Scrutinized by the public eye, the decision of Dell Technologies Inc., to acquire EMC — along with its decision to take Pivotal Software Inc. public — had some questioning whether Dell had bitten off more than it could chew and accusing the company of drowning in too much debt. But insiders within the company, including Dell’s chief financial officer, are positive the company is headed in the right direction and that the digital transformation is growing within all business sectors.

“We’re very happy with the progress that we’ve made since the integration [of EMC], which was back in September of ’16,” said Tom Sweet (pictured), chief financial officer of Dell Inc. “What’s been really interesting is how … the offerings have come together together in a much more integrated fashion, which has been fun to watch and fun to sort of help put this thing together. And the customer buy-in and the customer acceptance of the vision and the story has been … pretty remarkable from my perspective.”

Sweet spoke with Dave Vellante (@dvellante), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, at the Dell Technologies World 2018 event in Las Vegas. They discussed Dell’s advances over the past few years and challenges CFOs face during the digital transformation. (* Disclosure below.)

End of PCs, Pivotal, positive business

Although people warned of the coming end of PCs, that has not been the case from Dell’s point of view, according to Sweet. “Today, it’s roughly half of our revenue and growing nicely,” he said. “We’re pretty excited about it.”

In storage, they are making strides with VMware Inc. “It’s a great company growing very nicely and … extraordinarily well positioned as you think about the world of multicloud. … That whole story is resonating,” he added.

While some have criticized the move to have Pivotal go public, Sweet said Pivotal’s IPO has been in the works for over a year. “The growth of Pivotal and the acceptance of Pivotal has been remarkable, and so … that’s all about giving Pivotal their own capital to fund their business growth and dynamic,” he stated.

As companies and institutions spend money on IT because of the digital transformation, Dell continues to grow. “We look across the top 45 economies right now where we do business. They’re all growing. GDP is growing,” Sweet said. “So we feel pretty good about … the overall economic environment.”

Many CFOs are wrestling with the challenges of the next five years of AI, machine learning, cyber security, etc., according to Sweet. “The same sort of conversations we’re having with our customers we’re having internally are amongst the CFO community.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Dell Technologies World 2018 event. (* Disclosure: Dell EMC sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Dell EMC nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE