Dell Donates Millions To Fight Coronavirus: ‘We Are All In This Together’
Dell Technologies is donating at least $4 million to fund front-line organizations who are fighting the coronavirus pandemic as well as to hospitals in China.
Dell Technologies is dishing out millions of dollars to fight the coronavirus on several fronts – from upgrading IT infrastructure in China hospitals to $3 million to fund front-line organizations fighting the worldwide pandemic.
“We must protect each other and especially our most vulnerable – our elderly and those with underlying conditions,” said Dell CEO and founder Michael Dell in a blog post announcing his company’s coronavirus donations. “At the same time, we are managing the impact on our own business and supply chain operations, so we can take care of you. Whether enabling a remote workforce, ensuring business continuity, powering the technology for infectious disease prevention and control, or providing simple, human advice, support and friendship – we are here to help.”
The $92 billion Round Rock, Tex.-based company will give roughly $284,000 to fund materials such as surgical masks, protective clothing and eye protectors for local hospitals in China. Additionally, Dell will donate IT infrastructure valued at more than $850,000 to the Hubei Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in China to help upgrade their technology to enable the center to respond to the epidemic more effectively.
[Related: IDC IT Spending Forecast Cut Due To Coronavirus; No Slowdown For Partners Yet]
Dell is setting aside a whopping $3 million in funds and technology to help “meet the greatest needs of our communities and front-line organizations” working to treat and contain coronavirus across the globe.
Lastly, Dell has agreed to match employee donations to the CDC Foundation’s Emergency Response Fund up to $10,000 per employee. The company has set up a fundraising page where employees can donate to the CDC fund, which is used to support local and state health departments, communications, data management and critical response supplies, to name a few.
In a recent interview with CRN, Michael Dell said he’s never seen anything have such an impact on the IT world as the coronavirus in his 35-year career.
“There’s been nothing really like this. So the whole work-from-home movement is something our customers need a lot of help with,” said Dell. “We are actively helping our customers and partners with solutions, not just the products. Because it’s not just as simple as, ‘Okay, here’s your computer, go work from home.’ There’s a lot more involved in how do you get teams to collaborative, be productive, share information and recreate the incidental communications and collaboration that occurs when people are physically together.”
The company, who reported earlier this month that one of its own employees tested positive for coronavirus after visiting its headquarters, is limiting international and domestic travel for Dell team members and contractors to business-critical and customer-critical only. When employees travel to or through countries that have travel bans in place – for personal and non-Dell reasons -- they must self-quarantine, refrain from entering any Dell Technologies facility or customer site, nor interact with any Dell personnel or customers for 14 days upon returning home.
Approximately 65 percent of Dell employees already work from home on some sort of regular basis. Dell has implemented a work-from-home policy for employees capable of doing so. For Dell employees who need to go into work, Dell is promising that it will conduct deep sanitizing and cleaning of its facilitates each night in addition to two more cleanings per day.
“We are all in this together,” said Dell in a recent tweet.
I want to share a few thoughts with our customers, partners as we reinvent how we work, live during COVID-19 pandemic, along with a link to more about what @DellTech is doing at this time. We are all in this together. Be safe and take care of each other. https://t.co/s47abYIALG
— Michael Dell (@MichaelDell) March 13, 2020