I can’t tell you how excited I am about our partnership with the McLaren Technology Group.
At the core of McLaren is design and engineering – characteristics that are most often expressed through their Formula 1 team, which is second only to Ferrari in terms of success. But this is not your father’s McLaren.
Over the past seven years, McLaren have applied their Formula 1 racing heritage to the street and are now well on their way to building a billion dollar business. Its automotive business includes the McLaren 720S (below), which was named the most beautiful supercar of 2017.
But our partnership also extends to the McLaren Applied Technologies division. This is probably the least well-known area of their business, but potentially the most exciting. The Applied Technologies division takes the advanced design, engineering and analytics expertise that McLaren has developed over decades of F1 competition, and applies this know-how to other industries. They are driving innovation across areas such as connected public transport, entertainment and healthcare, and working with companies like Deloitte in the world of IoT, GlaxoSmithKline on Analytics, and the National Health Service for body sensor technology.
Dell Technologies will be using this partnership in many different ways.
First and foremost we will be using Formula 1 to underpin the expansion of our brand campaign in Europe and Asia. Think of us using it in the same way as we have used the PGA Tour golf events so successfully over the past couple of years. Over 400 million people watch Formula 1 each year, most outside of the US, and it contains a high concentration of tech-savvy watchers – which is of particular interest to us! As well as featuring the Dell Technologies brand on the McLaren F1 car and drivers, we will also be featuring their use of our technology in our brand campaign.
The McLaren Technology Group provides us with a great, ‘edge to core to cloud,’ case study in their use of Dell Technologies products and services. McLaren has been a longtime customer with everything from PCs to servers to storage and SecureWorks. Over the next few years they will be expanding their use of our technology as their Digital Transformation picks up speed – an incredibly hot topic in the automotive industry! We plan on showcasing the McLaren story (along with racing simulators!) at our tier 1 global event during 2018.
During 2017, McLaren increased its focus on gaming by not only running the inaugural “World’s Fastest Gamer” (and signing up the winner), but also appointing a new director to oversee their eSports strategy. eSports currently enjoys a following of about 200 million people and that’s expected to grow to over 300 million by 2020. This represents another opportunity for us to build on our recent eSports announcements at CES.
Providing customer hospitality at F1 races and leveraging the amazing McLaren Technology Campus as a venue for press, analyst and executive events will be a key part of our partnership with McLaren as well. We want to use McLaren’s facilities, and their executives, to help us build stronger relationships with our best customers. We will once again be partnering with Intel on our customer hospitality, executive events and eSports activities. We’ve had a lot of success over the past couple of years demonstrating our combined value at marquee events such as this.
Finally, we believe there is an opportunity to partner with McLaren Applied Technologies and apply their know-how in industries such as transportation, media & entertainment and healthcare to make IoT real for our customers. Similar to the natural alignment between McLaren and Deloitte, GlaxoSmithKline, and the National Health Service, McLaren Applied Technologies offers Dell Technologies deep industry expertise as well as leading edge sensor technology that plays well with our edge gateways and data center infrastructure.
Over the next few weeks you will see McLaren announce their new F1 car for the upcoming season and then you’ll be able to see it in action at the first race in Melbourne on March 25th. We will be working on new case study materials for DellTechnologies.com as well as creating a live interactive experience at Dell Technologies World in Las Vegas in May. Our partnership with the McLaren Technology Group gives us a great platform to tell the Dell Technologies story, building on the great work done in 2017 in the United States… and now expanding to Europe and Asia!
