Day Two of Dell World Looks Toward Future of Technology

As with most conferences, Dell World has so much great content that attendees (including myself) often wish to be two places at one time. There is no way I can recap everything that happened today, but let me take a shot at some highlights.

In Michael Dell’s opening keynote, he talked about how the forces of cloud, big data, mobile & social are advancing human progress more quickly & more fundamentally than at any time in human history. Technology, combined with the limitless capabilities of the human brain to innovate, solve problems and dream, is ushering in an era of infinite possibilities for “The Next Billion.”

“In partnership with all of you, we have never been in a better position to invent the future than right now,” he told the audience and he brought Peter Zornio, the Chief Strategy Officer of Emerson on stage to talk about digital transformation, the Internet of Things, and Dell and Emerson’s unique partnership that spans more than 20 years.

Then there was a lot of exciting news to announce around our end-to-end solutions.

IT World reported afterwards that “Dell looks to wow clients with a new type of converged system;” and from what I heard talking to customers after the keynote, it certainly hit the right note. They were excited to contemplate the ways the new FX2 next-generation converged solution could help them reduce complexity through its workload optimized, single architecture with integrated management.

Cloud remained a common topic of conversation as we announced our new Cloud Marketplace public beta program that is striping away any remaining concerns limiting cloud usage through key industry alliances. For more background, read how InformationWeek took a look at why a customer might purchase a product via our Cloud Marketplace rather than going directly to the vendor.

But even before the opening keynote and these announcements, there were great discussions happening here at Dell World.

At a Think Tank on the topic of tackling “social” for medium-sized businesses social business experts emphasized “how much of a moving target the area is, and how little it lends itself to one-size-fits-all solutions.” You can watch the full replay of that conversation, but the following comment from Andres Bang of LinkedIn really stood out to me as something most Dell World attendees can relate to:

We’re excited that IT leaders like Andres have taken the time to join us here in Austin this week. It is in partnership with them that those infinite possibilities mentioned at the opening keynote will become reality.

As Michael Dell said in this morning’s opening keynote:

“Individually, we are doing amazing things, but together we are a movement… anchored in the core belief that we can build better businesses, better outcomes, better lives… And a better world through the limitless boundaries of human creativity… amplified exponentially through the power of technology. We stand at the edge of infinite possibility.”

About the Author: Laura Pevehouse

Laura Pevehouse was profiled as one of five “social media mavens” in the March 2009 issue of Austin Woman Magazine and named an AdWeek’s TweetFreak Five to Follow. She has been part of the Dell organization for more than 15 years in various corporate communications, employee communications, public relations, community affairs, marketing, branding, social media and online communication roles. From 2014-2018, Laura was Chief Blogger/Editor-in-Chief for Direct2DellEMC and Direct2Dell, Dell’s official corporate blog that she help launch in 2007. She is now a member of the Dell Technologies Chairman Communications team. Earlier in her Dell career she focused on Global Commercial Channels and US Small and Medium Business public relations as part of the Global Communications team. Prior to that, she was responsible for global strategy in social media and community management, as well as marcom landing pages, as a member of Dell’s Global SMB Marketing, Brand and Creative team. When she was part of Dell’s Global Online group, Laura provided internal consulting that integrated online and social media opportunities with a focus on Corporate Communications and Investor Relations. She managed the home page of Dell.com, one of the top 500 global web sites in Alexa traffic rank, and first brought web feeds and podcasts to the ecommerce site. In her spare time she led Dell into the metaverse with the creation of Dell Island in the virtual world Second Life. Laura has earned the designation of Accredited Business Communicator from the International Association of Business Communicators, and received her Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from Louisiana State University. Before joining Dell Financial Services in 2000, she worked at the Texas Workforce Commission and PepsiCo Food Systems Worldwide.