Why Michael Dell Is ‘Quite Optimistic’ About The World Economy

‘We’re having a lot of people come back who now want to get things in a safer condition and start to add some of the governance, security, and things that they lacked in the interest of speed,’ says Bob Keblusek, CTO of Sentinel Technologies.

Michael Dell is bullish about the world economy ahead as many businesses around the globe are benefitting from a “reimagining of cost” stemming from the COVID-19-related lockdowns with “pent-up” technology demands in 2021.

“The world economy feels pretty good right now,” said Dell, chairman and CEO of Dell Technologies during a media and analyst Q&A session at Dell Technologies World. “If you look at businesses, certainly on the earning side, many benefited from a reimagining of cost during the lockdowns, and there’s been a carry-forward of those learnings. Plus, now you have a significant pent-up demand, and you have stimuluses by many central governments.”

Dell said although many places around the world are still battling the COVID-19 virus, technology has been the “only thing that really worked” during the global pandemic.

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“You have this acceleration of digital transformation because that’s the only thing that really worked in the lockdowns and clearly that’s a big factor driving our business as well. So yeah, I’d say we’re feeling quite optimistic about the economy, particularly the digital economy,” said Dell. “There’s some concerns and headwinds out there for sure, but I’m feeling very positive about this year.”

Bob Keblusek, chief technology officer at Downers Grove, Ill.-based Sentinel Technologies, one of the nation’s top solution providers ranked No. 114 on CRN’s Solution Provider 500 list, fully agreed with Michael Dell’s bullish thoughts on the economy and businesses driving digital transformation.

In fact, the first quarter of 2021 was Sentinel’s best revenue quarter in its history — which spans nearly 40 years — with sales growing at a double-digit clip with no “signs of slowing down.”

“What Michael Dell said about reimagining things, I do think a lot of IT organizations did that. There was a bit of a surge to rush to cloud, I don’t want to say they did it in a reckless way, but they did it in the interest of speed and keeping people working rather than taking the time and the planning that they normally would have,” said Keblusek. “So we’re having a lot of people come back who now want to get things in a safer condition and start to add some of the governance, security, and things that they lacked in the interest of speed.”

In terms of opportunities, Sentinel’s CTO said customers are now asking questions around data center refreshes as well as moving toward cloud collaboration.

“Most of our customers that have premise-based collaboration systems are now asking the question about moving to cloud, either with their existing vendor or looking at what options are available out there. That’s seen some acceleration,” said Keblusek. “Also, some people that had data centers and equipment that was already aging that they hoped to move to cloud, are seeing they’re probably not going to get there fast enough before they’re out of support, out of security. So we’re starting to see some people looking at another refresh or some sort of a smart cloud strategy where it’s more of a balance rather than they think they’re just going to lift and shift everything and move it there. There looking at it in a more practical approach. … So there’s a lot of projects that were held up that are starting to move forward.”

Michael Dell’s $94 billion Round Rock, Texas-based company sold millions of PCs since the COVID-19 pandemic began in early 2020 while also selling billions worth of servers, storage and hyperconverged infrastructure that enabled remote working and learning.

Dell said his company, channel partners and the technology industry as a whole help saved the world from potential economic disaster.

“Together, we prevented a complete societal economic meltdown. That isn’t hyperbole, it’s what we as technologists did for the world since the shutdown began,” said Dell.

You can read CRN’s complete coverage of Dell Technologies World here.