Michael Dell Takes Center Stage: His 5 Boldest Statements At Dell Technologies World 2018

'This Is Our Show'

More than 10,000 solution providers, customers and technology partners descended on Vegas for the first-ever Dell Technologies World to hear from Dell Technologies top leaders, including Chairman and CEO Michael Dell.

This is the first year that all of Dell Technologies seven brands, including VMware, Virtustream and Dell EMC, were combined into one major event at the Sands Expo Convention Center.

Here are five noteworthy comments Dell made during his keynote on Monday.

' 34 Years In The Making'

For me, this moment is 34 years in the making, and my hope is that we come together to share more than technology and expertise and products -- we'll have plenty of those -- but we share a vision. A vision of a future that is better than today. A vision of technology as the driver of human progress. I'd like the Dell Technologies World to be a platform for the possible. A showcase of the ways -- big and small -- that you're using technology to change the world.

Software-Defining 'Not Exclusive Domain Of The Public Cloud'

Most customers are beginning to realize that the cloud is not a place, but rather a way of doing IT, where everything is software-defined and infrastructure is code. IT is not a question of the public cloud versus the private cloud, but rather there's a right answer for every workload. By software-defining compute, storage, networking and security – it enables automation and improves agility. But this is no way the exclusive domain of the public cloud. Automating modern infrastructure also creates hyper-efficient, on-premises systems, especially for the predictable workloads, which for most organizations are about 85 to 90 percent. And we're working to ensure that you can run your workloads seamlessly in any cloud environment.

Software-Defined Data Centers Are The Future

Our VxBlock, our VxRack, our VxRail solutions, are your fast tracks to a super-efficient software-defined data center, and we have solutions ready to support your on-premise and hybrid cloud with VMware, Pivotal, Microsoft Azure Stack, Oracle, SAP and many others. For those workloads best suited for the public cloud, VMware is extending its lead as the No. 1 private and hybrid cloud to the public clouds – extending and embracing -- for example with VMware Cloud on AWS and on the IBM Cloud. We're also extending (our) Data Domain (backup appliance) to Virtustream, AWS, Azure and the Google Cloud, and we're innovating to make it much more secure to move your data in a hybrid and multi-cloud world by software-defining and virtualizing the network with VMware NSX. This is an absolute game changer.

Data More Valuable Than Applications

If AI (artificial intelligence) is your rocket ship, data is the fuel for your rocket. And if you know how to use it, with learning and inference, your data will become your most valuable asset -- even more valuable than your applications. And the great news about data, is you're going to end up with tons of it through the Internet of things. … As the Internet of Things explodes, so does the attack surface and security risks. So we're thinking deeply on how to secure this new, even more connected world. We also need a lot more storage and computing power, and AI-ready infrastructure – and not just for the cloud – for the edge too.

'Nerds' Are 'Becoming Rock Stars'

Digital transformation has burst onto the public consciousness. Every customer that I meet is reimagining how they use technology in every aspect of their operations to drive growth, new business models, customer relationships and new products and services. Technology is now at the very top of the agenda for business leaders everywhere and for the C-suite. Because today, technology strategy is business strategy. All of us -- the nerds, the engineers, the techie -- we're at the center of the conversation. The world's great introverts are in the spotlight and becoming rock stars.