Playing the transformation game

Twenty years ago, Dell was among an emerging group of PC brands that was making waves in the IT space, with ‘made-to-order’ builds that offered customers a wider array of configurations coupled with the latest processors and other performance tools. 

This made them stand out and even take on bigger, more established brands in the market at the time. Since then, a lot of the other brands have disappeared.

Today, Dell EMC has grown to be one of the largest players in the consumer and enterprise IT space and seeks to become the technology industry’s most trusted advisor, providing capabilities spanning strategy development, consultative services and solution deployment and support to help customers and partners drive the digital transformation of their businesses. 

Daily FT spoke with Dell EMC Vice President of Asia Emerging Markets and APJ New Business Chee Wei, a man with more than 25 years of experience in the information technology industry. Since joining Dell in 1997, Chee Wei has held a variety of sales and marketing leadership positions based in Singapore. He started his career at Dell as a sales manager and, through several career rotations, moved into more senior leadership roles.

“When I first joined Dell in 1997, I was selling PCs and notebooks. That was everything that Dell was known for at the time. As the company grew in 1999, we launched a big campaign to sell our servers. Although servers were launched earlier than that, to really focus on selling servers was a big thing for Dell at that time. 

 “We knew that we needed to diversify, though. That’s why we went into servers and, in 2001, into storage. Then, we went into networking.” 

The diversification strategy was wise; over the years that followed, the market saw previous powerhouses like Gateway and Compaq get swallowed up by other companies or disappear altogether.

In 2013, Dell removed itself from the public domain and made a $ 24.9 billion move to go private. Most recently, in 2016, Dell moved to acquire EMC, a company that would give it the edge in the larger enterprise space, for a record $ 67 billion. 

EMC’s strengths in the higher-end enterprise space were a great complement to Dell’s leadership in the consumer and commercial segments (i.e. PCs, notebooks, servers, storage and networking). 

Together, Dell EMC is now focusing on four strategies spanning digital transformation, IT transformation, workforce transformation, and security transformation. 

Chee Wei said everything around us today is being digitised from how we use our handphones and our notebooks to how we consume videos, and Dell is helping that development. 

“One of the family of Dell Technologies companies called Pivotal helps companies develop applications fast. We were talking to one of the largest conglomerates here – previously, they needed nine to 12 months to develop an application. At the end of nine months, if they didn’t like it, it would be back to the drawing board and all of that time would have been irretrievably wasted. Agile computing is a new way of thinking. With agile computing, you can build a skeleton of an application in two weeks. It would have no functionality but at least you can see what it looks like and the micro-services surrounding it. So, you can now make confident progress much more quickly, and develop a product in two to three months before pushing it live. Pivotal is helping the likes of Bloomberg, Garmin and Volkswagen this way.”

On IT transformation, Chee Wei said consumer-centric industries like banks and telcos don’t have to wait as long as they did before to get their data. “You can store it on all-flash drives, giving you rapid and reliable access, and then fully automate the backup and recovery using our technology, too.”

In the workforce transformation space, Chee Wei said the innovation comes in how all the information is harnessed. “Working patterns now mean that the lines between work and personal life are much more blurred. People use the most advanced technology to get things done and stay connected at home, and they expect work to be just as good or better. With Dell Technologies, we give users the capabilities and experience they want, and literally transform the way they work.” 

And finally, regarding the security transformation space, he said: “How do you make sure all these things you have created in your digital, workforce, and IT transformation are protected? That’s where we have Pivotal, RSA, SecureWorks and VMware, to make sure that we have the whole story covered. So, we can very confidently advise customers on these four pillars and guide them on what component they need to grow, secure and protect their entire infrastructure.”

Elaborating on the workforce transformation, Chee Wei said that the modern consumer wants to consume their data anywhere and at any time they want. “People want to work from home. I have a two-in-one detachable laptop. It serves as a light notebook or tablet, increasing my productivity at work or home. Note that when I talk about workforce transformation, I’m also talking about security. If I lose this detachable laptop, I want to be sure that all my company and personal data is both protected from unauthorised access and backed-up so that I can retrieve it elsewhere. That is why we have encryption on all Dell system hard drives.” 

Enabling this process is its VMware Workspaces, which stores each session on the web and, when it’s closed, all the related data is left on the local device. Even system updates and security patches are kept up-to-date each time the user logs in to the company network, negating the need for IT personnel to physically install updates on each device. 

Speaking on Dell EMC’s role in Sri Lanka, Chee Wei said that there is significant opportunity in emerging markets.

“At Dell, we have a dedicated focus on a number of key, developing markets, including Sri Lanka. Chrishan Fernando, who has a strong reputation in the enterprise IT industry, is our Country Manager here. The Sri Lankan market is growing and we’re really building strong foundations in the country. Chrishan is building up his team and we are very excited to see how we can grow further in Sri Lanka.”