It’s official. Dell, master of the hardware supply chain, is a software company. Or rather, it has a budding software company within its ranks, the Dell Software Group, which already has a revenue run rate of $ 1.45 billion.


John Swainson, president of the group, said at a press briefing in San Francisco Thursday that he had been asked by CEO Michael Dell to create a software business that complements Dell’s hardware sales. It’s expected to give Dell’s direct salesforce of 20,000 and Dell VARs and partners the chance to follow up a hardware sale with Dell software that adds value to the system.

Dell will also depend on the group to provision it with application performance management, virtualization management, and systems management software that may be packaged with Dell hardware systems before they ship.
Network Computing