It took Michael Dell four years, a $63 billion mega merger, and going private, for his namesake computer company to embark on a new future. The newly named company, Dell Technologies, has also returned to the Fortune 500 as one of America’s biggest corporations ranked at number 41.
So what exactly is the new Dell? And how does the huge acquisition of EMC fit under the Dell roof?
Here’s how a confident Michael Dell who continues as CEO of the new enterprise explains it: “We store a little over half of the mission critical data in the world. It requires modern infrastructure, requires an enabled workforce, has to be secure. So we’re really a big enabler for all the world’s leading companies, governments, institutions to jump into this digital transformation.”
It’s quite an incredible journey for a company that was founded in Dell’s dorm room at University of Texas at Austin in 1983 with a $1,000 investment to sell IBM clones. Over the next two decades Dell Computer would become the most popular and best-selling PC maker in the U.S. Now Dell is competing with powerhouse companies like Amazon and Microsoft.
But Dell is undaunted by the challenges. “My life has been characterized by doing things that maybe weren’t really so obvious,” he says. “I’m not really doing it to prove it to anyone. I’m doing it because it’s fun. It’s interesting and creates a lot of opportunity. It’s cool. It’s stuff I’m passionate about.”