It was interesting that Michael Dell spoke for 40 minutes and barely mentioned hardware. It was also interesting that Oracle president Mark Hurd made a point of saying twice how much more they expected to work with Dell in the future. Much like the storm troopers on Tatooine searching for droids Dell is trying to find their identity in the new world order and based on their acquisition pattern and according to Michael Dell that identity is a "end to end solution company". This article will review the Dell keynote and the implications for product lifecycle management. The interesting aspect about Dell is that they are one of Oracle's largest customers and also benefit from Oracle since they drive the need for faster hardware.

One of the more signifcant points Dell made throughout his speech was regarding IT. He quoted his CIO, Robin Johnson as saying, "IT's job is to create value by improving business process". This seems to be somewhat of a departure from IT's traditional role as a facilitator of hardware infrastructure. I have noticed this trend in the industry as IT organizations throughout the country take on a more proactive role in streamlining product development process. Historically IT organizations have been more of an impediment to change often concerned about the impact that radical changes to process would have on security and network performance. Recently in several companies we have worked with IT has taken a leading role in ensuring that the implementation of PLM was structured in a manner that would achieve their companies business objectives both from a cost and functionality perspective. In today's climate companies need IT organizations that do not limit their actions to just hardware and also do not wait on the business owners to drive them to seek solutions. The point Dell makes is that "the line between business and IT is disappearing". To further illustrate this he highlighted the example of Dell's own business structure. He discussed how prior to this current IT initiatives Dell's operating cost consumed 70% of their IT budget severely constraining their ability to innovate and drive change and increase productivity. This initiative reviewed their internal cost structure and the software platforms they were using to run their business on and by consolidating and strategically optimizing their infrastructure they were able to reduce this number to 48% leaving 52% for future innovation. Having worked with Dell and knowing firsthand some of the steps they have taken their utilization of Agile PLM and other Oracle technologies has played a large role in this strategic adjustment. By being proactive the IT organization at Dell has driven significant value for the organization and made itself less of a cost organization and more of a value driver.

Dell also emphasized their acquisition of Perot Systems and 45000 resources they now have that have been combined with the business architects at Dell to deliver similar types of solutions to other companies. He touted their leadership in IT Healthcare systems and the billion dollar investment they have made to develop their own private cloud. He also featured a software integration solution called Boomi that allows companies to tie disparate systems that exist as cloud applications to on premise applications. He specifically cited procurement to ERP as one area where this technology works well. Dell has also invested heavily in security. SecurityWorks seems to be a turnkey service and technology organization at Dell that has over 3000 customers. His comment about this product was that like Fight Club the rule is you don't talk about SecurityWorks. They cover risk assessment and also deploy security solutions that protect over 14 trillion dollars in assets in financial organizations worldwide and assist in compliance with security regulations in a variety of industries.

Finally at the end of his discussion he touted the next generation of Power Edge Servers when combined with technology from Dell's Force 10 acquisition will significantly outperform today's hardware and highlighted some of the technology innovations that will make these servers valuable investments as companies create larger data sets and more complex data models. He also emphasized the value of PC's and as a shot across HP's bow emphasized the value of PC's pointing out that 95% of all storage today goes into PC's versus 5% in servers and storage solutions. The interesting takeaway from this speech is that it is clear that Dell has a strategy to stay relevant in today's business climate by running lean and continuing to embrace technology as the way to drive value both internally and externally. Time will tell how successful they will be but with the chaos at HP and their lack of focus Dell sees opportunities and Oracle and Dell seemed closely aligned in capitalizing on market opportunities. Dell's continued search for a new identity is evolving and R2D2 and C3PO better find a good hiding place because it appears Dell is coming on fast.[clear-line]