Would you agree that there's a perception problem that's going to make your IT-as-a-service plan a difficult sell?

I agree that there's a perception problem, and I think anytime you make mistakes you have to perform in order to overcome those mistakes. But I think we are performing, and I think there's plenty of evidence that's beginning to mount that [the image problem] is a thing of the past.

So what exactly is it that you want to deliver under the new program, and to whom?

I'm really trying to focus in on small and medium businesses for now, and then configurable managed services for large businesses. I want to deliver a range of [services] for customers that solve the specific issues around managing their infrastructure. And I want them to be able to configure and choose which of those services make the best sense for their business.

If you go back to the hardware company that Michael [Dell] started 23 years ago, he essentially got configurability, supply-chain optimization, and price and cost value to customers, and we're going to do the same thing in the services space. We're going to do for the supply chain of services the same thing that Michael and Dell did for the supply chain of hardware.

Will these be Dell-branded services?

I don't think we have to own all of the intellectual property associated with them. Approximately 30 per cent should probably be Dell, because it relates to things that are really kind of critical to the customer, like [regulatory compliance]. But a lot of the innovation we shouldn't bottle up and make it just Dell innovation. We ought to be tapping into the best innovation in the world.

Can you elaborate on where last year's acquisitions of Everdream and Silverback Technologies fit into the plan?

Everdream is a software-as-a-service platform, specifically focused on IT systems management. It basically makes sure that assets and the services for those assets are in the state that they're supposed to be in. And any difference between where they are and what they're supposed to be experiencing gets resolved automatically through the delivery capabilities of Everdream.

Inside of that platform, we have integrated Silverback, which does proactive monitoring of anything with an IP address. So once those assets are identified through Everdream, Silverback can monitor anything with an IP address to help with those assets. If a hard drive is taking some soft failures, [Silverback] will know it's taking those soft failures even before the user does. And then it provides management capabilities to go out and proactively solve problems that it sees. If it's a case that can't be solved remotely, we can dispatch somebody to come out and fix that problem before you experience a failure.

So you're talking about remote management as a hosted service, right?

Yes, the software is hosted by Dell, and the remote infrastructure management is provided by Dell or one of Dell's partners. This is a service - it's not the hardware itself. When you have drivers that are out of sync with the operating system, somebody will fix that for you. When you have patches that need to be applied to your software, somebody should be applying the patches for you without you even necessarily having to know that's going on. We host all of the software tools, we host all of the management capabilities associated with providing that service to you, and we do that from a remote location - wherever it's the most effective labor strategy for your particular situation.