Call it a problem of perception. The newly private Dell computer company announces a new Research Division and people think Dell is “getting into” research. The reality is that the 30-year-old company headed by CEO Michael Dell has been in the R&D business for years.
“[In] 2012 we filed the largest number of patents in the company's history up to that point. Beat that in 2013, filing even more. This year we'll file even more patents….[Dell] “has around 20,000 people developing products, software, services in 12+ lab sites around the world from Austin to Silicon Valley and beyond,” Michael Dell, who founded the company in a dorm room in 1984, told me in an email.
See also: Dell Plans to Go Private in Deal Worth $24.4 Billion
In other words, don’t let the “new” division fool you; Dell Research doesn’t represent so much a new initiative as way to bring together disparate research projects and ideas under one governing body and, perhaps, one man.
Jai Menon is that man. As the new Dell VP and chief research officer, Menon’s tasked with delivering “organic, long-range innovation…to complement innovation going on in other parts of Dell.” Menon has a pretty strong background in research, having served as an IBM Fellow since 2000 and that company's CTO and VP of Tech Strategy from 2009 to 2012. Menon joined Dell that same year, serving, until recently, as CTO and VP of Dell's Enterprise Solutions Group.
The creation of this unit coincides with Dell going private (after some highly successful and then tumultuous decades as a public company) and reorganizing into four distinct groups: End User Computing, Enterprise, Software, Services.
The Research Division, which is relatively small, though Menon would not give exact headcount numbers, cuts across those groups. “[We’re] reaching out across Dell. There are lots of people who have a lot of interest and passion. We’re tapping people without making them formal parts of Dell Research.”
Like other research teams at other tech firms, Dell is also forming alliances with academia like the University of Southern California and the University of Houston, which is helping them work on next-gen networking.
Even though Dell has, by Michael Dell’s count, been issued or filed for more than 6,000 patents, some still see the establishment of Dell Research as an important inflection point for the company.
Industry analyst and President of Creative Strategies Tim Bajarin expects the newly private company to focus much more heavily on R&D. “It is true that they are behind. But this team is highly focused on next generation form factors, designs and services with a solid budget and this is not what they have had in place for over 15 years.”
Menon would talk budget beyond saying Dell is investing more in this area. Bajarin didn’t have numbers either, though insiders tell him “it gives them a serious amount of capital towards creating innovative products.” Dell told me that, in general, his company “spends billions on R&D.”
Dell Research is divided into four groups:
• Security
• Data Insights
• Mobility and Internet of Things
• Modern Infrastructures
Each group has its own chief data scientists. Already the division has delivered a Tech Outlook, which posits the growth and development, at an industry level, of things like:
Insider Threat Research, which looks for a way to help businesses and governments identify the next Edward Snowden before it happens.
Next-Gen Flash Memory technologies like phase-change memory and persistent RAM, all of which could make future flash storage up to 100-times faster than your current mobile storage solution.
Smart Algorithms that could predict not just the weather, but help the company decide in advance how many plows they’ll need and where, exactly, to position them.
Data Insights, which takes analytics beyond visualization and predictive analysis to prescriptive analysis.
Dell and Dell Research won’t necessarily build any or all of this, but Menon contends that a big focus of his team is the creative part. “If you look at my metrics for success, [they] are the following: It's about business impact. Did I help Dell create new products? Help them create sooner, better, faster? Also how did I impact the rest of Dell?” Only a third of Menon’s success relies on external activities like producing tech outlooks and delivering speeches.
For founder and CEO Michael Dell, the new Research Group represents a kind of thread in the company, “Now with four distinct groups … we wanted to ensure all of these groups stay connected especially for things like longer term research, linkages with research universities, companywide APIs, big technical initiatives, technical vitality.”
Dell's focus on innovation could help change long-standing perceptions of the computer manufacturer as a company that simply builds computers from parts and delivers them to customers. Part of Michael Dell's years-long (though Dell says misunderstood) feud with Apple founder Steve Jobs revolved around that perception.
Jobs once said of the company, "Pretty much, Apple and Dell are the only ones in this industry making money. They make it by being Walmart. We make it by innovation."
However during Apple's mid 1990s difficulties, Dell recommended draconian measures for Apple, "What would I do? I'd shut [Apple] down and give the money back to the shareholders."
As Apple's fortunes rose and Dell's slid, the former company was viewed by many as the real innovator. These days, questions about who is innovating are being laid at both Apple and Dell's doors.
Even so, outsiders like Bajarin are impressed by the initiatives and take it as proof that Dell “will be a much better company as a private one,” said Bajarin, adding, “Wall Street pushing them quarter by quarter forced them do to things that put profit ahead of quality devices and services. I feel Michael can now concentrate on great products and services and that is the priority instead of meeting Wall Street expectations driving what they had to do.”
All this appears to align with Menon’s goals, who told me his group gives Dell ‘the ability for us to be more long range in our thinking and innovation and to be more flexible and entrepreneurial.”
Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.