With a monumental merger in the rear-view mirror, Dell Technologies Inc. has seemingly settled into its new position as a massive conglomerate of storage, networking and software services.

Having acquired EMC and majority shares of VMware Inc. and Pivotal Software Inc., and returning to Wall Street after going private for five years, Dell has weathered the all-consuming transition and has seen great success by some estimates. So what challenges lie ahead for Dell, and can its blended family of subsidiaries keep pace with market demands without things getting complicated?

Looking to answer these and other questions, SiliconANGLE Media Inc. is at Dell Technologies World 2019 this week in Las Vegas, with exclusive commentary and interviews from its livestreaming studio theCUBE. TheCUBE coverage will begin on Monday, April 29, at 11 a.m. PDT and end on Wednesday, May 1, at 5 p.m. PDT. (* Disclosure below.)

Software simplifies family complexities

Having undergone its own transformation, Dell is now working to advance its stated vision of helping other enterprises do the same. With the show theme “Real Transformation,” Dell is eager to showcase an integrated portfolio that addresses modern computing demands belying the digital transformation’s multicloud environments, powerful artificial intelligence applications and an ever-spreading edge of networked devices.

“Michael Dell’s goal is to be the leading infrastructure company,” said Stu Miniman, an analyst with Wikibon Inc., SiliconANGLE Media’s sister market research company. “How does that play into things like cloud, AI and IoT? Dell has an answer for all of those. Dell, like EMC before the acquisition, is a number of pieces.”  

Yet the challenge of crafting a cohesive product portfolio from all these pieces means enterprise solutions can sometimes be more complex than intended. Helping to glue the pieces together is the software layer, influenced greatly by VMware’s efforts in virtualization. Its solutions, including VxRail, have been deeply integrated into Dell’s servers to simplify cloud adoption processes and hyperconverged infrastructure platforms.

Appropriately, VMware has been a critical investment for Dell. Recent upgrades for VxRail include support for VMware Cloud and fully automated network configuration with Dell EMC’s SmartFabric. Just last month VMware refreshed its cloud portfolio with its first native hyperconverged appliance running natively on VxRail. This marks the first HCI appliance engineered from the ground up for VMware’s hybrid cloud infrastructure stack.   

Dell’s investment is paying off. Last quarter, VMware revenue jumped 17% to $2.6 billion, ahead of analysts’ estimates of $2.49 billion. VMware has indicated expectations to top $10 billion for the first time in fiscal 2020 on 11.8% growth.

Even for all the benefits VMware has brought to Dell’s family of products, no good deed goes unpunished. VMware’s popularity with Dell competitors leaves everyone in the gray area of coopetition, especially after VMware’s groundbreaking partnership with Amazon Web Services Inc. Some may wonder how VMware can keep hold of its customer base of 600,000 if integration with public cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services Inc. potentially leads them away from key Dell services.

Speakers at Dell Technologies World include Michael Dell, chairman and chief executive of Dell Technologies; Jeff Clarke, vice chairman, products and operations at Dell; Allison Dew, Dell’s chief marketing officer; Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware; and Joyce Mullen, president, global channel, OEM and IoT solutions at Dell EMC.

Other event speakers include will.i.am, founder and CEO of I.AM+; Ebin Shapiro, deputy editor at Time; and Brynn Putnam, founder and CEO of Mirror.

How to watch theCUBE interviews

We offer various ways to watch all of theCUBE interviews that will be taking place at Dell Technologies World, including theCUBE’s dedicated website and YouTube. You can also get all the coverage from this year’s event on SiliconANGLE.

TheCUBE’s dedicated website and Ustream

All of theCUBE’s exclusive interviews from Dell Technologies World will be available on theCUBE’s dedicated website.

You can also watch all the interviews on the dedicated Ustream channel.

Watch on the SiliconANGLE YouTube channel

All of theCUBE interviews from Dell Technologies World, which runs April 29-May 1, will also be loaded onto SiliconANGLE’s dedicated YouTube channel.

TheCUBE Insights podcast

SiliconANGLE also has podcasts available of archived interview sessions, available on both iTunes, Stitcher and Spotify to listen to while on the go.

Guests to will be interviewed on theCUBE at Dell Technologies World

Guests who will be interviewed on theCUBE include Michael Dell; Doug Schmitt, president, Dell Technologies Services at Dell EMC; Sanjay Poonen, chief operating officer of VMware; Jeff Clarke; Joyce Mullen; Pat Gelsinger; Ty Schmitt, vice president and fellow, Extreme Scale infrastructure, at Dell EMC; Ashley Gorakhpurwalla, president and general manager of server and infrastructure systems at Dell EMC; and Jeff Boudreau, president of Dell EMC’s Storage Division.

Also being interviewed are Howard Elias, president of Services and Digital at Dell; Tom Sweet, chief financial officer at Dell; Andy Anglin, director of cloud technologies at Halliburton Landmark; Tom Burns, senior vice president and general manager of Dell EMC networking and solutions; Chris McNabb, CEO of Dell Boomi; and Cliff Madru, vice president of cloud solution architecture and engineering at Iron Mountain.

Livestream of Dell Technologies World

If you are unable to attend Dell Technologies World in Las Vegas, you can watch key sessions, event activities and on-demand content here.

(* Disclosure: Some segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE are sponsored. Sponsors have no editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Image: Dell