The conference was all about digital transformation. Company leaders must begin thinking about digitally transforming their companies or they face disruption from digital startups.

This was Dell EMC World—the first user conference after the major acquisition of EMC by Dell forming Dell Technologies. Touting the size and breadth of the combined companies, Michael Dell began the meeting, “Let the transformation begin.”

A poll of business leaders returned these sobering thoughts:

• 45% may be out of business in 3 years;
• 48% 2-3 years see big changes;
• 78% digital startups will be a threat

As Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE put it, “You go to bed an industrial company and wake up a digital and analytics company.”

“Dell EMC will be the trusted provider of essential infrastructure for the next industrial revolution,” proclaimed Dell further into his keynote.

I attended the conference at the invitation of the Dell social influencer marketing group. Press conference attendance broke down as 41% analysts, 41% press, and 18% social influencers. They expect the press number to decline and influencer number to increase over time.

Michael Dell in press conference: “Internet of Everything helps customers embrace the digital future.” Dell also sees the need to help customers move from CapEx to OpEx. This need financial need from customers was echoed the next week at the Emerson Exchange. Companies in many industries at this time have slashed capital expenditures. Any movement forward in facility and process improvements must be done through operations expenditures.

This was my second Dell World. The Internet of Things group is just over a year old. Its unveiling was last year’s conference. This year’s presence was greatly enhanced. The booth layout simulated an ice cream factory (see diagram). Emerson Automation was represented (along with partners OSIsoft, Microsoft, and Dell) showing valves, wireless transmitters, date ported to a database into the Microsoft Azure cloud using a Dell IoT Gateway.

Emerson’s Jim Cahill wrote this section of the process in his Emerson Process Experts blog.

Dell has taken an embedded PC platform, added its services, mixed in a variety of partners and baked up an IoT solution. Other partners included Air Watch, Eigen Innovations, V5 Systems, IBM, KMC Controls, PTC Kepware, ELM Fieldsight. Solutions included quality, security, data communications, analytics.

As I have written several times over the past year, Dell is serious about the manufacturing space. The IoT platform is designed to leverage Dell’s vast IT contacts to achieve IT/OT convergence from the IT side.

Dell Technologies new products

Dell Technologies is a serious technology player on many fronts. I’ll just highlight some of the many announcements it made during the conference.

Michael Dell was insistent that integration of Dell and EMC was achieving rapid results. Many of the products announced resulted from just that integration.

From the press release:

Global business leaders agreed that moving toward a cloud model, expanding software development capabilities and enabling faster innovation and deeper insights from data are key strategies to digital transformation. However companies are struggling to evolve their data centers, with 69% saying they are being held back by too many traditional applications. They are challenged with reducing sprawl and spend, while bringing systems up-to-date. New products and solutions announced this week at Dell EMC World are designed to help organizations accelerate their transformation and manage costs.

“To ensure that they’re not “Uber’d”, “Airbnb’d” or “Tesla’d” in their marketplace, today’s organizations must embark on a digital transformation. To truly realize their digital future, we believe the vast majority of organizations will transform their IT through a hybrid cloud strategy, ” said David Goulden, president, Infrastructure Solutions Group, Dell EMC. “The first ‘no regrets’ step is to modernize their data center through the most advanced converged infrastructure, servers, storage, data protection, and cybersecurity technologies to name a few. This week we are launching a wave of new products and solutions designed as the building blocks for this endeavor.”

Announced this week at Dell EMC World:

•  #1 in Storage, Servers, Virtualization = Powerful Hyper-Converged Appliances and Systems
  Dell EMC will announce the expansion of its leading converged infrastructure portfolio through integration with PowerEdge servers into VxRail Appliances and VxRack System 1000 hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI).

• New Dell EMC Analytics Solution Provides Business Insight to Drive Digital Transformation
  Dell EMC will announce the new Analytic Insights Module delivering all of the software, hardware and services necessary to stand up an environment for both big data analytics and cloud native application development in days rather than weeks.

• Dell Unveils New Endpoint Data Security and Management Portfolio For Greater IT Interoperability Dell will unveil its Endpoint Data Security and Management portfolio encompassing technologies from Dell, Mozy by Dell, RSA and VMware AirWatch, offering data protection, backup and recovery, identity assurance, threat prevention and advanced response, and endpoint device and application management capabilities.

• #1 Scale-Out NAS System Dell EMC Isilon Goes All-Flash For Unstructured Data
  Dell EMC will announce a new member of the Isilon product family, combining the high performance of flash technology with the #1 scale-out NAS platform in the industry. Dell EMC Isilon All-Flash is designed to help IT organizations modernize their infrastructure and deliver on the capabilities of a digital business.

• New Dell EMC ECS 3.0 Accelerates Digital Transformation, Delivers 60% Lower TCO Than Public Cloud Options
  Dell EMC will announce updates to the Dell EMC Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS) platform, with new support for Dell EMC PowerEdge Servers. ECS 3.0 is purpose-built to help businesses navigate the shift to an increasingly digital economy, with multiple consumption models offering 60% lower TCO than public cloud storage.

• Dell EMC Delivers Software-Defined, Cloud-Enabled Data Protection For The Modern Data Center
  Dell EMC will announce a new software-defined version of Dell EMC Data Domain protection storage delivering a 6x increase in scalability and support for Dell EMC PowerEdge Servers, along with new cloud-enabled software updates to help customers of all sizes ensure protection of applications and data in the modern data center.

• Dell EMC Extends Common User Experience to SC Series
  Dell EMC will announced it has boosted the capabilities of its mid-market proven SC Series (formerly Compellent) storage arrays by making it interoperable with the world’s leading portfolio of storage management, mobility and data protection solutions formerly only available to EMC customers.

• New Dell EMC OpenScale Payment Solutions Portfolio Delivers Flexibility in IT Acquisition and Consumption
  Dell EMC will announce availability of OpenScale Payment Solutions from Dell Financial Services, developed to span a broad range of Dell EMC products and solutions. The OpenScale Payment Solutions provide flexible consumption options, to help customers scale technology availability with IT demand.

• Extraordinary Dell EMC Partner Program To Provide Transformational Business Value and OpportunityDell EMC announced a preview of the company’s new and highly anticipated channel partner program. The Dell EMC Partner Program provides an unprecedented business opportunity for partners and validates Dell EMC’s commitment to the channel. Built on three core tenets—to be Simple, Predictable, and Profitable—the new program strategy ensures partners have ample opportunity, business continuity and commensurate profitability no matter their program tier.