Michael Dell: Going Private Has Fueled Creativity, Market-Share Gains

Dell's decision to go private has unlocked more creativity, big-picture thinking and fast-growing relationships with Synnex and other distributors, said founder and CEO Michael Dell.

"I love having control of our destiny and being able to make the investments," said Dell, who took the company private in October 2013. ""We're operating with a whole different pace in terms of our aggression and gaining share."

Dell told the nearly 2,000 attendees at Synnex's Inspire North American Conference that his team had, as a public company, become too focused on generating a certain level of income each quarter, and therefore wasn't even hearing about outside-the-box ideas that could dramatically increase income in the long run but required some initial investment.

[RELATED: CRN Exclusive: Dell Federal Embraces Distribution, To Work With Ingram Micro, Synnex]

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"As we've changed this focus, we're starting to hear about ideas, and we're investing not in all of them, but in a number of them," Dell said Thursday at the TD Convention Center in Greenville, S.C.

Moving to private ownership has allowed Dell's leadership and ownership to focus completely -- with no jitters -- on research and development, customer innovation, new products and new capabilities, Dell said. And the benefits of shifting from a 90-day horizon to a three- to 10-year horizon are laid bare by the numbers.

Dell grew its patent filings by 28 percent in 2014 -- its first full year as a private company -- to the highest level ever recorded in the vendor's 31-year history. Dell's net promoter score -- which gauges the loyalty of a firm's customer relationships -- also reached its highest level in company history, he said.

Market data also is evidence of the success of Dell's new approach.

The Round Rock, Texas-based vendor has gained market share in the PC business for 11 consecutive quarters, Dell's longest run of success since the 1990s, and is now the leading vendor in commercial PC sales for the U.S. Dell also gained another 1.8 percent of market share in the mainstream server business, and led all vendors in the number of bytes shipped for storage in the most recent quarter.

Across all business, Dell recorded nearly a 1 percent market-share gain last quarter, according to Michael Dell. Dell also has aggressively leveraged distribution to fuel its gains in market share.

The vendor only began working with Synnex in November 2014, allowing the Fremont, Calif.-based distributor to sell Dell PCs, servers, storage, networking, converged infrastructure, software and Wyse virtual desktops to its commercial customers. And in August, Dell for the first time allowed distribution (Synnex and Ingram Micro) to sell to partners in the federal space.

"I'm really excited about the relationship created in the last year with Synnex and its partners," Dell said. "The growth opportunity we see is tremendous."

Much of that growth will come north of the border, with Synnex beginning sales to Dell's Canadian partners Nov. 1.

Dell also was recognized in September by the Global Technology Distribution Council (GTDC) as the large vendor most rapidly growing its use of distribution for hardware over the past year. Dell's distribution business is up "double digits" on a year-over-year basis, according to Frank Vitagliano, vice president for global partner strategy and programs.

Dell also has made a slew of acquisitions to bolster its end-to-end capabilities and take advantage of the convergence between storage and compute. The vendor now has expertise in everything from data protection and systems and information management software to cloud integration, security and the data center.

Working with Dell has become a little easier since the company went private, according to Mark Christopher, chief financial officer of NCS Technologies. The Gainesville, Va.-based Dell OEM partner has found the vendor to be more flexible, willing to look at long-term opportunities and willing to let customers test expensive servers at no cost to NCS.

Similarly, Metro Datacom found it much easier to procure Dell products and services since the vendor began working with Synnex in November, according to company President Ace Ten Eyck. The McLean, Va.-based company likes being able to lean on Synnex for help with deploying and supporting Dell products, Ten Eyck said.

PUBLISHED OCT. 1, 2015