Dell Service Aims to Help Businesses Get Most out of Computers

Posted 01 July 2006 @ 01:12 am EET     Print     Reprint     E-Mail     Comments

San Francisco (Reuters) - Dell on Wednesday unveiled a premium support service, complete with 24-hour command centers, it touted as a tool for businesses to get maximum performance from their computer systems. The Texas computer company's Platinum Plus enterprise clients will have "mission critical applications" protected and get "benchmark" data to figure out how to improve their operations, Dell said. "Customers say that while they value speeds and feeds, it is about getting value of their systems," Dell vice-president of Enterprise Services Steve Meyer said during an interview in San Francisco.

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"A better chip matters, but what customers are really pounding the table for is how to make their whole IT ecosystem work better. It's not sexy, but it is what is important." Dell has a set of Enterprise Command Centers fashioned after command posts used by public safety officials during disasters, according to Meyer. Workers at the centers track conditions such as approaching storms or major political gatherings to anticipate problems with computer networks and get resources in position ahead of time, Meyer said. "It's a really cool setup," Meyer said.

Dell used Google Earth Pro to create an online mapping feature that lets customers or command center workers use the Internet to pinpoint the whereabouts of service people responding to repair systems. Among those already signed on for the Platinum Plus service, which essentially contracts Dell to make sure computer systems keep running at peak capacity, was the US Army, according to Meyer. "They can't afford to have downtime, obviously," said Meyer.

Dell's new premium service will be an upgrade in the United States, but will be offered for the first time in Asia, according to the company. "It is great news for our global customers," Meyer said. The Operations Performance Benchmarking service harnesses a natural obsession shared by many Dell insiders, according to Meyers. "We are maniacal about measuring things," Meyer said. "It is just Dell DNA. If you join Dell, you know wob to bob, worst-of-breed to best-of-breed, within six months."

Providing performance feedback to clients so that they could learn from what was working well, best-of-breed, to improve what was working poorly, worst-of-breed, according to Meyer. "To the best of our knowledge, this is absolute industry first and is not offered anywhere else," Meyer said. Dell invested more than $200 million in its enterprise service during the past several years, according to the company. The service division of Dell accounts for an estimated $5 billion in annual revenue, Meyer said.