Dive Brief:

• The way companies are interacting with vendors is changing as businesses look to transform technology stacks for the digital age, according to Chris Riley, President, Americas Enterprise Sales at Dell EMC. At Dell EMC, customers are more centered around a solutions approach where they can "align from a partnership perspective vs. a vendor relationship," Riley said. "They're looking for fewer, more strategic partners that can handle more of the landscape of the challenges that they have."

• This shift speaks to what Dell EMC — and Dell Technologies as a whole — has to offer, Riley said. Following the merger, the company has had even more bandwidth to help companies transform, focusing in particular on digital, workforce, IT and security transformation. For customers’ transformation efforts, Dell EMC’s goal is to lower cost, to create more efficiency, to make technology cloud-enabled and to "take advantage" of new technologies, Riley said.

• The size of its portfolio and its in-depth customer base is one of the reasons Riley thinks Dell EMC is its own biggest competitor, rather than traditional counterparts such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise or IBM. "If we execute, we don’t really have a traditional competitor in the markets you would most closely associate with Dell or Dell EMC or some of the other companies."

Dive Insight:

The technology giant is still in its first year post-merger, but Dell Technologies has continued to promote its advancements in the enterprise and its roadmap for maintaining and growing its market share.

Though the merger made waves in the technology community as a whole, the enterprise market was particularly impacted because of the disruption to the vendor landscape. Powerhouses in the industry such as VMware and RSA suddenly fell under one corporate giant. Now, one customer can receive a full suite of diverse services to match its technology roadmap, in essence creating a one-stop shop for business technology.

But Dell’s move is the opposite of what other vendors have done. Dell EMC wants to offer customers as many services as it can, making it easier to implement modern technologies. Other vendors, such as HPE, split its business, divesting some assets to focus on certain technologies, including its move to get out of the IT services and the software business.

HPE's focus on agility is the reason for becoming more streamlined, allowing it to create services more tailored to the customer. But for Dell, that is the opposite of where the market is going. As companies look to transform, Riley’s perspective is that customers want end-to-end support rather than pure specialization.

It’s too early to know how Dell EMC’s move will pay off, as the new company is still going through growing pains. In FY17, the company reported a $3.3 billion operating loss, though it’s too early in the Dell EMC marriage to spell doom for the tech giant.