Friday, August 1, 2008

Dell - on the comeback trail?

In their first fiscal quarter (ended 2 May 2008), Dell reports that their "Consumer business sales for the quarter rose 20 percent and unit growth hit 47 percent, outpacing the rest of the PC industry." After a few years of stagnant performance, it could be that the PC industry's answer to McDonald's is regaining their footing.

I've been a regular Dell customer for about a decade now, and what I like about them is that you pretty much know what you're going to get. They're not the leader in quality, nor are they the cheapest guys in town. But, just like the pickle on a Big Mac is always under the top patty, a Dell machine is going to be reasonably priced and will good for about 2 years of a hard work.

Their latest strategy in the server business is to provide advanced support for cloud computing, putting them in competition for a share of the industrial power user wallet. These are organizations like Facebook, Amazon, eBay, and the financial sector. Dell's chairman predicts that this could be a $1 billion market in just a few years. I believe that's a conservative estimate, especially as organizations focus more and more on creating transactional capabilities for their customer-facing applications. Media companies will also start to explore cloud computing in order deliver more content over the web, bypassing Comcast and DirecTV and gaining more control over distribution and ad revenue.

I read about this on CRM Daily - Michael Dell Promises ...

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