Michael Dell at Oracle OpenWorld

A large crowd of people gathered today at Oracle OpenWorld to listen to Michael Dell share his vision for how technology will continue to enable companies of all sizes to innovate and grow, and how Dell will be right alongside them to support their IT objectives.

After touching on the partnership that Dell and Oracle have enjoyed since 1995, Michael talked a little about the history of computing and the rapid change we’ve seen over the past 25 years. The explosion of data and applications today is driving the IT industry to reconsider ways to manage, store and secure—but most importantly, bring value to businesses.  With 35 zettabytes of data estimated by 2020—and one third of that predicted to live in the cloud—it’s  not surprising that the way businesses will manage data and information has become a significant topic at Oracle OpenWorld this year. 

The crowd was energized by a quick demo of the Dell Streak Android tablet and a sneak preview of a prototype 7” tablet that Dell has yet to release. Michael made the point that devices are changing and evolving rapidly to keep up with the way users want to get their data—anytime, anywhere. 

Michael also shared that it was clear to him that scale up is dying off and scale out is the way of the future. He gave a glimpse of some of the innovations Dell’s Data Center Solutions (DCS) team has created to enable hyperscale computing environments that are truly “scaling out.”

Michael was then joined by Cadir Lee, CTO of Zynga, the gaming visionaries who created Farmville and Mafia Wars, and a great example of a Dell customer that has embraced scale out. Cadir shared some astounding data about the growth of Zynga and the amount of information and data they move each day through their infrastructure which manages more than 215M users per month.  Cadir agreed with Michael that scale out and virtualization are two of the most important innovations of the decade and he discussed how Zynga is working with Dell to move their infrastructure to a private cloud.

The topics of virtualization and storage came next, and Michael shared some interesting perspectives about the future of storage and the network. Moving on to services, Michael talked about the increased value Dell can bring to customers with Dell Services which is now an $8B business for the company.

Rob Carter, CIO of FedEx, then joined Michael to talk about the importance of the data center to a company responsible for delivering more than 8M packages every day in 220 countries. Rob explained that FedEx.com gets 20M visitors a month and more than 5M tracking requests daily. Rob and Michael talked about the changing scope of IT needs at FedEx and some of the biggest challenges as CIO of such a complex IT environment. Rob mentioned that FedEx, like many other businesses, is pushing to save power, development time and space in their data centers by scaling out on x86 hardware. Rob closed by emphasizing the significance of the relationship FedEx IT has with Dell Services and said the Services business is one of the finest in the industry and superb to work with to get things done. 

Michael closed with a reminder that the IT industry is at an inflection point and that continued growth will drive increased innovation in the data centers of the future, as well as in the services needed to support them. 

Customers can visit the Dell booth #521 in Moscone South today to learn more about the Dell Services Oracle Practice and see how Dell server and storage solutions are helping customers succeed all over the world.  Additionally, you can follow Michael on Twitter at @MichaelDell.

Update: Here is a highlight video of Michael Dell's keynote yesterday.

About the Author: Susie Grandi