Dell Situation Analysis and SWOT
By: Nicole Saathoff
History
Dell was started in 1984 by a college student, Michael Dell. Dell started the company off out of his college dorm room. He bought IBM compatible computer parts at wholesale prices and built computers that resembled IBM models. He sold them to people looking for a PC but not wanting to pay the retailer prices. After making $80,000/mo, he dropped out of college and started Dell Computer Corp.(Free Encyclopedia of Ecommerce) He started advertising and selling computers through telephone orders, and because he used no middleman, he was allowed to sell machines lower than competition. It took no time for him to become the leader in mail order PC sales.
Because of this
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(Castaldo 2010) According to Marks (2009), virtualization refers to the process of installing multiple "virtual" servers on a single computer. So, instead of having a bunch of desktop computers working at only part of their capacity, virtualization can help get more use out of a single machine. This is huge for Dell considering they mostly cater to larger institutions and businesses because it allows these places to get rid of all of the unnecessary individual computers. There are huge benefits from getting rid of a bunch of computers and running all your business applications on one tower because you can cut the cost of powering those machines, save on space, and protect yourself so that if one application crashes it affects only one virtual server, not the entire machine. (Marks 2009) This industry has grown tremendously in the last three years and will continue to grow as providers compete in pricing and software.
Wireless allows us to use these electronic devices just about anywhere, and virtualization takes away from our need of our personal computer’s processing power. We can now store our information and software on the internet or servers. As computers become more mobilized, companies are competing to put out the most specialized devices, and it seems that Apple is setting the mark. Apple's multifunctional iPad has sold more than 7.5 million units since it was unveiled in April 2010. (Rapp 2011) Since the unveil
Virtualization is a combination of software and hardware engineering that creates Virtual Machines (VMs) - an abstraction of the computer hardware that allows a single machine to act as if it were many machines, or a computer that does not physically exist as a piece of hardware. The hardware that is seen by the operating system is emulated in an effort to separate the physical hardware from operating system. This allows the virtual machine to be moved and hosted on any machine independent of hardware. Virtualization technology is possibly the single most important issue in IT and has started a top to bottom overhaul of the computing industry which is why many companies around the world have are using its softwares to enhance their business opportunities.
Keith Maxwell is the Vice President in charge of Worldwide Operations, for Dell Computer Corporation. Dell Computer’s was founded in 1984 by Michael Dell in his University of Texas dorm room, and by 1999 the company grew to market over $98Billion. Dell was the second growing largest personal computer manufacturers, just behind Compaq in the growing PC industry. Dell
This paper will give a short history and descriptions of Apple’s I Pad minicomputer. It will also give factors that affect demand, supply, and equilibrium prices in the market. Issues that Apple faces that affect its competitiveness will also be addressed. Lastly, this paper will identify the long term profitability of the iPad including, price elasticity of demand, technological innovation, and cost structure.
It allows network administrators to create a virtual server environment by using some of the server’s resources. By doing this, it creates virtual/private servers and one of the benefits of this is that it would cost less money to use virtual servers rather than physical servers as hardware maintenance would not be required. Also, if one virtual server goes down, the others will still be left running. In the example above, there are 4 physical servers. Server Virtualization only needs one physical server to be able to create the virtual servers.
In the last decade Apple Inc. has yielded exponential growth. As a company, the imaginative and invocative approaches of technological product advancements have enable Apple, Inc. to achieve an elite status among technology companies throughout the world. Apple, Inc. serves as an inspiration to many companies through higher benchmark standards they created. Though their product margin is not as vast as most technological competitors, Apple, Inc. innovates and releases a new product to consumers. Apple, Inc. has proven to able to move and create new markets with one product that allows Apple, Inc. to rain as the elite player in technology.
Apple Inc. has been dedicated to innovation ever since the company was first formed. Apple's recent breakthroughs were a result of a new technologies convergence upon the "digital hub" strategy (Mortensen, 2010). This strategy has served Apple well; especially during the last few years. The iPad, iPod, and iPhone were all born from this strategy. Furthermore, producing these innovative, user friendly, and design oriented products has earned them a considerable amount of customer loyalty.
Today’s technology improves so fast. As technology improves, more and more electronics will be designed and produced. There was once a day when people did not have many different electronic devices available to them. We did not have laptops, much less an iPad. Now, everyone has their smart phones, and tablet PCs. Apple is going to releases the Iphone 5 this
Virtualization in a network is the most interesting thing I have learned about. In full virtualization, the virtual machine completely simulates a real physical host. This allows most operating systems and applications to run within the virtual machine without being modified in anyway. I would envision using virtualization when testing a new service or application in the development stages, testing the product on different operating systems. I think virtualization is brilliant, a problem that arises is security and how you go about protecting your data in the virtual machine. Placing a virtual firewall is a good way to protect your machine of routing the memory through physical machines that have a firewall to protect them. A benefit of cloud
Dell Computer Corporation was founded in 1984 by Michael Dell. From the early 1990s until the mid-2000s, Dell was ranked as a PC market leader relying on their distinctive marketing pattern “Direct Model” which undertook direct communication with customers and provided customized products. Recently, the PC industry is facing inconceivable worldwide competition, and Dell is gradually losing their competitive advantages by using its direct model in critical business segments. The company is facing shrinkage of growth, increasing competition, declining quality of customer service, and limitation of expansion. These issues have an enormous impact on Dell’s position as a technological giant in the PC industry.
Most of the manufacturing in the organization is automated with the help of high end servers. These physical servers when are overloaded or when they are being used for longer period of time, tend to degrade and malfunction as their components start to fail and this would require replacing them with new ones. This will incur additional cost to the company if the server is not covered under manufacturer warranty or it has expired and is no longer in support by the manufacturer. Thus the organization is in need of virtualization of the physical servers to overcome these problems. The organization has been around for more than three decades and hence is using older applications that won’t run on newer hardware and the current hardware is about to degrade. So in order to save the company from such incidents that could result in major setback in manufacturing, virtualization of these servers is necessary. Another benefit of virtualizing the servers is that the resources such as CPUs, disk size, RAM size of the virtual servers can be increased if the load is too high on the server. This can be done on the fly, without creating an impact to the organization.
IBM Market Leader in Mainframe –market share 61%, starts PC business in ’81, in 2 yrs market share is 42%
Apple’s main objective has always been to be the innovation leader. The same philosophy extends even to the manner in which they manage their internal communication which showcases their superiority. In accordance with this concept they have most of the processes which are virtualization is the factor which will provide the company with a competitive advantage in the market place.
REF OF GROUP MEMBERS’: TABLE 1 : 5 C’s SITUATION ANALYSIS Factors Dell Company: Resources 1.4 Licensing, Distribution channel, Supply • Intellectual property, Human resources, Patent, Competences Brand acuity1 chain management 24 25 Techno structure • Just-in-Time; CRM; Engineer R&D, Acquisition
Nowadays, Apple has positioned itself to be an innovator in the personal computer industry and Apple has developed by offering modern products compared to its competitors. According to Apple’s mission statement last year, “Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App store, and is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices with iPad.” (Business Management,
Apple has always been something of a trendsetter in the tech space. Its product history since Steve Jobs’s return in 1997 gives us a solid list of examples to choose from, from its very first iPod, to Apple’s PowerBook (and later MacBook) lines, to the iPhone and the iPad. Apple’s history is dominated by products that existed before Apple had a crack at them - but it was Apple who simplified them, made them appealing on a much wider scale, and ultimately made them objects of desire for the masses.