While details of the Dell-EMC merger are dominating most conversations at Dell World 2015, the focus for some of Dell’s departments has stayed on keeping business running smoothly as usual while the merger heads toward finalization.

Tom Burns, GM of networking and peripherals at Dell, Inc., met with Stu Miniman, cohost of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during Dell World 2015 to talk about how the responsibilities of managing his department have stayed steady, what changes the merger will have coming his way, platform accessibility and the rising profile of Software-Defined Networking (SDN).

Multi-part business

Given the wide range of coverage in products his department position provides, Burns had no shortage of products and strategies to discuss, from the continued development of the Dell OS to plans for continuing to move up the stack.

“We’re offering kind of a mid-market solution, really going after Dell’s sweet spot,” Burns said, touching on pay-as-you-grow accommodations for customers, as well as the shifting balance of intelligence between the software and hardware layers of operation.

Giving acknowledgment to the looming news of the merger, Burns mentioned that “pieces of EMC will remain unchanged,” identifying NSX and other VMware, Inc. utilities as specific examples of what Dell intends to preserve. With additional solutions, technologies and cooperation on the way, Burns was optimistic but firmly realistic about future opportunities.

Flexibility at the software level

Burns placed emphasis on the importance of SDN, stating that as it has moved from capex to “a piece of the overall solution,” Dell was seeing “a quick advancement of the adoption around SDN” and “the benefits in common tools.”

As compute storage and networking are brought closer together, more priority is being placed on helping “customers move in this direction vs. staying in the normal network stack group.”

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.

Photo by SiliconANGLE