It would be an understatement to say that Michael Dell has been quite busy lately. First, it was the $25 Billion leveraged buyout of the troubled company that bears his name, in partnership with private equity firm Silver Lake.
During the marathon buyout process Michael asserted that “This is a great outcome for our customers and our company…In taking Dell private we plan to go back to our roots, focusing on the entrepreneurial spirit that made Dell one of the fastest growing and most successful companies in history.”
Now that Dell is enjoying its privacy away from the glare of stock market and feeling its roots again, Michael’s second act was to fully focus on the rebirth of Dell as a solutions company for small, medium and large scale enterprises while gradually discarding its old avatar as a products company. Dell had briefly alluded to this impending transformation in an interview released earlier in April 2012. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lygzd1w1sj4
But it was really at Oracle’s OpenWorld conference in San Francisco this past week, where he gave the attendees and tech-world a bird’s eye view of his long term vision for Dell Inc.
“Our success won’t be measured just by short-term results but also by our ability to help our customers succeed five, ten and 20 years from now…We need to be looking not just at the quarter ahead, but at the decade ahead and investing to create value for customers as long-term relationships with a long-term vision…We are totally focused on transitioning our customers to more agile, more affordable, powerful solutions to help drive their organizations,” insisted Dell.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqGAvua6i3Q
And it is Asia and Africa with rapidly exploding populations where Dell has set his sights to sell his “more agile, more affordable” solutions. In an in-depth interview with AllThingsD, Dell spelt out his plan for the emerging markets.
“We’re also really active in emerging markets. We’ve been active in all the obvious ones. But we’re also really active in the outer reaches of the emerging market. We have a billion-dollar business in Africa that is growing rapidly. We’re also active in southern Asia. We’re expanding …into countries like Ghana and Kazakhstan, and Ivory Coast and Croatia and Nigeria. All these countries have governments and telcos, financial and energy companies, all of which need serious mission-critical IT. Half our business today is outside the U.S,” said Dell.
Dell, which has consistently been one of the biggest and most influential contractors for the mammoth US Federal government even as its global market-share was rapidly eroding, will now aggressively lobby African and Asian governments to purchase technology solutions from Dell-Oracle partnership to boost growth and profits.
Will this strategy succeed? Since Africa is producing 40 million births/year, 10 times that of North American births, and Asia is producing 74 million births/year, 10-times that of European births, growth will come from Asia and Africa, not Europe and North America, which are rapidly aging and dying. This means Michael Dell, if he plays his cards right this time around, will enjoy phenomenal success. And we wish him well.
[image from Youtube]