Thu. Apr. 24, 2008
by Steve Schuckenbrock, President, Dell Services
With today’s acquisition of MessageOne, we continue building out our plan to dramatically simplify IT infrastructure services and give companies choice and flexibility in how they purchase and manage services. Our goal is to improve the price/performance of infrastructure services to save companies millions -- potentially billions-- of dollars for IT that will grow business and improve competitiveness.
Through this acquisition and our recent acquisitions of SilverBack, Everdream and ASAP Software, we’re building a SaaS-enabled services delivery platform to remotely monitor, manage and troubleshoot routine IT infrastructure issues such as patch management, anti-virus, asset tracking and software license management. We believe this approach will prevent many of the issues that challenge businesses of all sizes. And in contrast to standard industry practices, we’re making these services configurable and subscription based so customers can start or stop a service or any combination of services at any time, in just one click.
We’re also simplifying IT infrastructure consulting services. We’re using innovative tools and automated discovery agents and technology based analysis and profiling-- instead of armies of consultants-- to virtualize and improve data center power consumption, simplify storage and improve end-user computing, systems management and network security. We’re using these tools with information collected through our ITaaS management consoles to identify problems and prescribe pragmatic solutions that improve infrastructure performance for our customers. Our new partnership with Glasshouse—a specialist in storage assessment— and our new client migration assessment tool are two recent examples of how we’re bringing this to life.
Support is also a part of our vision. Our new ProSupport program, developed from customer feedback and launched in February, lets customers configure their support by speed of response, level of protection and pro-active vs reactive services. Support options based on usage models address the discreet needs of end-users and company IT professionals. And we included customer-requested services such as 24/7 support of road warriors; how-to support for popular third-party applications and one-stop support for 40 middleware and third-party applications for IT professionals. Our goal is to prevent issues and get to resolution much quicker and with less aggravation for everyone.
For too long, some companies in our industry have perpetuated IT complexity-- reaping its benefits via long-term, inflexible and expensive services contracts that consume precious IT budgets and resources. Dell is using customer insight, our efficient business model, new partnerships and the latest tools and technologies to Simplify IT giving businesses more value, choice and flexibility in how they purchase and manage IT infrastructure services.
Thank you for continuing to share your ideas and feedback with us as we build out our strategy.