As IT moves from the back office to the front office, Michael Dell, founder and CEO of Dell, Inc., wants to help his customers make the journey to that transformation. As we learned in the day one keynote from Dell World 2015, he believes that there is no other company poised to do it like Dell can. Since its inception, the company reports generating $900 billion in revenue, and with its latest announcement that it will acquire EMC, the founder of the private company only sees new opportunities for innovation throughout the ecosystem.

Today, Dell made a special appearance on theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE’Media team, at Dell World 2015, in Austin, Texas, for an exciting exchange with hosts John Furrier and Dave Vellante about the EMC acquisition and the future of Dell.

Making life easier for enterprise

According to Michael Dell, the journey of transformation is now less complicated.

“We have incredible assets, talent, resources, reach and breadth across the globe,” he said, adding that customers are energized because it is making life easy for them to bring it all together by providing more of the necessary solutions.

Behind the deal

Furrier wanted the details behind the deal. And Vellante brought up a conversation last year where he asked Dell, “What would you do if you were Joe Tucci [chairman of the board of directors, president and CEO of EMC]?”

Dell responded by saying that he reached out to Tucci, who was a longstanding friend and ally. They were already in discussions at that time, and both parties wanted the best outcome for EMC and believed that acquisition was the way to go. Dell believes, “The companies are complementary, and it creates an absolute enterprise powerhouse.” He also feels that privatization was intriguing to EMC due to the ability to accomplish more.

EMC owns 80 percent of the hotly debated company VMware, Inc. When asked about another friend, Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware, Dell reported, “We all see an incredible opportunity. Now let me say as it relates to VMware, we have been very clear that it will remain independent public company.” Dell reached out to key ecosystem partners to assure them that VMware would run as usual and that there is no incentive to disrupt partnerships. He feels VMware is a special company.

Dell is dangerous to the ecosystem

When talking about the transformation of the business, Dell acknowledges that it is a big move and the journey addresses customer needs. “One thing I’ll say about the enterprise is we built an incredible enterprise business at Dell and I don’t think we have gotten our due relevant to level of innovation and investment we put forth,” he said. He believes the alliance with EMC will help remedy Dell’s reputation in the enterprise arena.

Business model theory

Furrier asked Dell about how the businesses will integrate. Dell’s policy seems to be if you put them together your will crush them. “There are unique businesses with unique customers and you do not need to amalgamate them,” he said, pointing to Dell’s acquisition of SecureWorks.

He said that allowing the company to focus on its core business was the right approach because it is growing. He feels that Dell’s role is to incubate the new businesses.

Pivotal moments

When asked about Pivotal Software, Inc. (the EMC Federation’s fastest-growing business unit that spun off from both EMC and VMware, Inc. in 2013) and EMC’s intent to take the company public, Dell agrees with the decision and says they are on a path to IPO. He is impressed by what the company does and wants to take a closer interest in what he calls an “incredible asset.”

The merger is exciting, and Dell is looking forward to the opportunities that lie ahead. Certainly the decision to acquire EMC was a long and deliberate process that he feels was worth it.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of Dell World 2015. And join in on the conversation by CrowdChatting with theCUBE hosts during Dell World 2015.

Photo by SiliconANGLE