, manageability, flexibility of deployment and endpoint devices, global collaboration, among many others. In all, our enhanced Dell Precision portfolio extends our resolve to provide you, the customer, with the best technology offerings to maximize your success.

We are excited to hear your success stories and learn how the T1700 and R7610 have empowered you and your organization to do more.

Dell and Intel research reveals optimism among small businesses in the United States

Lionel Menchaca, Chief Blogger — Mon, 13 May 2013 19:51:00 GMT

Today, along with Intel, we released a research report called Understanding the State of Local Startups and Small Businesses. This report reflects the collective research we completed across nine cities we visited over the last several months.

Folks from our Small Business team helped organize a series of Think Tank discussions to focus on small business owners and entrepreneurs. These events happened Miami and Atlanta in June, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles and Orange County and Austin this fall, and Philadelphia and Seattle in February and finally Boston in March. Focusing on cities allowed us to delve deeper into issues that affect business owners at the local level. That’s why we called this series of Think Tanks the “Go Local” series. We started each event, by sharing local research findings for specific cities with the participants in attendance.

Some clear themes emerged over the course of that research. Overall, entrepreneurs and business owners were optimistic about the opportunities for their business over the next year. Many businesses are focused on growth. The majority of startups in the United States see more domestic growth opportunities versus outside the United States. Despite overall optimism, many business owners and entrepreneurs remain wary of the national economy, while many small businesses received more support from their local government compared to government at the state or national level.

For more insight, check out today’s press release, click through to the Center for Entrepreneurs site or see summaries of the Think Tanks in each of the cities. You can download the Understanding the State of Local Startups and Small Businesses report by click the link or clicking on the image below.

Dell Security Products Dominate at Interop 2013 with New Next-Gen Firewall Series

Patrick Sweeney — Fri, 10 May 2013 13:05:00 GMT

This week at Interop 2013, Dell demonstrated our commitment and leadership to Security at the premier IT Security event of the year. On Tuesday, we kicked off the week in front of 12,000 attendees, furthering our leadership by unveiling Dell’s SonicWALL Network Security Appliance (NSA) Series Next-Generation Firewalls to the industry. Dell’s presence on the show floor was unparalleled. Our security experts located at the Security Zone, in the Dell Security Products booth and our main booth demonstrated how we deliver the ability to embed, detect, protect and respond through Connected Security.

The launch of Dell SonicWALL’s Network Security Appliance Series gained tremendous attention. We garnished excellent mainstream press with our direct targeting of Cisco in our frontline materials. Dell’s new game-changing NSA Series introduces powerful security for mid-sized businesses and distributed enterprises. Dell’s Next-Generation Firewall Series is comprised of the NSA 3600, NSA 4600, NSA 5600 and NSA 6600 models, providing enterprise-class security and uncompromising performance with intrusion prevention, SSL decryption, application control, gateway anti-malware and URL filtering and other security technologies. This new generation of security appliances effectively renders competitive firewalls obsolete by delivering outstanding security at a competitive price and 10GbE interfaces to help future proof networks.

We brought together entertainment and education for our customers, partners and prospects. Our booth overflowed with attendees drawn to our back-to back magic shows, compelling sweepstakes and technical presentations: Next-Generation Firewalls, Dell KACE Systems Management, Dell Data Protection | Encryption (DDPE) and Quest Identity and Access Management.

Across the show floor, the main booth featured our end-to-end solution: Transform, Protect, Connect, Inform and Social Networking kiosks. Dell Networking’s Active Fabric S5000/AF/AFM earned Best of Interop Finalist.

Our customers and partners could not stop talking about our launch of Dell’s Network Security Appliance (NSA) Series. They were excited about how well our innovative architecture fit with their future IT goals and budget. Providing solutions for our customers, world-class support and product development to address the industry’s constantly evolving threats satisfies our goals of global leadership.

Istanbul to host female entrepreneurs and business leaders at Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network global event 2013

Aongus Hegarty — Thu, 09 May 2013 12:30:00 GMT

On 2^nd June, the fourth annual Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network global event will kick off in Istanbul, Turkey. As a vibrant city in one of the fastest growing markets in the world, I’m thrilled that Istanbul will have the opportunity to host over 200 inspirational female entrepreneurs, business leaders and media from the Americas, EMEA and APJ. A three-day event, the Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network conference will highlight the positive impact women have on business and technology and unite some of the top global female business owners in a vibrant entrepreneurial community. With a wide range of keynotes, panels, breakout sessions and pre-conference labs covering a variety of issues critical to fast-growing businesses, attendees will have the opportunity gain perspective on these topics from an impressive roster of global entrepreneurs and business leaders.

The Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network is part of our Women Powering Business initiative and underscores our on-going commitment to support the advancement of women. We believe that the emphasis and investment we make in this area sets the bar for our industry, and we are extremely proud of the work our teams and network members are doing. It is an investment we make on the understanding that women have an innate flair for entrepreneurship and a unique perspective and approach to business. Working with our partners, like Intel, Dell’s end goal is to accelerate opportunities for women business owners through improved access to knowledge, technology, capital and networks helping them grow and benefitting the communities where they live and work.

Our experience of previous years’ events has shown us the unique ‘multiplier effect’ that female entrepreneurs can have not only on their own communities but our global economy. This led to the theme for this year’s event, which will underpin an exciting new global movement that we will officially launch in Turkey in June - ‘Pay It Forward’.

The goal of Pay it Forward is to harness the power of network members and Dell women employees to positively impact women’s entrepreneurship around the world. The movement will challenge members of the Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network and our Women Powering Business LinkedIn groups to pass on their knowledge in the form of mentoring, open up their networks, share their technology success stories and/or provide capital to support women launching new businesses, ultimately reaching 1M up-and-coming women entrepreneurs by the end of 2015. During the event, we’ll be discussing this initiative in much more detail and taking some exciting next steps to help women worldwide fulfil their dream of business ownership.

For the 2013 event, we have an incredible line up of speakers including; Elizabeth Gore, Resident Entrepreneur at the United Nations Foundation; Melek Pulatkonak, founder & curator, Turkish Women’s International Network (WIN); Julie Meyer, founder & CEO, Ariadne Capital; Moira Forbes, president & publisher, ForbesWoman; Padmaja Kumari Mewar, joint managing director, HRH Group of Hotels; Sarah Curran, founder, my-wardrobe.com; Simone Ross, COO, Techonomy; Aysegul Ildeniz, regional director, Intel plus many more. I’m excited to be joining the event for the first time this year along with other leaders from Dell including Steve Felice, Karen Quintos and Ingrid Vanderveldt. You can find the full list of speakers here.

You’ll be able to follow DWEN 2013 in Turkey via Livestream or join the conversation on Twitter at #DWEN.

Lunchtime Live Demo #1: Datadog Monitoring Service 05-10-2013 at 1.00 – 1.45 pm EDT (UTC-4 hrs)

Rafael Knuth — Tue, 07 May 2013 08:09:00 GMT

Please join our first Lunchtime Live Demo May 10^th at 1.00 – 1.45 pm EDT (UTC-4 hrs). With that series, we want to introduce you to innovative (startup) companies that provide exciting solutions for the cloud (consider this a community service for the broader cloud community). Expect no PowerPoint, no marketing talk – just a quick glance under the hood and an opportunity to chat with those guys who built the product.

If you are not able to attend, watch out for the wrap up blog post which we will publish a few days after the demo. Also, if you have any questions prior to the chat or suggestions, feel free to reach out to me via email (see below). We love to iterate and get better with every iteration!

About Datadog

Datadog is a SaaS monitoring service and data platform for Dev and Ops teams supporting applications on cloud, on-premise and hybrid infrastructure. Datadog unifies the data from servers, OS, databases, applications, tools and services to present an integrated view of an IT environment. In addition to its out-of-the-box alerting and graphing capabilities, Datadog can correlate data from infrastructure components such as Chef, MySQL and Git to provide insights that enable IT teams to avoid downtime, resolve performance problems and ensure on-time application releases and deployment.

Our Presenters

Amit Agarwal is VP of Products at Datadog. Throughout his 15 years of experience in the enterprise software industry, Amit has worked in various business strategy and senior technical management roles to bring new enterprise software products to market. Before Datadog, Amit was the Director of Product Management at Quest Software (now Dell). In this role he led the product management team that was responsible for performance monitoring and high availability solutions.

Alex Rosemblat is Director of Marketing at Datadog. Previously, Alex served as Product Marketing Manager for Dell’s Virtualization and Cloud Management product family (via the acquisition of VKernel).

In order to attend the chat, go to delltechcenter.adobeconnect.com/chat No registration is required. If you have any questions prior to the chat, please contact rafael_knuth@dellteam.com. Looking forward to see you there!

Dell takes on Cisco in the Mid-Market with new Next-Gen Firewalls

Dmitriy Ayrapetov — Tue, 07 May 2013 13:15:00 GMT

According to the Infonetics research firm, Cisco owns over one-third of the mid-market firewall business worldwide. Majority of that share is comprised of the Cisco ASA traditional stateful firewalls with a few of the models supporting addition of IPS or anti-malware modules (additional hardware, of course) for improved security. However, you can only pick one module.

It’s time to kick security complacency out of the mid-sized business market.

Today, at Interop 2013 in Las Vegas, we are introducing the Dell SonicWALL 6^th generation Network Security Appliance (NSA) Series that bring the “inspect everything” philosophy, a prerequisite for security against modern threats, to the latest generation hardware aimed at the mid-sized businesses and distributed enterprises. This generational refresh began with the SuperMassive 9000 Next-Generation Firewall Series (NGFW) launch in February 2013.

By scaling this technology to the $4K-$20K (USD) price point, there’s little excuse for organizations between 100-1000 employees to settle for a network security appliance that can’t simultaneously do Stateful Firewall, Intrusion Prevention, Anti-Malware, SSL Decryption, Application Control, URL Filtering and Botnet prevention through a single integrated security engine with a single easy-to-use management interface. Website defacement has given way to attackers compromising and insidiously placing attack code on well-known websites leading to headlines like “US Labor Department Website serving malware to innocent visitors” and the recent compromise of speedtest.net. This tactic is designed to ensnare as many victims as possible, regardless of their size, location or affiliation. No business or individual connecting to the Internet should gamble the safety of their data and computer by not protecting their organization from attacks such as these. Dell’s patented Reassembly Free Deep Packet Inspection™(RFDPI) engine powered by intelligence by the Dell SonicWALL Threat Research Team can find these threats and neutralized them before they enter into the network, even if the traffic is encrypted with SSL.

Cisco can’t touch this. Well, they might try to come close, but they’ll require four separate pieces of hardware chained serially together, with additional licensing for each piece. Busy IT admins and security directors shouldn’t settle for these types of solutions for critical infrastructure.

In addition to combining high security with high performance, the new Dell SonicWALL NSA Series makes Dell the first major security vendor to bring 10GbE connectivity to the sub $5k price point, ensuring that our customers’ infrastructure is future proof and can scale with the growth of their business. The new NSA series, comprised of the NSA 6600, NSA 5600, NSA 4600 and the NSA 3600, ranges from 24 to 6 powerful security cores, with 2 to 4 10GbE interfaces and high density mixture of copper and SFP 1GbE interfaces. This processing power is necessary to inspect all traffic for numerous types of threats at speeds up to 3Gbps – regardless of port or protocol. Power consumption for products that run 24x7x365 is always a big concern, and the new NSA series does not disappoint on this front, consuming between 74 and 113 watts and full load, depending on the model.

Note: Click on the image below to see a larger version of the new Dell SonicWALL NSA Series:

The new NSA series introduced by Dell Security Products today is ground breaking in the security capabilities available to mid-sized organizations and distributed enterprises, allowing enterprise grade security to be deployed in all locations. Tying those locations together, of course, is our Global Management System allowing a single pane of glass management for thousands of Dell SonicWALL firewalls, ensuring consistent policies across the enterprise and a centralized point of logging and reporting.

This week at Interop in Las Vegas, May 7-9, we will be showcasing the new NSA Series in the Dell Security Products booth #851 and the Dell (main) booth #1127. Join the conversation in real time from the show floor at Interop via Twitter and follow the hashtags #DellSecurity, #NGFW and #Interop. Follow @Dell and @SonicWALL on Twitter for the latest updates.

More About Dell's Enstratius Acquisition

Tom Kendra — Mon, 06 May 2013 18:35:00 GMT

Dell's been providing public and private cloud options to our business customers for years now. There’s a reason why many companies are either considering or have already deployed cloud environments to help with aspects of their IT needs. Cloud deployments offer new levels flexibility in helping organizations deliver and manage applications and IT services.

While clouds themselves offer flexibility, managing multiple cloud environments can be especially challenging. And that’s why it’s not surprising that customers have told us they are interested in making it easier to manage multi-cloud environments. Given the rapid evolution and adoption of cloud deployment models – across private, public and hybrid cloud environments - it’s easy to see why cloud management is a key strategic priority for the Dell Software Group.

That’s why Dell acquired Enstratius today. They help IT organizations deploy and manage enterprise-class applications and IT services across private, public and hybrid clouds. Enstratius provides software solutions that deliver single and multi-cloud management capabilities, including usage governance, automation to meet service levels, cloud utilization monitoring, financial controls and application provisioning. In fact, we’ve partnered with Enstratius over the last year to offer their solution as a component of Dell’s OpenStack-Powered Cloud Solution.

Enstratius complements other tools in Dell’s software arsenal like Gale Technologies’ Active System Manager (ASM). Enstratius currently supports more than 20 public and private cloud platforms, with the added flexibility to easily add new clouds. Enstratius supports all leading public and private clouds,including OpenStack, VMware, Rackspace, Amazon Web Services and Windows Azure. Also worth noting: Enstratius is “cloud agnostic” so customers can choose any combination of public and private cloud providers, including Dell and non-Dell clouds.

Here’s what one of our customers had to say about the acquisition:

Insider Threats Often due to Carelessness, Report Says

John Milburn — Thu, 02 May 2013 18:00:00 GMT

In the world of IT security, one of the key reference documents often referred to throughout the year is the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR). Think of it as an international report card on data breaches that you are anxious to read, but certainly never want your company’s name to appear in. This year’s report is 63 pages of facts, findings and figures on the highlights and extent of data breaches from last year.

According to the report, “2012 reminded us that breaches are a multi-faceted problem, and any one-dimensional attempt to describe them fails to adequately capture their complexity.” We couldn’t agree more. Whether the threat is at the firewall or from within, it is more important now, than ever before, to install dynamic security controls that protect your organization at every touch point.

Some interesting takeaways from this year’s report:

There were a total of 47,000+ reported security incidents, 621 confirmed data disclosures, and at least 44 million compromised records.
96 percent of breaches were perpetuated by outsiders, but, most interestingly, we were surprised to see the findings showed only 14 percent of breaches were committed by insiders.
76% of network intrusions exploited weak or stolen credentials.
13% resulted from privilege misuse and abuse - "Abuse of system privileges is particularly common in larger organizations."

This is why it’s so crucial to have in place the right process to review data access within your organization in terms of who has access, who needs it, and who has it but isn’t even using it. An effective data access governance plan rooted in connected security will help protect sensitive information, support compliance and maintain business operations. Dell’s Connected Security solutions do just that: enabling businesses to connect and share intelligence across the entire enterprise to make sure all employees have only the access they need to do their jobs – and nothing more. Even better, by providing employees with only the access they need, you will cut down the pool of insider “threats” who have access, and may unknowingly open your organization up to a breach.

Join Dell for insights and innovation at SAP SAPPHIRE NOW 2013

Dan Woolley — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 15:00:00 GMT

Dell is headed to Orlando, FL for SAPPHIRE NOW 2013 in a few weeks to showcase Dell’s end-to-end SAP solutions, valuable services and innovative technologies. The audience at this event is pretty broad – ranging from executives and IT decision makers to the technical, hands on folks who implement and support SAP programs. Our agenda includes a mix of strategic perspectives and nitty gritty technical details aimed to satisfy all comers.

We are excited to share our SAP solutions and services, including Dell’s innovative and powerful SAP HANA platform, new modernization and migration services for SAP as well as Dell’s mobility and BYOD solutions for SAP. We are also excited to hear from customers and experts in the field. What we learn from you helps us build and enhance our future solutions!

Each day, we are hosting a series of in-booth events, and Dell experts will be on hand for demonstrations, Q&A and knowledge sharing. Visit our booth to learn more about Dell and SAP solutions, including:

Dell Solutions for SAP HANA, including our latest appliances and services designed to help customers generate new business insights. (Also be sure to check out our blog closer to SAPPHIRE NOW as Dell will be announcing new features for customers deploying SAP workloads)
Industry-optimized solutions and enhanced application management services for SAP Business Applications
Enhanced modernization services for the SAP Real Time Data Platform that includes new features from Dell Boomi and Quest Software
Mobile Agility
Access Management and Governance Strategies for SAP

Sarah Gates from the International Institute for Analytics (IIA, www.iianalytics.com) will be joining us for several in- booth presentations to talk about the amazing advantages and insights that analytics can deliver. She will discuss challenges and success strategies for setting up a high-performing, analytics-based organization. Dell is a premier underwriter for IIA – the only research firm dedicated exclusively to defining the path to analytics excellence. Together, we are driving analytics thought leadership, best practices and innovation.

In addition, Dell is leading three sessions on a broader stage:

Tuesday, 2PM

Partner Theater

Get more value from SAP HANA with solutions and services from Dell – Find out how our modular scalability, innovative manageability, and comprehensive services combine to create an SAP HANA platform that delivers real lasting value.

Thursday, 12PM

Database & Technology Theater

Use emerging technologies to gain a competitive advantage in the market – Hear how Dell’s new modernization services, coupled with the powerful lineup of HANA solutions, allows businesses to harness the power of SAP’s Real-Time Data Platform and increases competitive advantage.

Thursday, 1PM

Demo Theater, Partner Center

Dell’s Rapid-Response, Self-Service Analytics with SAP HANA – Learn how Dell is leveraging the SAP HANA platform for rapid-response, self-service analytics and reporting, achieving business agility and flexibility.

Dell and SAP – we’re pooling our solutions and doing great things together! From high power analytics to high performance SAP business solutions – the Dell and SAP Global Alliance delivers innovative platforms, robust capabilities and implementation expertise.

Join us for an exciting week of conversations, sharing and great ideas by visiting booth #2606 or follow online at www.dell.com/sap.

Making Technology More Accessible… Introducing Dell Latitude 3330

Kari Sherrodd — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 20:56:00 GMT

Dell was founded on a simple principle – the idea that more businesses, healthcare providers, schools and individuals should have the keys to unlock their potential through greater access to technology. Every day we get to see how this becomes a reality in schools around the world – from a young child getting their hands on a tablet for the first time to working with an administrator in the US to help them properly prepare for Common Core State Standards Initiative within their school or district.

Today, we’re happy to share a few more details about our recently announced Latitude 3330 that schools around the world are quickly adopting. In the United States they are finding it has the right specs to make Common Core and other on-line assessments a reality. Around the world the pricing and choice of an operating system that schools want are also attractive.

The new Dell Latitude 3330, created with students and teachers, in mind gives schools an affordable, manageable device they can easily integrate into the classroom. It supports Microsoft Windows 8, Windows 7 and Linux Ubuntu, giving students the performance and ability to produce, consume and share information, as well as leverage common learning applications and software to personalize their learning experience during the school day and at home – all for under $500, an outstanding value.

We certainly understand that when placed in a classroom setting, these laptops will need to withstand more than the normal wear and tear most laptops would be expected to. The sleek, lightweight, and sturdy design stands up to the demands of even the youngest of students. It also fits easily on classroom desks or in a backpack so students can easily take it and store it wherever they need to go. The battery also is designed to stay charged for an entire school day and longer.

In another step to make sure teaching and learning requirements are incorporated in this design, the Latitude 3330 is built to couple with our updated Dell Mobile Computing Cart so teachers or IT administrators can easily transport and charge and IT administrators can update not just the 3330 – but up to 30 Dell tablets, ultrabooks, netbooks and laptops.

Take a look for yourself. And, see what others are saying about the Latitude 3330.

The #icandokuchbhi Twitter contest is here!

Ajay Arora — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 15:45:00 GMT

Dreams are born out of passion and inspiration is what turns them into reality. With technology driving many of these dreams into a realm of infinite possibilities, we’re today announcing a Twitter contest for you to flash those ambitions out in the open.

About the Contest

The contest, I CAN DO KUCH BHI, invites you to tweet about your Passion that makes you say #icandokuchbhi using the aid of technology. The tweets that best represent your passion correlating well with the possible use of technology to achieve that passion, shall be the winners.

Please note:

All tweets must contain the #icandokuchbhi hashtag
There’s no limit to the number of tweets that you could submit
Contest begins at 10am on April 27^th and closes at 10pm on April 29^th

Gratification

10 people with the most interesting tweets will receive a Dell branded t-shirt with their tweet printed on them. The best tweet will receive a grand prize of a Dell Inspiron laptop.

The complete terms and conditions of the contest could be found HERE.

The contest is a way to best showcase our Personal Achievement that could be made possible with technology, which is something that our new television commercial captures as well.

(Please visit the site to view this video)

So get started to participate in the contest by sharing a tweet using #icandokuchbhi. (Remember, no limit to the number of tweets).

For any queries on the contest, please drop a line in the comments stream below.

All the best and tweet on!

Wimbledon, Jungle Book and ProSupport Plus

Jim Roth — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Tennis was always a big part of my family growing up. My parents met on a tennis court, played multiple times a week and watched every tournament on television. Before I was eight, I learned that Wimbledon does not play a fifth set tiebreak and that the first two lines of Rudyard Kipling’s 1895 poem “If” hang over the door to centre court in the gentlemen’s locker room.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you

Later in life, I came to appreciate this first stanza as a good mantra for those who serve customers. Each day our 24,000+ support engineers around the globe go to the ends of the earth for our customers. As we celebrate the 5^th birthday of Dell ProSupport this spring, our teams continue to do an amazing job keeping their heads about them and delivering exceptional service for our millions of ProSupport customers in over 50 languages around the globe.

Today, we are thrilled to launch ProSupport Plus, our first truly proactive support service. Once again I am reminded of a Kipling quote, this one from The Jungle Book, the inspiration for the 1967 Walt Disney animated classic. The main character in Jungle Book is a boy named Mowgli who was raised by wolves and befriends a panther named Bagheera. When asked how things work in the jungle, Bagheera responds to Mowgli, “What is the law of the jungle? Strike first…”

ProSupport Plus is built to strike first as we all know that prevention is the best support. Instead of responding to an issue after it occurs, our new service proactively improves infrastructure performance and stability through a dedicated technical account manager that delivers monthly reporting and performance recommendations. Under the hood of ProSupport Plus, our SupportAssist technology identifies potential problems before they become severe, and in some cases, before they happen. SupportAssist remotely monitors systems, collects and transmits information and automatically creates a support case. This allows our elite Dell ProSupport Plus engineers to gain insight into the problem and begin troubleshooting before contacting the customer.

In the jungle of support, when a “strike first” approach is coupled with experts that keep their heads about them, customers can face whatever lurks in the shadows by relying on ProSupport Plus.

(Please visit the site to view this video)

Facebook's News Feed Updates: Impacts for Marketers

Yasmine Mukahal — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 14:50:00 GMT

Early in March, Facebook announced major changes to the News Feed, particularly in the way users control the content they see. These changes were part of an overall redesign that puts more emphasis on images and makes the Facebook experience more consistent across web, mobile and tablet devices.

These updates affect the way marketers should approach their Facebook strategy, though not drastically. There are two major implications for marketers:

Visual Content Becomes More Prominent

Facebook clearly wants a more visual experience for their users. Photos and videos will appear larger in the News Feed. Maps will show where Friends of a user have checked in, right in the News Feed. Thumbnail images and excerpts for links added to status updates will be larger.

One particularly notable change is that when a user Likes your Page, your cover photo will now show up in the News Feeds of their friends. This is a fantastic opportunity to get a highly visual, engaging image out in front of a new audience to attract new followers.

Facebook Ads in the News Feed, such as Sponsored Stories, will also have more prominent images. The effect this may have on advertisers and their ROI remains to be seen.

Users Get Control Over Content Feed Segmentation

Facebook is still rolling out the redesign to members and will continue to do so until everyone has the new layout. The feature most impactful for marketers is the ability for users to filter down into specific types of content.

The News Feed view will remain the default option, though users can now choose to see only that content posted by Friends or by Pages. They can also drill down into Photos, Music, Games and other controls that will display only the content of their choice.

Note that this is not a change to the algorithm Facebook uses to decide which content a user will see in their News Feed. It is a visual redesign, but one that gives users the option to essentially filter out – or focus in on – brand content.

Users with a lot of friends may actually be exposed to more brand content, if they choose to use these controls. In the News Feed as it was, Page content was often hidden amongst the myriad of Friend posts in the average user’s feed.

What can brands do about this particular change? Monitor your own Page and content performance. Test constantly to see which content types and topics garner the best engagement and help you reach your business goals. In the coming months, we are sure to see studies and reports on the actual impact of this latest redesign.

The opportunity to connect with and engage fans with high quality images, meaningful photos and video is greater than ever. Have you noticed changes in the way your fans are interacting with your content since the March update? Share your experience in the comments!

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How Targeted LinkedIn Status Updates Can Help Boost Social Engagement

Cy Jervis, IdeaStorm Project Manager — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 17:14:00 GMT

Across social channels, companies are striving to better connect with their target audience through increasingly relevant, engaging content. LinkedIn’s targeted status updates are one tool helping marketers reach just the right people, with the right message, at the right time.

A recent case study from healthcare, lighting and lifestyle brand Philips shows how they used targeted status updates to increase follower engagement by 106%. The company was also able to build their audience and use the insights inherent to increased engagement to inform products and services.

With each new post to the LinkedIn Company Page, marketers have the ability to target specific audience segments according to:

Company size
Industry
Function
Seniority
Geography
Whether or not they are employees of the brand

Philips representatives explained how they used targeted status updates to build their following to over 205,000 members of the professional social network. “We need to reach everyone from the C-suite, to clinicians, to design professionals. However, we know that not all of these groups are necessarily interested in everything we have to say,” said Clive Roach, social media strategist for Philips Healthcare.

“With social media, you want to tailor what your audiences see,” Roach explains. “When someone decides to become a follower of our LinkedIn Company Page, it’s nice if we can target our messages so as not to take up their time with content that’s not interesting to them.”

Roach and his team experimented with different targeting parameters and messaging to offer more relevant content to their global followers across health care, engineering and creative design. Press and employees were always included in their targeting, he said, to increase social sharing.

In the six-week period in which Philips first launched targeted status updates, post engagement rose by 106%. This figure includes all forms of engagement, including Likes and clicks through on content.

Corporate communications officer Stephanie Charron said, “The targeted updates helped us more than double the social interaction on the page, and that increased interaction created more value for our followers.”

Precise targeting helps companies using LinkedIn for social media marketing offer greater value through more relevant content, but also keeps those interested only in certain information from unfollowing the page.

Follow these best practices for targeted status update success on LinkedIn:

Know your audience as you are creating content to ensure relevance.
Experiment with different combinations of targeting parameters and measure results.
Ask your audience for input on what they want to see more or less of.
Keep status updates brief and to the point, focusing on a single issue at a time.

Have you used LinkedIn’s Targeted Status Updates feature? Share your experience in the comments!