Dell is like the Central Intelligence Agency of customer monitoring.
At Dell World, Amy Heiss, executive producer with Dell’s Social Media Ground Control Center, spends her days “listening to customers” on social networks.
In fact, the software that powers Dell’s social media listening station comes from Radian6 and allows Dell to listen, like a fly on the wall, to conversations about itself on social networks. Radian6, based in Canada and founded in 2006, provides software that allows companies to analyze how their customers are talking about them on social media networks and to respond to them quickly.
For example, Dell monitors Twitter with the @DellCares Twitter account and every time someone mentions the company on that social network, an alert gets sent to one of the screens at Dell’s social media monitoring center. Dell also watches a screen filled with people deemed influential because of their reputation and the number of followers they have on Twitter. If one of those influential people tweets something negative, a red box appears around their name on the monitor. If they tweet something positive, they get a green box. If they tweet something neutral, the box is black.
Heiss says that the color-coded system allows Dell to respond immediately to people who have problems with the company or its products.
Dell launched its social media command center last December at its Round Rock headquarters.
Once criticized for its lack of customer engagement, Dell has fully embraced social media in the past decade. The company sees huge opportunity in engaging customers online. Even Founder and CEO Michael Dell regularly tweets.
Author: LauraLorek@gmail.com (Page 348 of 352)
LauraLorek@gmail.com
Dell is number one worldwide in Healthcare technology solutions.
Dell partners with other companies like Citrix, VMWare and others to provide complete technology packages to hospitals, clinics, doctor’s offices and other healthcare providers. The company offers electronic medical records, medical archiving and mobile clinical computing.
Employees with the Dell healthcare division donned blue scrub outfits at Dell World and had a mock patient room set up to talk to people about its healthcare solutions. Sara Schaeffner, director of Dell’s healthcare services, talks about the company’s latest offerings at Dell World.
Dell is one of the top suppliers of technology to schools.
In the past few years, Dell has worked to provide schools with total technology packages in what it dubs the “connected classroom,” says Snow White, (yes, that’s her real name) a former elementary school teacher who works in Dell’s education technology division. She demonstrated some of that technology at Dell’s Solutions Expo at Dell World. The company showcased a projector, called the S300wi Interactive, that works with Dell’s laptop computers, smart board and pointer to allow students and the teacher to interact on wireless systems in the classroom. The teacher can either write directly on the smartboard or use it to write on the board from across the room.
During his keynote address at Dell World Thursday, Michael Dell proclaimed that Dell is no longer just a PC company. It is a global solutions provider.
In fact, Dell employs 40,000 people worldwide in the solutions area.
And Dell displayed many of its areas of solution expertise on the expo floor Thursday with Dell employees manning stations for everything from manufacturing Formula One race cars to secure computing solutions for healthcare and government applications like cameras and computers integrated into a patrol car.
Scott Radcliffe with Dell’s global government solutions division explains how law enforcement officials are using the company’s rugged computers in this video.
The PC market is alive and well.
“We don’t see PCs going away at all,” Michael Dell said Wednesday afternoon, during a question and answer session at a Dell World press and analysts event in Austin.
“There are a billion and a half PCs in the world and that seems to me like a pretty big number,” Dell said. “Estimates are that there will be 2 billion PCs in a few years so it’s a growth market.”
While the industry shifts to more mobile devices like smart phones and tablets, Dell sees those devices as augmenting the PC and not replacing it. He will talk more about Dell’s plans for innovation during an 8 a.m. keynote address to the inaugural Dell World Thursday at the Austin Convention Center. About 2,000 people are expected to attend the sold-out event, which runs through Friday.
Dell is also focused on capturing Hewlett Packard’s customers during this turbulent time as HP goes through leadership changes and company realignment.
“I also believe that there is certainly a benefit to us, an opportunity that is created by the turmoil and uncertainty at one of our major competitors,” Dell said.
Dell released a survey this week by Technology Business Research, that showed most of the 130 HP U.S. customers with at least 500 customers, surveyed reported concern with the direction HP has taken.
HP announced plans to jettison its $40 billion PC business and become a software and services company like IBM. But those plans are in limbo since the departure of its old CEO Leo Apotheker. Now under the leadership of its new CEO, Meg Whitman, HP may keep its PC business after all, according to a story in the Wall Street Journal Tuesday.
To further diversify its business, Dell has also shifted into the data center, solutions and services business over the past several years. It’s not the same PC maker that Dell founded 27 years ago.
Steve Schuckenbrock, president of Dell Services, reported that Dell is number one in services in the healthcare industry and number two in the education space around the world.
“We started out as a product company,” Dell said. In the last decade, Dell has evolved into a solutions company, but one that still cares about PCs, he said.
During the last 18 months, Dell has been one of the most active acquirers of businesses in the information technology industry, Dell said. It has added companies like Compellant, Kace Networks, Force 10 Networks and SecureWorks. Dell looks at more than 250 companies a year to decide which 8 or so it wants to acquire, Dell said.
“In last 12 months, earnings per share grew by 83 percent,” Dell said. The growth is coming from acquisitions and organic growth, he said.
Dell has also made a big push into the data center business and cloud computing. It has made $1 billion worth of investments in data centers this year. Dell just announced the opening of new data centers in the United Kingdom and in Quincy, Washington. This year, Dell has also opened nine Solutions Centers and plans to open three more by the end of this year.
A reporter asked Dell his thoughts on China-based Lenovo, which bought out IBM’s PC business, becoming the number two PC maker worldwide. Dell said that his company focused on profits and revenue and not necessarily number of PC units sold. He called Lenovo a great competitor, but said he didn’t worry about rankings. Research firm IDC reported on Wednesday that Lenovo overtook Dell for the first time to become the number two PC maker. HP ranked first with an 18 percent market share, followed by Lenovo with nearly 14 percent and then Dell with 12 percent.
The total information technology industry is worth $3 trillion and only 10 companies have 1 percent of that market and Dell is one of the companies that has more than 1 percent of that market. But it’s a highly fragmented market and not a single company dominates the industry, he said.
Dell also shared his thoughts on the fast growing tablet marketplace, which he says “is basically an iPad market.” He sees the challengers to the iPad are Microsoft’s Windows 8 and Google’s Android operating system for mobile devices.
“Those are the two primary alternatives to iPad,” Dell said. Dell appears to be backing the Windows 8 system for the tablet market. It will announce a wide variety of products around Windows 8 when it is released, Dell said.
At Dell World 2011, Michael Dell will take questions today during a panel discussion with press and analysts at the Long Center in Austin.
The sold-out Dell World event begins with a welcoming reception at Austin City Limits Wednesday night. Then, bright and early, Michael Dell will deliver the keynote at 8 a.m. Thursday at the Austin Convention Center. His speech will discuss trends in the virtual world such as data overload, mobile applications and security. He’ll also talk about how Dell’s “customers can best succeed, compete and innovate.”
Dell World 2011 also features speeches from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Intel CEO Paul Otellini, Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, former White House CIO Vivek Kundra, VMware CEO Paul Maritz, IDC Research Vice President Michelle Bailey and many others. The focus is on innovation.
Justin.TV is broadcasting the event live at 2 p.m. central time.
Today, the Game Developers Conference Online kicked off at the Austin Convention Center.
The conference, which runs through Thursday, features keynotes by John Vechey, co-founder of PopCap Games, author Neal Stephenson and David Calvo, creative director at Dofus creator Ankama.
In addition, the conference has panels, round-table discussions and an Expo with 78 exhibitors. The conference focuses on video game narratives, virtual items, smartphone and table games.
The organizers of TedxSanAntonio selected Gurvinder Pal “G.P.” Singh, founder of San Antonio-based Karta Technologies, as one of its speakers for next weekend’s event.
Singh now serves as CEO of Paras Capital Management. He will speak on his “Entrepreneurial Journey: From Expert Technologist to Servant Leader.”
Singh started Karta Technologies in his garage and sold it in 2007 to NCI, Inc., a government contractor in the information technology industry, for nearly $65 million.
Karta, a privately-held company, worked as a military and government contractor as well as for commercial customers. At the time of the sale, Karta had more than 400 employees and offices in 25 locations.
The second TEDxSanAntonio will be held at Trinity University’s Stieren Theatre on Oct. 15. Last year, about 250 people attended the inaugural TEDxSanAntonio event. TEDx is affiliated with the TED Conference held in Long Beach, Calif. every year. But the x stands for independently organized.
Last year’s event featured a speech by Rackspace Chairman Graham Weston on treating employees well.
“What we all want is to be valued members of a winning team on an inspiring mission,” Weston said.
Want to win at the Clean Energy Venture Summit or the South Central Cleantech Open in Austin?
It helps to have a solution.
Omni Water Solutions won the Clean Energy Venture Summit. The Austin Technology Incubator, Austin Energy and Pecan Street Consortium sponsored the event.
Omni Water Solutions pitched its portable water treatment system in front of a panel of judges from the venture capital industry. It competed against nine other companies pitching everything from a cell phone home monitor to a battery recycling company.
The Austin-based company uses “patent-pending Octozone technology” to purify contaminated water. The portable systems can be used during natural disasters or deployed to third world countries with poor water supplies.
Three other companies with “solutions” in their names also won during the South Texas Cleantech Open: CycleWood Solutions won first place, Silcon Solar Solutions took second place followed by Smart Office Energy Solutions.
Austin-based South by Southwest launched a new conference, SXSW Eco this year.
The environmentally focused conference kicked off Tuesday and runs through Thursday at the Hilton Hotel in downtown Austin.
The conference features speakers from the the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Siemens Corp., Hewlett Packard, World Hunger Relief, IBM, ERCOT, the Nature Conservancy and dozens more.
If you didn’t get an $800 ticket to attend the event, you can watch select keynote presentations through its live stream broadcast.