Michael Dell: IT-Driven Innovation a Key to Economic Recovery

Strategic, Focused Investment in IT Carries Additional ‘Green’ Benefit
High-Performing, Energy-Efficient Technology Can Help Define Post-Recession Leaders

Finance.yahoo.com, Thursday March 26, 2009, 1:30 am EDT

BEIJING--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Strategic use of information technology streamlines businesses and governments and makes them more effective, especially in the midst of economic weakness, Dell Chairman and CEO Michael Dell told members of the international news media here today. Mr. Dell was in Japan and is visiting China this week, meeting with customers, business leaders and government officials.

“Leaders will continue to tap into IT for innovation and efficiency, and doing so now will help organizations set themselves apart as the global economy inevitably improves,” said Mr. Dell. “We’ve seen that many times before, including in the 1980s and following softness in 2001.”

IT a Common Thread for Winning

Mr. Dell said many of the most successful organizations will share three approaches:

• Increasingly standardizing IT in part by applying virtualization, a highly efficient technology that allows one server to do the work of many.
  
  
• Employing IT to unlock innovation, freeing resources that in the past have been consumed by maintaining technology.

“Forward-looking businesses are using IT to target unnecessary cost and complexity,” said Mr. Dell. Unlocking time, money, and human resources, he said, enables organizations to create new and higher levels of customer value; and,

• Creating a competitive advantage even as their organizations become greener. Dell, for example, is currently saving approximately $3 million annually and avoiding 20,000 tons of carbon dioxide through facility improvements and a global power-management initiative that turns computers off when not in use.
  

Driving Innovation

• Dell is helping small and medium businesses, large enterprises and public-sector organizations worldwide achieve improved performance and increased efficiency. Mr. Dell today made reference to a breakthrough portfolio of next-generation enterprise products and services that enable businesses to be more efficient and maximize people, time and money.
  
  
• The company’s new 11th Generation PowerEdge servers and Dell Precision workstations give customers outstanding performance, world-class management capabilities and thermals that can help them make the most of their IT infrastructure. The new PowerEdge portfolio offers optimal virtualization, system management and usability capabilities while providing exemplary power and thermals for overall energy efficiency.
  
  
• Last week, Dell introduced the world’s thinnest laptop, the first product from the new Adamo by Dell brand. Adamo is the flagship in a range of beneficially disruptive computer systems that combine leading design aesthetics, personalization and technologies.
  
  
• By listening to customers, Dell is also setting the standard for environmentally-responsible IT. Since 2005, Dell has enabled customers using Dell OptiPlex desktop systems to save an estimated $3 billion in energy costs and avoid more than 32 million tons of carbon dioxide through power management and energy-efficient features. Last September, Dell announced that all of its new notebooks would come with energy-efficient, mercury-free LED displays within 12 months.