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 Sameer Garde, Country General Manager, Dell India, predicts that breakthrough products in price and affordability will be the cornerstone for growth in consumer space, while SMBs will drive demand in the commercial segment
As 2009 comes to a close, the technology industry is beginning to see improvements in underlying market trends, technology introductions, economic activity, and IT demand and spending.
For us, 2009 was a year of transition as we introduced a multi-faceted strategy for long-term growth, one designed to transform the company from its legacy in hardware leadership to a company that delivers targeted hardware, services and solutions to consumers and organizations of all sizes.
Consumer purchases in India continued to be strong through 2009, and were not impacted as much as commercial businesses; this helped maintain overall growth momentum in the market. We saw positive trends in the market in the second half of 2009, and hope to see renewed vigor in commercial as well as consumer buying. The trend toward mobility is bound to get sharper with falling bandwidth prices and the launch of 3G some time in 2010.
Personal computing trends
Consumers demonstrated a willingness to spend on technologies which are an extension of themselves, which reflect their personalities, styles and passions. They are leading connected lifestyles, and expect anytime, anywhere access to content, photo-sharing, social networking, gaming and videos. Consumers want these capabilities, and they want them personalized, with the colors, designs and content they choose. Some also showed a desire for laptops which are ultra-thin with premium craftsmanship.
The all-in-one PC as a form factor continued to gain popularity both in the consumer as well as commercial segment, with breakthrough products in price and affordability.
We believe that such innovations will help people fall in love with their PC again.
What enterprises want
What we heard from our large enterprise customers during the year is that they have been allocating too many dollars and resources to the management of legacy systems just to keep the lights on. The downturn certainly wasn’t helping, and budget-squeezed CIOs were limited in their ability to invest in innovation. The upside? An opportunity to identify and eliminate inefficiencies, which is being achieved by working with vendors who deliver targeted hardware, services and solutions.
This was true not just for large companies but also for SMB customers whose success is rooted in an efficient IT infrastructure. According to IDC, SMB IT spending growth has outpaced total corporate IT spending worldwide since 2002, and is expected to continue doing so through 2010. SMBs no longer want one-size-fits-all offerings. Instead they are asking for customized solutions that addressed their individual pain-points and make them more successful.
Data continued to grow at a rapid pace, driven, among other things, by the increasing use of e-mail and rich media applications, but budgets were being slashed. As customers begin to take a closer look at their current deployments, they are opening up to discussions on solutions and services in areas of archival, de-duplication, compliance and storage virtualization.
The industry trend toward the consolidation of offerings continued. Our acquisition of Perot Systems is one such consolidation move to expand the range of commercial IT solutions across a broad customer base.
Cloud computing and virtualization
Virtualization saw rapid adoption by Indian companies, driven by the need to optimize infrastructure and derive more flexibility while achieving cost advantages. It is also integral to the green IT initiative that many companies are driving within their organizations.
| Takeaways for 2010 |
- The trend toward mobility is bound to get sharper
- SMB IT spending is expected to outpace total corporate IT spending
- Businesses are asking for customized solutions that address their individual pain-points
- Customers are opening up to discussions on solutions in areas of archival, de-duplication, compliance and storage virtualization
- Cloud virtualization and computing can help companies to lighten their computing workload
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Two strategies in particular—cloud computing and in-house virtualization—can provide a one-two punch that helps companies, including SMBs, to simultaneously lighten their computing workload and pack more processing power into their existing infrastructure. However, cloud computing probably isn’t the answer to all scalability challenges; the jobs SMBs run in the cloud must run on whatever software the provider offers, and software customization will likely be limited. For the tasks SMBs choose to perform in-house, virtualization can help them get more out of their server and storage resources.
Channel focus
The channel continues to be a strategic partner for us to deliver the best products, services and solutions to our customers. From the perspective of channel partners, it is imperative that they be empowered for improved margins, hence much of our investments have been to offer them with better training and solutions to enable them to move up the value chain. Through a robust rules-of-engagement model, we have put in a special effort to make sure we are listening to our partners.
We have continued to reaffirm our commitment to customers, as also to our engagement with the community, through programs such as the Dell YouthConnect, free consumer recycling and other green initiatives.
In 2010 we will continue to differentiate through efficient, best-value enterprise solutions, as well as personal computing devices of all sizes that boast innovative design without a cutting-edge cost.
We believe that 2010 will be a year when our success will be tied to the customers’ success, and their ability to wield IT solutions to save, connect and grow. |