Dell EMC now calls itself a “digital transformation” company, but with a sticky reputation for legacy infrastructure and little software, can it sell this to enterprises?

EMC has shown it can indeed sell to enterprises. “They know how to tell the enterprise sales motion, which is the biggest challenge in today’s industry,” said John Furrier (@furrier) (pictured, right), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio.
(* Disclosure below.)

If Dell can absorb EMC’s sales culture through the acquisition, it may not matter that it doesn’t have Google Inc.’s software, for example, said Furrier, as he and co-host Paul Gillin (@pgillin) (center) and guest host Keith Townsend (@CTOAdvisor) (left) wrapped up Dell EMC World in Las Vegas, Nevada.

But are enterprise sales a bigger challenge than owning the best software?

“Look at Google. Look at what they’re doing in the cloud. They’re struggling, because they have great tech and horrid sales people. They’re hiring young people doing phone work,” Furrier said, pointing to the greater importance of the sales force.

The opposite of Google in this area might be EMC, whose sales strategy may be without peer in the tech industry, according to Gillin. “I mean these are the guys who would charter a plane at midnight to get to the customer’s site to fix a problem.” he said.

Nonetheless, the software-defined message has been drilled into enterprise heads, and it is unlikely that Dell EMC’s slick sales tactics alone can remove it, Gillin stated. “The future is going to be software-defined everything, and that’s not a story they’re telling yet,” he said.

Dell EMC’s untold software story

Dell EMC holds two software cards that give it a fighting chance if it can play them wisely — Pivotal Software Inc. and VMware Inc., Townsend said.

“They need to get in front of the right people and tell their story — that [VMware] cross-cloud story of being able to develop using CF [Cloud Foundry] and then move that to any cloud using NSX [VMware’s network virtualization] — great story,” Townsend said, adding that getting it into C-suite officers’ ears will be key.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Dell EMC World 2017. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Dell EMC World. Neither Dell nor other sponsors have editorial influence on content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE