Michael Dell: 'HPE's multicloud strategy is not going so well'
CEO claims that Dell made the first punch in scrap for multicloud supremacy
Michael Dell has hit out against infrastructure rival HPE claiming that the vendor's multi-cloud strategy "isn't going so well".
The Dell Technologies founder spoke to members of the press soon after announcing a swathe of new integrations between Dell EMC, VMware and Microsoft in addition to launching Dell Technologies' Cloud Platform.
VMware can now run on Dell EMC's hyper-converged Vxrail, and its device management software, Workspace ONE, has now been integrated with Dell devices and Secureworks as part of Dell's new Unified Workspace offering.
"No one has a better and more comprehensive multi-cloud strategy than Dell Technologies and VMware together. And I think at least on the part of HPE in some ways it's clear that their strategy is not going so well," he said.
Dell cited Dell Technologies' partnerships with more than 4,000 cloud service partners, which now includes Microsoft following yesterday's announcement.
"We have over 4,000 partners. Think about adding Azure to that as of the announcement today. It is certainly an important one to add. And within the Dell Technologies Cloud console customers will be able to seamlessly move workloads across all of those 4,000 cloud providers and their on-premise environments."
"I think you're seeing this trend of a lot of the public cloud services finding their way on-premises, which is the true definition of multi-cloud."
The founder alluded to when Dell first announced its $67bn merger with EMC in 2015, the same year that HP split into HP Inc and HPE, claiming that Dell is now beating its rival because "it took the first punch".
"I go back to 2014 and 2015 and I think, if you're going to get in a brawl, make sure you take the first punch, and make it a good one. Well, that's what we did by coming together with EMC and VMware and now we're incredibly well positioned against all competitors," he said.
Dell outgrew HPE in 2018, with Dell's revenues growing 15 per cent to $90.6bn for the 12 months until 1 February 2019, while HPE's grew by 3.7 per cent to $30.9bn for its year ending 31 October 2018.
Dell EMC overtook HPE in the global server market in Q2 last year after posting a 53 per cent leap in revenues and an 18.8 per cent share of the total market.
In a twitter post in March, Michael Dell claimed that Dell EMC is "running circles" around its rivals while posting a front-page advert of the company in the Wall Street Journal.
Despite Dell Technologies owning 80 per cent of the shares in VMware, the virtualisation vendor still operates as a standalone company.
But Michael Dell made it clear at Dell Technologies World that the event's announcements indicate that VMware and Dell are working closer together than ever before.
"We are VMware and VMware is us, right, so Dell Technologies and VMware are completely integrated from a technology standpoint.
"What you saw from Jeff [Clarke] and Pat [Gelsinger] is the collaboration and joint development of the solution across the entire environment. From on-premises, where VMware has 600,000 customers, not all of them are using Dell EMC infrastructure but quite a lot of them are, all the way through to public cloud and the edge.
He added: "We have a fantastic partnership with VMware that is clearly getting stronger. This is exactly what the customers told us they wanted. They want us to work together and build seamlessly integrated solutions."