Dive Brief:
- Michael Dell says he stands behind his bet to "go big" as other tech companies become smaller, according to an interview conducted by Computerworld.
- As rival Hewlett Packard Enterprise has spun off assets, Dell officially completed its $62 billion acquisition of EMC last month. The new company, Dell Technologies, is now the largest privately held tech company in the world, with 140,000 employees and annual revenue of $74 billion.
- Michael Dell says he thinks the company that comes out ahead will be the company that invests the most in innovation, which will be Dell Technologies. In particular, for R&D, "we've spent $12.7 billion in the last three years, we're spending about $4.5 billion a year — again, more than twice HPE," he said.
Dive Insight:
The merger set off a rivalry between Dell Technologies and HPE, two companies with similar backgrounds that took drastically different approaches to compete in the market.
In June, HPE reportedly spoke to "several hundred" Dell-EMC partners during HPE’s Discover Conference in hopes of recruiting them to sell the HPE product portfolio. The company also offered "special accommodations" to allow partners to move into the HPE channel program at the same level they are at with Dell-EMC.
HPE CEO Meg Whitman has also criticized Dell’s merger with EMC and claims the company won’t be nimble enough to compete effectively going forward. Because HP split its enterprise and consumer-facing divisions into two different companies, HPE and Dell Technologies are only competing for new business customers.
Dell said being a private company will also prove beneficial because it allows the company to take "a long-term perspective as to the future of our business, thinking about three, five, 10 years," rather than the typical 90-day cycle that companies such as HPE have to think in because of obligations to report to shareholders.
