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Corporate transformation can bring opportunity to both the company being transformed as well as its rivals. Dell transformed itself in 2013 when the company went private in a $25 billion deal. Now, as Dell’s rival Hewlett-Packard (HP) is nearing a split into two separate companies, Jim Ganthier, VP and GM for engineered solutions and cloud at Dell, sees an opportunity for his company from the change.
In a video interview with eWEEK, Ganthier discusses the benefits of his company’s private placement and the potential opportunities as other market players go through their own transformation. Ganthier also details Dell’s position on the public, private and hybrid cloud and how it is different from others in the industry.
“We take all of our competitors very seriously,” Ganthier said. “In chaos, resides opportunity, to use a Sun Tzu phrase.”
Ganthier commented that there is potential chaos and disruption going on at multiple technology vendors. For example, at Cisco there is a leadership change with the new CEO Chuck Robbins already realigning the management team. At IBM and Lenovo, there are also changes and challenges and HP is splitting into two groups.
“There are going to be a lot of questions in our industry,” Ganthier said. “While there is that chaos somewhere else, Dell is a safe harbor for customers that want to stand up either classic server, storage and networking as well as software services and end-user computing.”
The impact of Dell’s now being a private company also adds to the company’s ability to perform, according to Ganthier. As a private company, Ganthier said that Dell is faster and more focused than it could have been as a public company.
“When you have a very short-term focus and you’re thinking on a 90-day shot clock, there are certain decisions you’re going to make because you have someone else looking over your shoulder,” Ganthier said. “When you’re private, you can focus on customers, you can focus on the long term and you can focus on strategic aspects.”
Ganthier added that there is also a significant time-management benefit to being private. He commented that as a private company, the CEO and top executives don’t have to take the 15 to 20 days a year needed to get prepped for Wall Street. Instead, that time can be used to focus on strategy and execution.
“It not only frees you up, it [being private] makes you fast; it makes you more agile; and frankly, that’s one of the reasons why you’re seeing us put such great numbers up on the wall,” Ganthier said.
A core focus for Ganthier is cloud, whether that cloud is private, public or hybrid. In Ganthier’s view, the future of all cloud use is as a hybrid model.
“We believe that everybody is going to eventually end up in an hybrid cloud,” Ganthier said. “It’s not a question of if; it’s a question of how fast and when.”
Watch the full video interview with Ganthier below:
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at eWEEK and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.