Gartner Analyst Suggests Dell Enterprise Customers Should Start Looking Around

HP Customer & Market Insights has just made a recent Gartner report, Dell’s Leveraged Buyout Necessitates Scenario Planning for Customers, available to all HP Employees.  In this report, Gartner Research Director Adrien O’Connell provides perspective on Dell’s leveraged buyout, and the implications it may have on Dell’s enterprise and consumer customers. 



The Dell LBO has been big news lately, with the $24.4bn Michael Dell, Silver Lake and Microsoft funded initial offer being joined now by offers from Blackstone Group, and activist investor Carl Icahn.  While these offers are debated by Dell’s board, O’Connell suggests that Dell customers view Dell’s claims that it can transform itself into an enterprise tech company “with a degree of caution.”  Dell’s low margin PC business is not enough to sustain the company, and delayed delivery times or account team responsiveness may indicate danger signs for the company as it shifts strategy, and realigns its business.  Dell enterprise customers need to have alternative plans developed, and consider how private equity may impact Dell’s future, and their own supplier portfolio.

One outlet taking notice of the Gartner report, channelregister.co.uk, asks “Can it really be that enterprise customers should make sure they have an emergency raft ready to head to the shores of rival PC makers should Dell jettison its desktop and notebook portfolio when it goes private?”  Gartner’s report seems to suggest the answer is “Yes.”

·         Check out more of Gartner’s take on Dell’s LBO: “Dell’s Leveraged Buyout Necessitates Scenario Planning for Customers”.
This report is provided by Customer & Market Insights, and available to all of HP through 25 June, 2013.

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·         Read the channelregister.co.uk article