Talking with the President of Dell Americas about Cloud Computing and the Economy

December 1, 2008

When I attended the RackSpace Customer event back at the end of September I was impressed with the talk that Paul Bell of Dell gave (Paul reports to CEO Michael Dell and is responsible for all business operations for Dell in North and South America).

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Dell and the Cloud(s) (sources: my hand + the football Dell gave out at the conference + Friday’s sunset)

In his keynote Paul talked about Cloud Computing and the challenges the economy was presenting Dell and its customers.  I caught Paul after his talk (BTW Lombardi is a Dell customer and Dell is a Lombardi Teamworks customer) and asked if I could tape a podcast with him.  He graciously agreed and here’s the result that I recorded at the beginning of last week.

Take a listen:

>> My talk with Paul (11:59): Listen (mp3) Listen (ogg)

Some of the Topics we tackle:

  • The key Cloud characteristics: Speed to deployment and ease of turning on/off
  • The need to separate the “real” from the fictitious when it comes to the Cloud
  • The interest Paul is seeing in the Cloud from smaller companies
  • Two of the biggest ways Dells plays in the cloud 1) supplier of infrastructure 2) deliverer of IT as a service
  • How on one hand the tough economy is driving interest in utilizing the cloud while at the same time it is causing a slow down in the sales of cloud infrastructure
  • The economy (starts ~7:30): Looking back at what happened in 2001 and trying to gain insight
  • How the economic malaise that hit North America has finally caught up with South America
  • How Dell is planning to help customers during these tough times.

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

Lombardi Analyst Call

November 25, 2008

Last week Phil Gilbert and Rod Favaron, our President/CTO and Chairman/CEO respectively, held a call with analysts.  Since Lombardi is a privately held company these weren’t financial analysts but rather industry analysts like Gartner, Ovum, the 451 group etc.  That being said, the call which is usually held twice a year, is run very much the same way a traditional financial analyst call would be run for a public company.

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Lombardi’s fearless leaders, conveniently labeled.

What we talk about when we talk about Lombardi

Last week’s call, which was in addition to the normal semi-annual calls, was set up in order to address questions around the current economic downturn and what effects we may or may not be seeing.

Here are some highlights from the call that Sandy Kemsley noted in her blog

Lombardi continues to grow — 60% in license revenue and 40% overall — although their services business isn’t growing as fast as license sales since they are bringing on more partners to provide services rather than doing it all themselves, especially in geographies that they can’t cover well. They’ve increased their headcount by 25% and increased productivity (which allows them to grow revenues faster than headcount), and are in a profitable state for 2008. They believe that BPM will be counter-cyclical to the current economic crisis, and have the potential to grow in more difficult financial times due to a closer focus on ROI… (read more)

You can also check out the write-up from Dennis Byron of eBiz and get his take.

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

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