Dell-EMC will bring more innovation: Amit Midha

In one of the largest tech deals of all time, Dell announced that it will acquire EMC Corporation for $67 billion, last month. The acquisition will create a combined entity with estimated annual revenues of over $80 billion. In his first interview to Indian media, after the announcement, at the Dell World 2015 annual conference in Austin, Texas; Amit Midha, President, Asia Pacific and Japan at Dell and Chairman, Global Emerging Markets, told BusinessLine that the company can now offer end-to-end technology capabilities to customers. Edited excerpts:

How will the EMC acquisition change the dynamics for Dell in the India market?

Dell India is our fastest growing geography and we are present here across all aspects, from R&D, manufacturing, services export, sales and marketing to support. Once the Dell and EMC integration is complete, along with VMware, we will have tremendous assets from all three companies to offer in the Enterprise customer space.

As per IDC last quarter, we hold number one market share in workstations and are within striking distance of getting to number one place in servers. In Asia, we are number one in storage. In the area of cyber security, our security-as-a-service solution SecureWorks that handles 120 billion network events a day along with RSA from EMC puts us in an industry leading position. Similarly Boomi, our cloud integration platform for connecting cloud and on-premise data along with Pivotal (a joint venture of EMC and its subsidiary VMware), can bring together new capabilities for customers. All our joint assets will help us bring more innovation to the marketplace. We will have the best talent, thought leadership, product leadership and excellent execution capability, which we believe will bring us great outcomes.

What are the innovations that the combined Dell and EMC entity will come up with?

We are focused on creating new computing models. For instance, in the area of digital transformation, we can provide a private cloud at the cost of a public cloud in a company’s premises with better control and better security, never done before. A big concern for India is security, where sometimes WhatsApp messages can lead to riots. We have security capabilities, from monitoring physical security on the street all the way up to what is happening on any of the digital platforms; allowing us to create a well-integrated picture for any law enforcement agency that was never possible before.

Another example of innovation is in the area of data analytics with the Pivotal platform along with our new IoT-enabling Edge Gateway solution, which helps organisations make best decisions regarding huge data volumes created by billions of sensors, embedded systems and connected devices.

After the Dell-EMC integration, how many people will be laid off ?

We are hiring, and will continue to hire. Last quarter (ended July), we hired 1,000 sales people worldwide, of which, 300 were in Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) alone. This quarter, we plan to hire another 300 sales people in APJ.

Your partner Microsoft, is encroaching into Dell’s space with its foray into the PC business. Your comments.

Microsoft is announcing a PC as a proof point of their Windows 10 execution. While their PC starts at $1400, which is a tablet with a keyboard; the average price point of a PC in India is $500, so we are not even competing. Microsoft is not getting into the PC business and there is no material change in their strategy.

The writer was in Austin, Texas, at the invitation of Dell.

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