Dell Technologies, became the world’s largest privately controlled tech company after the completion of the acquisition of EMC Corporation last week. It now comprises a family of businesses including Dell, Dell EMC, Pivotal, RSA, SecureWorks, Virtustream and VMware. The combined entity is a $74 billion company with 20,000 patents and 140,000 employees.

In an interaction with BusinessLine , Amit Midha, President, APJ Commercial, Dell EMC, said the new entity will spend $4.5 billion every year in R&D to provide infrastructure that will help customers build their digital future, transform IT and protect their most important asset, information, where India’s role will continue to be strong. Excerpts from the interaction.

Dell was addressing a $23-billion India opportunity. Will that double with the new entity?

The India opportunity would be way higher than $23 billion and represents a multi-year opportunity, while the $23 billion may be a single-year opportunity. I say this because the Minister for IT, Ravi Shankar Prasad, said Digital India represents a $1 trillion opportunity, so with the combined entity of Dell and EMC, we now have a set of tools, capabilities, relationships and the ecosystem to help customers participate in the Digital future and that includes the nation too.

How strong is your play in security, as the future of every digital economy stands on a strong security framework?

RSA is the No. 1 brand in security, from a secure ID perspective, that enables transactions.

We have SecureWorks, which is a cloud enabled security. SonicWall is today our next-generation firewall, which addresses core security. The most differentiated piece of security we offer is called NSX — micro-segmentation software defined networking.

It opens up dynamically generated IP addresses between one point to the other for a micro-second and shuts it down, and goes on to create a new one on both sides and opens up for a micro-second and shuts down. So, there is no possibility for anyone to say, I know which IP address, what information is going to originate to which IP address, for how long. Our security story is second to none with all of this. And this doesn’t even include our ‘client’ level security for endpoint devices.

Have you put in place a new restructured sales organisation with a new go-to-market strategy for customers?

It’s a very easy problem to solve, because the overlap is very minimal — customers who have been buying Dell may not have bought EMC and vice versa. This combined entity is tied to creating a future together with more revenue synergy and not on cost synergy, and having more customers experiencing the ‘better together’ story with a unique family of capabilities and businesses that can lead their digital future.

Our new go-to-market framework will kick in on February 1, 2017. Until then we will be coordinated with no impact to the customer.

What are the new emerging business opportunities in India and do you see customer engagements getting longer?

With the scale and the innovation we have, we don’t have to choose. We will address all market segments be it, start-ups, consumer internet firms, small businesses, mid-market, commercial, public, enterprise; whether it is e-governance, Digital India or creating an omni-channel strategy for a large industrial house, creating an e-commerce venture.

We will be relevant in all spaces because we have the capability and portfolio to do that. Ninety per cent of our business is B2B, our customers have multi-year, multi-decade engagements with us. Some customers like Microsoft, Ford and GE have all invested in Pivotal, because their entire digital future is tied to Pivotal technology.

Dell has already crossed the $2 billion milestone in India; have the India targets doubled now?

We are quite committed to the business momentum in India and will continue to invest in India in hiring and R&D. We cannot comment on revenue targets or hiring numbers.

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