By LAURA LOREK
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

A year ago, Dell went private, the largest company ever to do so.

And Michael Dell, its founder and CEO, couldn’t be happier.

“I believe one of the advantages of being private is that we can direct 100 percent of our energy toward the success of our customers and partners and focus on a future that is well beyond the next quarter or the next year or the next shareholder activist,” Dell said. He kicked off the fourth annual Dell World, an event that attracts thousands of Dell customers and partners to Austin, during a press conference Tuesday afternoon.

Dell didn’t mention Hewlett-Packard by name, but alluded to HP’s recent announcement about plans to split itself into two separate companies. And other upheaval in the industry like IBM’s move to sell its server business to Lenovo. He said the moves created chaos and uncertainty for customers and partners.

Being private gives Dell the “the freedom and the focus that we love to have and that is translating into results,” Dell said.

B1oVPtlCYAEPXlTDell is the fastest growing large integrated IT company in the world, Dell said.

“Delivering year over year growth across every region in the world,” he said.

The company grew its PC shipments worldwide by 10 percent in the third quarter, Dell said. In the U.S., Dell grew its share by 19.7 percent. Overall, in the U.S., PC shipments grew by 4.3 percent, he said. Excluding Dell from total data, the rest of the industry grew just 0.2 percent, he said.

“We still believe the PC is how real business gets done,” Dell said.

Dell is number one in servers in North America and is number one in storage and it has had double-digit growth year over year in its software business and its number one in healthcare IT services, Dell said.

Dell also just announced a new customer service center in Chicago. It now has 15 customer service centers in 11 countries, Dell said.

Dell has aligned its business around four major customer imperatives: transform, inform, connect and protect, he said.

Concern about security is the number one prohibiter to the adoption of cloud technologies, big data, and mobility for companies, Dell said. That’s why security is one of Dell’s main priorities to address for its customers, he said.

During the question and answer session with reporters and analysts, someone asked Dell if the company is doing so well, why did it lay off employees. Dell confirmed to CNBC that it was laying off a few thousand employees this year. The company has 109,000 employees worldwide. In response, Dell said that it offered voluntary severance packages to employees to realign its business to meet areas of growth and expansion. He said as Dell grows, some positions are no longer necessary, but the company is hiring employees in sales, research and development and other areas, he said.