Founder and CEO Michael Dell kicked off Dell World in Texas this week with an hour-and-a-half keynote speech in which he presented new hardware products, cloud services and the company's vision of the future of IT.
During the opening press conference, the CEO also commented the $67 billion acquisition of EMC gives Dell "an incredible position in the IT of tomorrow: digital transformation, hybrid cloud, security, mobile and more".
He said CIOs are trying to fund digital transformation by reducing cost in the infrastructure, and there is a move to virtualisation and hyper-converged systems where the silos are starting to go away. "It's important to lead in the next wave of IT, and the combination of Dell and EMC gives us a leadership in that position."
The fifth annual Dell World technology conference took place from 20 to 22 October. It was a hectic, information-packed event in which Dell, the world's third largest PC-maker, connected with business and IT stakeholders: VPs, CEOs, CIOs, developers, designers, and analysts but also the international press.
The conference featured a mix of keynotes, hands-on demos, panel discussions, interactive technology demonstrations and whiteboard sessions.
During the main keynote, which also briefly featured a discussion with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on the companies' new cloud-partnership, Dell presented new products, security services and cloud solutions.
Hardware
The company announced its first Dell Datacenter Scalable Solutions (DSS), designed and built to meet the storage needs of an exascale future, and aimed at the specific needs of Web tech, telecommunications service providers, hosting companies, oil and gas, and research organisations.
New products include the DSS 7000 4U server, which is able to fit 90x 3.5-inch drives and a max of 720-terabytes, as well as the flagship SC9000 storage controller. All new DSS hardware is equipped with Intel's latest Xeon E5 processors.
The company introduced a portfolio of backup and recovery solutions labelled Dell Data Protection & Rapid Recovery.
The next wave of Dell XC Series of Web-scale converged appliances was also unwrapped. These integrate compute, storage and hypervisor resources into a single offering, to help reduce total cost of ownership and streamline data centres.
The new line of servers is now globally available, while the new backup and recovery solutions will be on sale as of Q4.
Dell also revealed a refresh of its OptiPlex range of desktop workstation PCs. The fully revamped OptiPlex portfolio unveiled during the keynote are claimed to feature faster hardware, higher RAM and storage capacity, less power consumption and a smaller form factor.
Dell launched the Wyse 5050 AIO desktop virtualisation solution, which is specifically designed for VMware environments. It offers a full HD 23.6-inch display and support for high-resolution 3D graphics and advanced applications such as CAD and video editing.
The new OptiPlex range is available worldwide now, while the Wyse 5050 will ship in the US this December, and expand to other regions in 2016.
Security
During his keynote, Dell introduced a range of new security products and solutions, including the SonicWall protection service that should be able to better defend against next-generation malware and threats. It scans files of any size and holds potentially malicious unknown files until a verdict can be reached.
To further improve identity and access management, the new version of the Cloud Access Manager should enable secure access to all internal and cloud-based Web applications while enforcing security policies and controls.
Internet of things
Michael Dell made it clear his company sees great potential in the Internet of things (IOT), and therefore launched the Dell Edge Gateway 5000 device to manage enterprise IOT assets.
This "mini-server" features a range of analytics capabilities, expanded I/O options and was specifically designed to operate in extreme environments.
The Dell Edge Gateway 5000 sits at the edge of the network (near the IOT devices and sensors) with local analytics and other middleware to receive, aggregate, analyse and relay IOT data.
It has the ability to be mounted on the wall and to operate in locations with extreme temperatures, such as boiler rooms and rooftops. It also features operating system flexibility with choices that include Ubuntu, Wind River Linux, and Windows 10 IOT Enterprise.
Big data
Dell World 2015 saw the launch of a series of big data and analytics solutions and services designed to help companies turn their massive amounts of data into strategic and tactical advantages, and enable better and faster decision-making.
These include a new release of Dell's analytics software platform and analytics-as-a-service aimed at industries such as banking, healthcare and insurance.
Hybrid cloud
Finally, Dell said it will offer an expansion of its cloud portfolio with a new hybrid cloud solution, featuring technology that was developed in conjunction with Microsoft.
The goal of this new cloud partnership between Dell and Microsoft is to minimise the risks that come with initial cloud adoption, reduce complexity, and keep costs as low as possible while maximising control over data assets within that cloud environment. To achieve that, it features automated deployment and maintenance capabilities.
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