Michael Dell’s 5 Boldest Remarks On Public Cloud, Edge Computing And His Pledge To Hire More Women

‘This is why Dell Technologies exists—to unlock the power of data to solve our greatest challenges,’ says Michael Dell, founder and CEO of Dell Technologies, during his keynote at Dell Technologies Summit Tuesday.

‘This Is Why Dell Technologies Exists’

Michael Dell has bullish future plans for Dell Technologies, including becoming the kingpin of unlocking the power of data, simplifying technology, and transitioning Dell’s global workforce to be comprised of 50 percent women by 2030.

“This is why Dell Technologies exists—to unlock the power of data to solve our greatest challenges,” said Dell on stage during his keynote at the Dell Technologies Summit in Texas Tuesday.

Dell said across the $91 billion tech giant, Dell Technologies is creating the future of infrastructure from the cloud to the edge in order to make life simpler. “Innovating a simple open platform that’s going to secure and move siloed data to drive learning, insights and action when and where it’s needed, I believe, is the most important work we can be doing,” he said.

Dell also didn’t shy away from taking a jab at public cloud providers during his keynote.

“Our 600,000 vSphere customers have 70 million virtualized workloads—by the way, this is bigger than all the public clouds combined—and by integrating Kubernetes into vSphere, customers can operate their developer environment with the same management and automation tools that they know and love,” he said.

Here are the Dell’s five boldest statements from his keynote at Dell Technologies Summit.

VMware vSphere Outnumbers Public Cloud

The car has to talk to the bus, which has to talk to the 18-wheeler, which has to talk to the traffic lights and roads—and without data integration or coordination, it’s just noise and some kind of chaos. So the integration and the security of data are really our biggest challenge going forward. The promise of progress from all this data is really just a promise unless we can bring it all together and do something useful with it, while at the same time protecting and securing it. We believe Dell Technologies is the only company with the capability to do this. We’re positioned to be the open simplifier, preserving and moving data across an increasingly fragmented environment.

This is really the whole plot of bringing together Dell and EMC and VMware, the leading development platform with cloud integration with security. We’re hard at work integrating our innovation across Dell Technologies to create a simple data application and operations environment that is simple, open and unified. The applications and workloads can move safely in virtual machines and containers through an abstracted infrastructure that is software-defined, intelligent and autonomous. Dell Technologies Cloud platform really exemplifies the kind of integrated innovation that we’ve been working on. … Our 600,000 vSphere customers have 70 million virtualized workloads—by the way, this is bigger than all the public clouds combined—and by integrating Kubernetes into vSphere, customers can operate their developer environment with the same management and automation tools that they know and love.

‘This Is The Most Important Work We Can Be Doing’

[We have created] our On Demand and flexible consumption models so customers consume and buy technology in whatever way is best for them. We’re automating and abstracting infrastructure so organizations enable developers to apply their resources to innovation and expressing their competitive advantage through software and data. Across Dell Technologies, we’re creating the future of infrastructure, from the cloud to the edge, to make life simpler. Innovating a simple open platform that’s going to secure and move siloed data to drive learning, insights and action when and where it’s needed, I believe, is the most important work we can be doing. It also represents a generational opportunity to create value for our team members, for our customers and for our communities. A generational opportunity to continue to lead our company with ethics and integrity. A generational opportunity to make a positive impact on the world.

Unlocking The Power Of Data ‘Is Why Dell Technologies Exists’

All of the physical objects are becoming instrumented and connected and digitized, which is creating an enormous stream of data in the digital universe. It’s everywhere and in every thing—and it’s coming at us very fast. It’s in our homes, our buildings, our cars, our clothes, the entire world—this is the digital transformation.

In 2007, the entire cellular network in the United States moved 86 petabytes of data. Today, 86 petabytes move across the cellular network in 18 hours. In 10 years, 86 petabytes will move across the cellular network in 10 minutes. That’s a 52,000-times increase in the amount of data. This is why we call it the ‘next data decade.’ This tsunami of data holds incredible promise to advance humanity more than any force or really at any time in human history. Just putting this technology in the hands of people is not enough. The greatest opportunity is to really put this data to work to help the most people. This is why Dell Technologies exists—to unlock the power of data to solve our greatest challenges.

‘Massive Build-Out In Edge Computing’

All of our industries and our society, in fact the entire world, is being digitally transformed. But behind the scenes, it’s not as pretty. It’s becoming increasingly fragmented among heterogeneous environments. Data is increasingly siloed across a multi-cloud world. Think about the explosion in the edge and the amount of data and compute that’s going to be required at the edge. You have autonomous factories, all kinds of moving vehicles, transportation, delivery services, intelligent hospitals and buildings—and the demands of performance, latency, costs, security, compliance are all going to require orders of magnitude of more data and processing power at the edge than in all of the clouds combined. It means a massive build-out in edge computing in a highly distributed model processing data with artificial intelligence and making decisions in real time.

If you think the environment is fragmented right now, as literally everything in the world becomes intelligent and connected as infrastructure gets more distributed and more vertical, the fragmentation explodes along with it. This is a future problem that creates enormous complexities, and worse, the artificial intelligence and machine learning won’t work if data is fragmented in hundreds or thousands of different places and databases.

‘Women Will Comprise 50 Percent Of Our Global Workforce By 2030’

I’m very proud to announce our vision for 2030: Progress Made Real. The goals are centered around four areas where we believe our company can have the greatest impact. First, it’s advancing sustainability. Second, cultivating inclusion. Third, transforming lives. And fourth, upholding ethics and data privacy. For example, in sustainability, our ambition is pretty big here—it’s one-for-one recycling. That means that by 2030, for every product that a customer buys, we will reuse or recycle an equivalent product. Our 2030 plan is full of audacious goals grounded in action. While we don’t know exactly how to do all these things today, that’s precisely the point—it stretches us to create new things just like our 2020 goals did almost a decade ago. We’ll tap the brightest minds we can find to help us get there. That’s exactly why we’ve committed that women will comprise 50 percent of our global workforce by 2030. [Loud cheers from the crowd]. Thank you. That’s a global goal for us.