“Cloud computing is still a big question mark for SMBs”

How important is the SMB vertical
for Dell?

SMBs are one of the most important
areas for href="http://www.dqweek.com/Dell-bolsters-SMB-business-in-India">Dell's
growth. India by far is one of the prime markets in
the APAC region. There are over 1 mn SMBs in India having more than
1.5 mn PCs, and this is a huge market to score and grow. At Dell, we
are heavily investing in terms of introducing new products and
strategies.

What are the key requirement and
challenges of Indian SMBs?

We don't see any difference in the
requirement and challenges that the SMBs have in India compared to
the US, France and China. In fact, they all have similar pain points.
Essentially, SMBs are facing issues in terms of lesser number of IT
people, lack of IT expertise, lack of an automated IT environment,
managing explosion of data, and security. These are the common issues
across SMBs in different countries. Hence, our approach is to address
the pain points and bring solutions that suit their needs, and fix
their problem which would help them grow their business.

What are the new solutions that Dell
has launched for the SMB market?

On April 14, globally, we rolled out
new enterprise solutions for SMBs which are catering to storage,
networking and servers. Today, most of the SMBs are running desktops
as servers which do not bring reliability and performance, so our new
products are made in order to cater to such environment and need. For
Dell, servers, storage and networking are the growth engines and we
are continuously investing on these technologies. 2011 will be a busy
year for Dell, as we have planned at least 20 products for SMBs. We
expect the SMB segment to contribute 35% to Dell's overall revenue
globally in the next 3 years.

In your view, how are SMBs catching
up on cloud computing as compared to traditional products?

Cloud computing is still a big question
mark for a lot of SMBs. We feel that there is a lack of understanding
on what benefits cloud computing can bring to SMBs. There are also
too many marketing buzzwords associated with cloud computing,
however, the reality is that there do exist solutions which make
sense for SMBs to invest on cloud computing. But, there is a grave
need to explain in detail the benefits of cloud computing to SMBs.

What are the major business segments
of Dell, and how are they contributing to the overall revenue?

Today, Dell has four major business
segments-large enterprise, public, small and medium business, and
consumer business which contributes 40%, 27% and 33% (SMB and
consumer together) respectively to the overall revenue. The company's
global revenue for FY 2010-11 is $61.49 bn as compared to $52.90 bn
in FY 2009-10.

After Dell moved from direct model
to indirect channel, how has been the experience?

Our direct business continues to grow,
wherein our indirect business, primarily through channels in most of
the countries is doing well. Moreover to protect our partners, we are
making sales transformation. We are also evaluating on how we can
redesign the number of accounts any account manager could have.

What steps have been taken to
increase the channel partners and customers base?

For Dell, channel partners are the key
growth engine for the company's success. Our effort is to bring
partner centric policies. In this direction, we have floated Global
Commercial Channels to serve as a single-point contact for our ever
growing commercial channels. Other than that, we have recently rolled
out Equipment Finance Program in partnership with Macquarie in India.
For customers, we are introducing Customer Advisory Council. Besides,
for the first time in India, we are taking 20 SMB customers to Goa to
get their feedback and understand their challenges so that we can
redesign our products accordingly.