Juan Francisco Aguilar

What role has Dell played in helping companies adapt to remote work?

We envisioned Dell playing a key role as the supplier of all the equipment required for schools, large corporations, and the government to stay connected and work from home. I would define 2020 as a year in which we worked closely with customers to define their digital strategies, because most of them faced many challenges in terms of serving customers, delivering products, and providing solutions and products. Most were also struggling to modernize their data centers, which is another direction we took in order to help customers. The third one is helping them with how to deal with all the data they generate from their customers, industries, and plants. Dell has been playing a key role in the last four or five years integrating with EMC to become Dell Technologies in which we have helped many customers face the challenges of COVID-19 through infrastructure technologies such as storage and hybrid cloud and work-from-home technologies.

What steps is Dell taking to become the most essential technology company in the data area?

In 2021, it is hard to imagine just how many devices will be connected via 5G technology and how many devices are generating data with technology such as IoT. All this data is now interconnected, and everyone is generating content and data that can be used for many things such as identifying market trends, following up on marketing campaigns, and most importantly change the dynamics of many industries. It will be a data-driven world in which computers will know more about ourselves than we do. In order to do that, they need storage power, the right architecture, and a hybrid model to get the best use of all the clouds and infrastructure. Most importantly is how all this information will be protected in a secure way because of the type of data and how sensitive the information is.

What would you consider to be Dell’s added value in comparison to other players in the market?

The big difference is that regardless of the size of companies and corporations, almost every company manages between two and four public clouds as well as data on premise, or what we call private cloud or local information. The most important thing that we do is define and design architectures in a hybrid way, combining public clouds and companies’ on-premise data or processing power. We define an architecture that allows them to get the advantage of every single architecture or model out there.

Are you planning to partner with FedEx to create hubs for innovation here in Mexico?

We are a global company, so when something works in one place, we replicate it somewhere else. Right now, the company is heavily focusing on transforming most of our solutions and products into a service model. During the pandemic, customers want consumption models in which they can define how long they will use, buy, rent, or acquire those systems based on their individual demands. We have to be extremely flexible in order to offer those types of solutions as a service. Right now, we are focusing on the direction that this company is taking as a service model and learning how we can implement that in Latin America and Mexico.

What are your expectations for Dell in 2021? What kind of performance are you expecting in Mexico in comparison to 2020?

We will strongly promote the multi-cloud environment or architecture. Customers are willing to focus on this, so you will hear more from Dell on that. You will also hear more from Dell about the work-from-home transformation initiatives, as well as understanding the challenges and, most importantly, the strategy corporations want to take in order to transform their organizations digitally. We talked about data, new processes, and digitalization in which companies need a great deal of help. It is highly related to what companies can do with all the data they are generating. We have also been releasing studies, surveys, and analyses. We recently released a report on the future of work, education, and the economy and how new technologies will impact our lives and the way we do business. Right now, it is extremely important to have a solid technological infrastructure and the right design in order to be scalable, flexible, and adaptable to one’s needs, be it the government, business, enterprise, or others.