Bees buzz around their hive, which is set up on the roof of a building. But they are supposed to do much more than collect pollen and produce honey - they are supposed to point the way to the future. A large number of sensors around the hive collect weather data and information from the surrounding area and monitor the bees' activities. The beehive is not just on any old building: the roof is part of the IoT Lab that Dell opened in Limerick (Ireland) last year. "We process the data collected by the sensors and make it available to scientists who analyze it in order to investigate the causes of bee mortality," says Dermot O'Connell, Executive Director & General Manager of Dell OEM Solutions EMEA.

Dell OEM Solutions is not trying to be a bee researcher, but to show something completely different: Even though many may not have noticed it yet, Dell is working intensively on the topic of the Internet of Things following the establishment of Dell OEM Solutions. "With the research on bee mortality, we want to set an example of how problems can be solved by collecting a lot of data and analyzing large amounts of data," says Dermot O'Connell. The new IoT Lab in Limerick also shows how important the topic of IoT has become at Dell. Dell OEM Solutions currently employs around 600 people worldwide. The most recently published sales figures were around 2.5 billion dollars. And Dell has set itself a clear goal: to significantly expand its business in the embedded markets, particularly in the IoT environment.

Hence the IoT Lab in Limerick: it is intended to give customers the opportunity to put their IoT concepts to the test without having to buy all the equipment first. "We have all the equipment to transfer the data from the sensors to the cloud, including the necessary middleware and analysis software. If the customer has sensors and a concept, then we can set up a complete and customized IoT system," explains Dermot O'Connell. And just as importantly: "We can help our customers bring the system to market globally."

Users can build the systems based on an extensive range of products: Several thousand products are available. These include more than just the standard devices. On request, Dell supplies the products pre-configured, but can also design them completely customer-specific. "Quantity 1 is no problem, and we can build and ship the devices at our many locations worldwide. This means we are global from day one," says Helmut Schmidt, Regional Sales Director Europe Central at Dell OEM Solutions. He joined Dell two and a half years ago and has many years of experience in the embedded industry. This makes him a perfect fit for Dell's OEM division: "We not only have a great deal of experience and expertise in the IT sector, but also in the field of Operation Technology (OT). That's why we can get very complex systems up and running quickly in IoT environments."

Dell supplies all the devices required to set up the infrastructure to collect and store the data, as well as the associated software for data management and integration through to in-depth data analysis. According to Dermot O'Connell, there are virtually no limits to the amount of data: "There is simply no such thing as too much data for us."

Company acquisitions

Helmut Schmidt, Dell OEM Solutions: "From the outside, our gateways look like industrial computers. On the inside, however, they behave like normal PCs and are as easy to manage and secure as a standard Dell system."

© DELL OEM Solutions

Dell has acquired numerous companies over the past few years in order to complete its range of hardware and software products. In March 2014, for example, Dell strengthened its position in information management in the areas of data mining, predictive analysis and visualization with the acquisition of StatSoft. Above all, the company now has a powerful analysis tool in its own program with the Statistica software developed by StatSoft. Well over 1 million users from various industries such as pharmaceuticals, finance and manufacturing are already working with Dell Statistica - not least because Dell has continued to invest heavily in Dell Statistica following the acquisition and has been able to utilize synergies with existing information management tools such as Toad, Spotlight on SQL Server Enterprise, Shareplex, Boomi, Toad Business Intelligence Suite and Kitenga Analytics.

On the hardware side, Dell acquired Wyse in 2011, a company that specialized in the development of thin clients, among other things. The fanless devices were Dell's entry into the IoT gateway business. From this, Dell developed a family of modular devices that have various protocols and connections and operate over the extended temperature range that is common in the industry. And they also achieve the long lifetimes required in the industry, which correspond to several life cycles of normal PCs. "From the outside, our gateways look like industrial computers. On the inside, however, they behave like normal PCs and are as easy to manage as a standard Dell system," says Helmut Schmidt. They are easy to maintain and update in the field or remotely. Above all, however, they are very cost-efficient.

Schmidt sees the fact that Dell is able to offer not only the gateways, but also the entire system including other functions such as the operating system and security functions from a single source worldwide as a unique selling point. "We can even deliver customized versions within two weeks, even in very large quantities, which are built on our standard production lines."

This is where he sees Dell's major advantage: the high-volume production lines, on which even customer-specific products can be manufactured cost-effectively. "This allows us to process large orders in a short space of time," says Schmidt. As an example, he cites an entertainment system, which is practically a modified tablet without a battery. "We can also manufacture 100,000 units or more in all Dell factories around the world within a short space of time and deliver them with software in the appropriate configurations."

This puts Dell in a decisive position in the IoT world: the company has united various business areas relevant to IoT under one roof. Of course, Dell does not want to enter the sensor business itself, but rather integrate sensor manufacturers as well as other suppliers and system integrators in order to build complete turn-key systems as required by the major OEMs. "We are paving the way for partnerships without which IoT would not be possible," explains O'Connell.

IoT systems for any size

One example is the cooperation with Berlin-based azeti Networks AG, a global manufacturer and provider of M2M technologies with extensive experience in the monitoring and management of complex industrial infrastructures such as mobile radio stations, fiber optic nodes or oil production facilities. This includes the control of environmental parameters, security and access management as well as passive monitoring. What is new is that Dell's IoT technology, together with azeti's M2M software, even enables the control of distributed infrastructures such as generators, air conditioning systems, cooling systems, UPS and pumps.

Another example is the company Zfx, which offers dentists, dental laboratories and milling centers dental products such as 3D scanners, milling machines, dental colorimeters and CAD systems. After deciding to work with Dell OEM Solutions, the company gained access to Dell Precision workstations based on Intel Xeon processors, which improved the performance of its computers by 70 percent over previous models. Dell ProSupport has reduced the service response time to one day, and customers worldwide receive support on the next working day. The hardware is supplied locally by Dell partner Forcenet GmbH from Regensburg. Thanks to the cooperation with Dell, Zfx has succeeded in significantly expanding sales in the USA and tripling the total number of systems sold. In this way, the Dachau-based company was able to take an important step towards globalization.

Dell can deliver the prefabricated products quickly and then support its customers and partners in keeping the installed solutions in operation over their entire lifetime - often ten years or more. Whereas previously customer systems had to be updated every few years, Dell offers three to five-year lifecycles and five to seven-year maintenance cycles. This significantly reduces service costs. In addition, Dell offers extensive services, for example to support partners in customer service.

"These examples show that we can build the right IoT systems with both large OEMs and small and medium-sized companies," says Dermot O'Connell. "The respective customers can focus on their core knowledge and growth. We at Dell OEM and our partners take care of commissioning and maintenance for the IoT system." The fact that Dell is serious about IoT can also be seen from the fact that the company was an exhibitor at this year's embedded world in Nuremberg.

Dell and EMC: Size matters

Dell's journey is heading in the direction of IoT and Industry 4.0, as demonstrated by the acquisition of EMC and VMware for 67 billion dollars announced at the end of last year. Dell is thus continuing its strategy of using acquisitions to put itself in a position to offer everything that IoT systems need in the broadest sense from a single source: from hardware for collecting and storing data from a wide variety of sources and the entire IT infrastructure to secure software for information management and data analysis. However, the money Dell is spending on the EMC takeover is unprecedented.

Apparently, Dell is convinced that size is the only way to survive in the new IoT and Industry 4.0 world. The internet has already turned some industries upside down. Companies such as Uber show where things will go in the future, and the industry is just at the beginning of the upheaval, which is happening faster than many thought two years ago. A look at the development of drones, autonomous driving and robotics shows this. The goal behind the EMC takeover (and the many acquisitions over the past few years) is to be able to offer customers comprehensive platforms tailored to their needs very quickly and from a single source.

Dell wants to stake its claim and also conquer the industrial sector, because the world is changing at breakneck speed and experience shows that only the market leaders will be able to survive in the future: Only the market leaders will be able to enjoy larger margins in the future.