What is Happening?  Earlier this week, several trade media outlets reported that Dell was in talks to acquire one of its core software partners, Quest Software. Quest offers solutions designed to “simplify the management of IT across physical, virtual and cloud environments,” according to its website. Regardless of whether or not the acquisition occurs, Saugatuck sees this type of activity as another indicator of two key trends:

• Enterprise IT leaders and organizations are looking to traditional, IT Master Brands (“comfort vendors,” as we call them) for ways to manage increasingly-uncertain IT architectures and environments; and
• Traditional IT Master Brands are shifting their M&A activity to not only maintain their enterprise presence, but to establish or enhance credibility in a shifting, “boundary-free” IT and business environment.

Why is it Happening?  Leading, competitive IT providers constantly acquire and divest other providers, technologies, and services to maintain and improve their competitive positioning. They follow trends based on what they see a critical mass of enterprise customers doing. And what the providers see their customers doing now is not only moving to Cloud, but changing – really, re-architecting – their IT and business infrastructures to reflect changing ways of doing business, and to reflect increasing/changing business opportunities.

IT and business leaders responsible for making sure that their investments don’t cripple their enterprise’s ability to do business should take a look at Mike West’s latest Strategic Perspective, which introduces Saugatuck’s Risk/Reward Assessment model.

We see this as the first approach to IT assessment that provides both buyers and providers with an objective, truly useful means to identify and then manage challenges in understanding, evaluating, selecting, and managing IT solutions in this new era of the Boundary-free Enterprise^™ and dramatically-altered IT/business master architectures, and the processes and practices needed to cost-effectively manage them.

What is Happening?  This week, Saugatuck research executives found themselves participating in three, simultaneous industry events shaping the world of Cloud IT and business. CEO Bill McNee and SVP Bruce Guptill sat down with key executives (including C-level meetings) at SAP Sapphire in Orlando; VP Mike West met with company leaders and users at ServiceNow’s Knowledge12 conference in New Orleans; and VP Charlie Burns took part in IBM’s invitation-only Cloud Innovation Forum in Chicago. It’s been a Cloudy week for Saugatuck, in other words.

The net takeaway from all three events, including dozens of discussions with provider and customer leaders, is that the religious wars and mystery about what Cloud is all about is clearly gone. The critical questions for providers and user enterprises have shifted from “What is it” and “Why should we?” to “When should we?” to “How do we?”

For a variety of reasons, Dell has been seen as a relatively “quiet” firm serving and enabling strategic enterprise IT. The company has been re-inventing itself rather significantly over the past few years, but is rarely one of the first names in the discussions around enterprise IT strategy, stacks, and Cloud.

This week, Saugatuck subscription research clients get a comprehensive look at how and why Dell has been rebuilding and growing, and increasing profitability, while evolving its business model beyond the low-cost, consumer PC space where it began. Key points include the following:

The second day of the Dell Annual Analyst Conference began early Wednesday with breakfast at 7, especially after many in our number were treated to a selection of rather excellent tequilas the night before.

It began with Steve Felice, President, Chief Commercial Officer sharing examples of Dell’s innovative culture (including crowd sourcing and bamboo in packaging), Boomi’s role in the OneWorld Alliance partner integration solution, and the emerging markets story, now accounting for 30 percent of revenues and projected to grow very rapidly. Steve Felice then presented three interesting Dell customers, and more about that shortly.