SXSW: Our first developer Chill and Chat

March 10, 2012

This is the 26th year of the SXSW (South by Southwest), the annual music, film, and interactive conference.  Everybody whose anybody, and even a few who aren’t, are here.   Yesterday the 10-day event kicked off.  As a company, Dell is a big participant and sponsor from panels, to music lounges, to an entrepreneur’s UnConference, to education, to gaming.

As for the Web|Tech vertical we have taken our own guerrilla approach to participation in this shindig in our own backyard.  Besides going to parties that customers and partners are throwing, Cote and I have organized a series of informal “chill and chat” meet ups for developers and tech types.

Last night we held our first soiree at Opal Divines.  Here is a mini-montage I made featuring a few of the attendees:

I asked the folks to say who they are, where they’re from, who they work for and what they hope to get out of SXSW.

The line-up

Our next events

If you’re around here’s where we’ll be tonight and tomorrow:

  • Saturday, March 10th  7-9:00pm  – Speakeasy – Downstairs (412 Congress Avenue, Austin, TX)
  • Sunday, March 11th 5:30-7:30pm – Hilton Bar (Finn and Porter)  (500 East 4th Street, Austin, TX)

Extra-credit reading

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

Dell Officially Launches Web|Tech vertical — the 100 second overview

February 29, 2012

Last month I mentioned that Dell was launching a Web|Tech vertical targeted at those companies who use the internet as their primary platform.  Well, a couple of weeks ago at our annual sales kick off (FRS) we debuted our six new commercial verticals to our sales teams from around the world.

At the show, which was held in Vegas, we had booths on the expo floor to talk about our solutions.  We also delivered breakout sessions to present an overview of customer needs and concerns for each of the six — Retail, Manufacturing, Financial Services, Web|Tech, Energy and TME (Telco, Media & Entertainment), as well as for our existing three verticals in the Public space, Government, Education and Healthcare.

Here is a quick overview I did of the Web|Tech vertical from the show floor in a mocked up developer’s cube in our booth.

Extra-credit reading

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

Kanban2go — How to build a cloud-based offering

February 27, 2012

Dell corporate strategist by day, entrepreneur by night, Prabhakar Gopalan recently launched a SaaS offering called kanban2go that helps you manage and share your task list in the cloud.  Prabhakar’s endeavor provides a quick overview of what it means to launch a cloud-based app today.  Take a listen as he talks about the process and what he learned:

Some of the ground Prabhakar covers:

  • Where he got the idea
  • From laptop to github to Rackspace
  • Desktop and mobile HTML5 version
  • Finding the right tools
  • Lessons learned

Extra-credit reading

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

The World of Web and Developers, getting to know it better

January 16, 2012

A couple years back, on the Public side of the house, Dell set up specific marketing teams  to focus on customer needs in three areas: Healthcare, Government and Education.  This vertical approach turned out to be a great way to get to better know our customers and their pain points and ultimately meet their needs.

Based on this success, a little while ago we kicked off a similar effort in our commercial business.  The first six verticals we are setting up are: Retail, Manufacturing, Financial Services, Web|Tech, Energy and TME (Telco, Media & Entertainment).  Web|Tech is the group I belong to (I lead marketing for the group).

Developers, Developers, Developers

In the Internet space we have already had a fair amount of success through our DCS group.  The idea with the new Web vertical is to learn even more about the customer set, companies that use the internet as their platform, and take this knowledge along with our accumulated experience, to a wider audience.  Two of the key areas of focus of this new vertical will be developers and open source software.

Look it up

One of the ways we are helping our teams get a better understand of the wild and wacky world of the Web and Web developers is via a glossary we’ve created.  In compiling this I pulled information from various and sundry sources across the Web including wikipedia, community and company web sites and the brain of Cote.

The glossary is organized into the following sections:

[Update Feb 1: I’ve gone back and linked the entries below]

Over the next several entries I will be posting the glossary.  Feel free to bookmark it, delete it, offer corrections, comments or additions.

Extra-credit reading

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

Mark Shuttleworth part two: Developers, DevOps & the Cloud

January 13, 2012

As I mentioned in my last entry, Mark Shuttleworth of Ubuntu fame stopped by Dell this morning on his way back from CES.  Between meetings Mark and I did a couple of quick videos.  Here is the second of the two.  Whereas the first focused on the client, this one focuses on the Cloud and the back-end.

Some of the ground Mark covers

  • The cloud, Ubuntu and OpenStack involvement
  • The developer story: connecting the dots between app work on the client and testing and then deployment on the other end.
  • The world of DevOps and how JuJu fits in
  • Apple’s iOS as a developer platform and where Linux might have the edge going forward

Extra-credit reading

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Posted by Barton George

Cote and I discuss Dell World and our new Web|Tech Vertical

October 19, 2011

Last week we held Dell’s first Dell World event here in Austin, Texas.  The two-day event was targeted at CxOs and IT professionals and featured an expo, panels and speakers such as CEOs Mark Benioff, Paul Otellini, Steve Ballmer and Paul Maritz as well as former CIO of the United States, Vivek Kundra.  And of course, being Austin, it also featured a lot of great music and barbeque.

At the end of the first day Michael Cote grabbed sometime with me and we talked about the event.

Some of the ground I cover:

  • Dell World overview and our Modular Data Center
  • (3:35) Talking to press/analysts about our new Web|Tech vertical and our focus on developers
  • (6:00) The event’s attempt to up-level the conversation rather than diving into speeds, feeds and geeky demos.

The Dell Modular Data Center on the expo floor (photo: Yasushi Osonoi:@osonoi)

(double click to see full sized)

Extra Credit reading

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

Cote’s first 10 days at Dell

August 25, 2011

A few weeks ago Michael Cote joined Dell from the excellent analyst firm, Redmonk which focuses on software and developers.  Cote who spent five plus years with Redmonk has joined Dell in our corporate strategy group, focusing on software.  I for one am very glad he’s here and feel that he’s joined at the right time in Dell’s trajectory to make a big impact.

I grabbed some time with him to get his initial thoughts and impressions.  Here are his thoughts both witty and wise.

[Note: So there’s no confusion, this Michael Cote is Dell’s second Michael Cote.  The first is the the former CEO of SecureWorks which Dell acquired.]

Some of the ground Cote covers:

  • Intro: Man is it hot, Cote’s background
  • (0:34) Why Cote made the move: going to the other side of the fence
  • (1:55) What is his new position and what will he be doing: his cloudy focus
  • (2:44) His first impressions: serious about solutions
  • (5:18) What his big goal is while at Dell

Extra-credit reading:

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Posted by Barton George

3 Reasons Public Clouds will Dominate: Developers, Developers, Developers

July 21, 2009

In a post at the end of last month, Frank Gens of IDC explained that, cloud concerns notwithstanding, within a few years the Public Cloud will be a humongous source of IT services.  The reason for the popularity of the public cloud will be the same reason any platform is successful: the apps.  And who’s responsible for the apps?  You guessed it, developers:

The online shift of the latest and greatest business solutions to the Web is happening because the Cloud is winning the war for developers:  a rapidly growing number of developers see the Web as the most attractive “platform” on which to quickly and affordably deploy their solutions.  It’s not a mystery:  the Cloud dramatically reduces the barriers for customer adoption (and upgrade) and dramatically expands the market reach for solution developers. Can you imagine a developer of a hot new solution choosing not to deploy in a Cloud/SaaS mode?  Hard to imagine.  They might not do so exclusively – they may continue to also develop for the big on-premise platforms, and many will also deploy their public cloud solution as a software appliance in a private cloud.  But it’s easy to see that the public cloud will be the number one deployment target for a large majority of solutions.

If you want to see where technology is going, follow the developers.

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

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