Transformation Tour - Raipur Chapter

It is evident that the Covid pandemic not only posed a boon in disguise and provided a massive push to the country’s technological development but it also redefined the way businesses operated across the country. To embrace the accelerating IT transformations in tier 2 and tier 3 cities of India, CRN India in partnership with Dell Technologies commenced the Transformation Tour. It is a series of seminars that brings to light the latest technology solutions that could empower SMEs in the host city to transform their businesses, enhance productivity, boost efficiency, and improve overall service delivery. The latest edition of the Transformation Tour organised in association with Ingram Micro was held in Raipur, the capital city of Chhattisgarh.

Raipur is a city that boasts rich minerals, limestone, and coal reserves. It houses over 150 large and mid-scale industries with big players like Monnet Ispat, Jindal, Century Cement, Lafarge, Ambuja Cement, Ultratech Cement, and more. The city, though seems to be trailing the path to growth and development, needs to focus on increasing adoption of digital and new-age technologies. Also, with new work cultures like work-from-home normalizing and becoming a demand of employees to an extent, enterprises need to reinforced themselves with better IT infrastructure. Moreover, there’s a need to harness the power of data with better and improved data management and processing solutions. You need to deploy automation to cover up mundane tasks, need AI-based tools to help in data-driven decision-making, and efficient data storage solutions.

Shedding light on the theme ‘Modernize Your IT Infrastructure’ Md. Danish Khan, Lead Pre- Sales Channel North India, Dell Technologies took the dais and shared his expert insights with the SMEs present in the house.

While laying emphasis on how and why Dell Technologies is the market leader among the OEMs, Danish said, “Dell has the industry's largest storage portfolio. Presently, we are providing the 15th generation of servers which is the latest in the industry.” Further, Dell is the only large IT service provider that offers Live Optics, a tool that identifies and collects data on workloads. Besides, Dell is a no-inventory company. It does not stock and sell but manufactures as per the demands, he added.

Live Optics helps the user understand how many servers are being used. Further, it generates a report stating what workloads are being hosted, trend analysis, and more. It even helps to see a five-year growth projection. With this tool, a customer can assess even the non-Dell IT infrastructure. Similarly, CloudIQ helps the user in tracking storage health, predict utilisation requirements, and detecting anomalies. Moreover, it offers immediate time-to- value and intelligent infrastructure insights. One of the latest offerings by Dell is APEX. It is not a service or a product but Dell's new buying experience where the customer has to pay as per its usage.

“IT is no more just the business enabler, but it is the business. And, data centers are the new- age factories,” Danish highlighted while elaborating on the significance of upgrading IT infrastructure, and deploying better servers and data storage solutions. He pressed that “IT should drive value to organisations.”

Apart from enlightening the gathering on Dell’s latest service offerings, products, and the rapidly changing course of growth of IT, he also brought to light a few persistent challenges that the IT industry faces. He mentioned that “Overprovisioning and under-provisioning is a persistent challenge in the IT industry. Also, CAPEX budget strains, unpredictable growth, tech refresh cycles, and cloud complexities are also tricky areas for the industry.”

The SMEs attending the conference were impressed with Dell’s presentation and appreciated the efforts by the OEM to reach out to the end consumers. Arunava Banerjee, Head - IT, Automation & Digitisation, Balco Medical Centre (A Unit of Vedanta Médical Research Foundation) admired Dell products and spoke highly of the quality of the products. He said, “We are presently using Dell servers and the performance have been quite impressive. The conference brought to light new products and services offered by Dell. The tools Live Optics and CloudIQ are commendable initiatives.” Meanwhile, Krishna Murthy Bulusu, Chief Executive Officer, IIT Bhilai called the Transformation Tour “an impressive effort” to reach out to small cities like Raipur and help the SMEs get better technology solutions. “At IIT Bhilai, we are using Dell’s servers, desktops, and laptops and we are satisfied with the products. However, the variety that Dell brings to the market is a thing to be highlighted,” he added.

The latest edition of ‘Transformation Tour’ held at Raipur ended on a high note. The delegates expressed appreciation for Dell’s lineup of products and were in consensus with each other on how Dell has come up with technology solutions that cater to every type of customer - ranging from the industry’s first 15th generation server Dell’s EMC PowerEdge to the industry’s most preferred storage solution, Dell’s Unity. Dell’s wide portfolio is one of its biggest USPs and a major reason why the company is a market leader.