Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending Dell’s Technology Camp in Amsterdam. It was a full on day starting at 7.30am and I finally got back home at 11pm but it was a fascinating event. Dell is currently heavily in the news and various sources are reporting that over the coming weekend they are likely to go private. Going from public back to private is not an easy decision to take and Microsoft’s reported interest in Dell certainly makes this situation all the more interesting. This will be a big change and I am sure will be subject of detailed analysis and commentary next week.   

For now, I would rather concentrate on an interesting conversation that I had with Sam Greenblatt, Chief Architect for Dell’s Enterprise solutions group. Sam needs no introduction as his career and successes are very impressive. As many of you may know, before Dell, he worked for HP as their CTO for webOS but he has also worked with Steve Jobs and many of the other founders of the modern IT market. As an Analyst, I am lucky that I get to speak with many senior executives and so I thought I would record this session for you. I apologize if the sound quality is not crystal clear but I am no Bill Talbott (famous Hollywood sound engineer) and we actually had to do this recording standing up in a kitchen area as the venue was one big open space. I was also fairly refrained in my questioning so as I could share the content a bit quicker with you.

It’s 15 minutes in length and here are the questions I asked:

(1)    So what’s your role at Dell?

(2)    What does success look like in this role?

(3)    What would you say are three key strengths for Dell?

(4)    What is the main challenge that Dell faces today?

(5)    Dell has made numerous acquisitions over the last decade. What’s the overall vision?

(6)    To some, Dell might seem like a large mall or hypermarket of solutions. How do your reassure your customers worried about integration challenges?

(7)    Is success all about the product or all about the services?

(8)    Give me one recent customer story that really epitomizes Dell’s capabilities?

(9)    So what does the future hold for Dell?

My thanks to Dell’s marketing team and Sam Greenblatt for their participation here and I hope they get a good rest this weekend as next week certainly seems like it will be interesting!

The mp3 can be streamed or downloaded from the following link – http://snd.sc/WDuCX3