2020 has been a year of change and adjustment in ways that few could have imagined. The transformed world has also meant dealing with a new reality for chief information officers in most organizations as well.

“The role of the CIO just gets more important as we enable new ways of working,” said Jen Felch (pictured), chief digital officer and chief information officer at Dell Technologies Inc. “People are working from home with whatever bandwidth they have available, whatever space they have available. I don’t think that’s going to change, those things are here to stay, which means respecting what people have going on in their lives, making sure what the expectations are and giving them the technology to be highly productive.”

Felch spoke with Stu Miniman, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during a digital CUBE Conversation. They discussed Dell’s reliance on software-defined wide-area networks to provide flexibility and her organization’s role in serving as a test bed for future products. (* Disclosure below.)

Building out hybrid cloud

The shift to a work-from-home model as a result of the global pandemic has led to an acceleration in acquiring SD-WAN solutions via the cloud. According to one recent survey, over half of respondents were looking to acquire SD-WAN capabilities through a cloud provider rather than accessing tools in a local data center.

That shift has fit well with Dell’s own strategic information technology approach.

“We have a big investment in our SD-WAN initiatives that have not only provided us with cost savings, but a lot of flexibility, which is the imperative for most IT organizations going forward,” Felch said. “In the data center, there’s no stopping migration to using cloud-native technology in building out our hybrid cloud. That gives us much more flexibility.”

Dell’s IT organization also plays an important role when it comes to developing and deploying new technologies for its client base.

“I love this role because we do get to work with product groups about the solutions that we’re offering to customers,” Felch said. “They can use our employees as a test bed to look at some of the dynamics that we’re seeing, and then that goes directly into the new products that come out.”

Here’s the complete video interview, one of many CUBE Conversations from SiliconANGLE and theCUBE. (* Disclosure: Dell Technologies Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Dell Technologies nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE