Dell promised the company would release 4K monitors in early 2014 for "well under" $1,000. Such a price would be extremely aggressive for the displays, which typically cost several thousands of dollars. With four times the resolution of typical HD models, 4K monitors offer obvious appeal to artists, gamers, and stock analysts -- but with sub-$1,000 pricing, the user base could grow much larger.
In addition to announcing new products and services, Dell execs reiterated messaging points they've been using throughout the year. These points include the four major pillars around which the company is organizing its efforts: Transform, which Dell said involves moving clients off of mainframes and onto modern architecture; Connect, which pertains to securely linking and managing devices, including cross-platform BYOD environments; Inform, which revolves around big data and analytics; and Protect, which encompasses the company's security efforts.
Dell execs alluded to future developments in each of these areas. Michael Dell said the company would produce a new x86 server that will support up to 6 TB of DRAM, for instance, and that the company is working with SAP on optimized HANA offerings. But in talking up the pillars, Dell leaders also seemed to emphasize that the company has continued to advance, even as the buyout process overshadowed its activities since February.
Dell Software President John Swainson said it's "only been a year since we took seven or eight acquisition and started to rationalize all the great technologies." The company hasn't spent billions of M&A dollars in 2013 like it did in 2012, in other words, but that doesn't mean operations came to a standstill while the buyout process wore on.
Indeed, the company's cloud partnerships illustrate the progress it has made implementing new intellectual properties. When Dell purchased Enstratius in May, for example, InformationWeek's Charles Babcock noted that "Dell can start to realize more of its ambition to be the link to and management agent between many cloud users and their service supplier." With the new announcements, this strategy is precisely the one Dell has followed.
Swainson foreshadowed other upcoming refinements to the company's software portfolio. He noted, for example, that technologies from its Wyse and KACE product lines will be blended into a single Dell Enterprise Mobility Management product to help companies manage devices and protect data.
"It will do what Dell does best -- [provide] strategic tech and IP to a hard customer problem, and allow them to find the way they want to operate in that environment," he said.
Michael Endler joined InformationWeek as an associate editor in 2012. Michael graduated from Stanford in 2005 and previously worked in talent representation, as a freelance copywriter and photojournalist, and as a teacher.
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