Telecommunications to drive Dell’s FY21 digital focus

“In FY21, our focus on digital transformation will be more relevant than ever, especially in sectors like healthcare, online collaboration, education, telecommunication and digital cities,” Alok Ohrie, president & managing director, Dell Technologies India told Mint.

“We see digital transformation as a multi-year journey which will continue to create new opportunities for us, both from the infrastructure perspective as well as from a platform perspective.”

Telecommunications including 5G has become one of the key focus areas for Dell in the backdrop of the pandemic which has boosted reliance on broadband connectivity more than ever before.

“The government’s ambition to launch 5G in India this quarter might be challenging, given the current scenario. However, our dependence on telecom and internet infrastructure has increased and thus serves as an opportunity for policymakers, regulators and service providers to lead a huge deployment of 5G,” Ohrie said.

Due to rapid digitisation, India also holds the potential to gain maximal benefit from deploying 5G. Industry-friendly policies are also required to support the deployment and reap the benefits of 5G, he added.

As 5G becomes more mainstream, it will enable new experiences and capabilities for people and businesses to connect with each other, Ohrie said. “The change is going to open brand new opportunities that none of us have even dreamt of yet.”

In February, Dell along with telecom provider Orange completed live field trials of its first 5G-ready Latitude notebook which according to the company is the first PC to successfully pass the Orange 5G testing. Dell Technologies and Orange had begun collaborating on 5G innovation nearly a year ago to develop a new platform for cloud mobility.

As more people work from home in the current environment, Dell has seen a rise in demand for its remote work solutions including “business PCs, Workspace One, virtualization, and SD-WAN (software-defined wide area network) solutions, monitors, and other peripherals,” Ohrie said.

Over the last few years, Dell Technologies has grown by acquiring several companies, of which Perot Systems, EMC, and VMware are notable.

The company, which follows a February-January financial year, reported revenues of $92.2 billion and record shipments of over 45 million units of PC for FY20. In India, according to IDC’s worldwide quarterly tracker for Q4 2019, Dell Technologies led the enterprise storage market (external original equipment manufacturer) with 25.6% share by vendor revenue and also led India’s x86 server market with 24.5% share by vendor revenue.

―Livemint