Dell has been going through a transformational journey ever since its founder Michael Dell delisted the company and took it private. The company has undertaken a number of big moves primarily aimed at strengthening its presence in the enterprise technology space. This includes a merger with EMC and acquisition of VMware. However, major part of its revenues still comes from the client solutions business which includes PCs, thin clients, workstations and monitors. BusinessLine recently met Sam Burd, President, Client Solutions Group, Dell, to understand how the company is shaping up to address the growing computing needs of consumers. Excerpts.
How important is the client solution business for Dell given that recent big moves by the company have been on the enterprise side?
The client businesses are really important to Dell. I think Michael Dell’s vision, as he laid out, was how we become an end-to-end solutions provider to our customers to be able to offer the whole portfolio, understanding customers and delivering what they need. So now we got great client business, great server business, great storage business. It allows us to leverage strengths across businesses and look for synergies across the customer base.
Recent quarters have been good for the PC market. Do You see that continuing going forward?
I am not a good fortune teller but we will see more growth in the PC space. I also think it’s a great opportunity when you look at countries like India, just as an example, with household penetration of PCs less than 10 per cent. We’re doing a great stuff with schools, with parents.. I see the same thing on the business side. You look at GST and other tax changes going on which has got business to think about going from paperwork accounting to automated processes. So that what give additional flip to the growth in the PC segment in the commercial side. There’s a lot of pent up demand. That is why I am optimistic about the growth in PC market.
Are there any projects you are doing to reach to the next billion users ?
When we started out our primary objective was to go deeper into smaller cities so we built our stores focussing mainly on the tier 3-5 cities to give people opportunity to touch and feel our products . We realised that the children are the ones who need PCs but they get influenced by teachers and mothers who may have never used a PC themselves. So we launched the programme called Aarambh. We put a programme aimed at training teachers on how to use the PC. This is our second year now so we have gone back to the school teachers again to train them because we realised that one time training is not good enough. Now, we are clearly seeing that in these Tier 3, Tier 5 cities, we are getting an uplift in term of sales that is happening in these markets. We are also working with the government on Atal Tinkering Labs.
Is India already among the top 5 market for you globally?
Yes, India is in the top 5. There is tremendous potential inside India and I see India becoming even more important for our business. We also have development team here doing some of our most cutting edge software across all our products. We are totally committed to India and we see lots of opportunity here in the future.
New technologies such as robotics, blockchain and AI also require engineers equipped with new skills and knowledge. What can engineering graduates, who may have expertise in older platforms, do to be employable?
They should come to Dell. We have such-better technologies they will have an awesome experience. I do think having a technical background itself is a huge asset. I also think that people will have to build soft skills so that they have the ability to collaborate effectively. The ability to focus on teamwork and tap into the expertise and knowledge of others is very important.
What worries you?
There is lot of bad stuff in the tech world so that can always bother you. But in terms of our business, I worry about whether we are listening to customers enough and are we leaning forward to take the opportunities that’s out there.