The good people at Dell are delving into helping startups get started.
Dell chief Michael Dell (pictured on right) said this week that his venerable computer company is starting a $60 million fund designed exclusive to help invest in “storage startups.”
Michael Dell made the announcement while speaking at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen, Colorado. His remarks underscore why its important to support and encourage new companies and new technologies that deliver the storage solutions consumers of all varieties now demand.
“Dell has a long history in seed investments in interesting technology companies,” Dell boasted. “We really believe in this explosion of data driven a lot by smartphones and tablets.”
“Our storage investments will align to the Dell Fluid Data architecture strategy with the end game of bringing more affordable and easier to manage storage solutions to more of the market,” the company said Tuesday in a blog post. “We are looking to change the economics of the storage industry by doing two things — bringing high-end enterprise features to the broad mid-market and solving enterprise problems at a midrange price point.”
Storage represents one of several big opportunities for Dell, as the company tries to transform itself from a PC maker to a provider of software, services and technologies used in data center. Sales of laptops and desktops still account for 54% of Dell’s revenue, but CEO Dell says it’s a “very different company that it was four to five years ago.”
“We’ve spent $5 billion on acquisitions just this year,” Dell admits. “The storage world is really getting shaken up a tremendous amount and you’ll see us continuing our acquisitions in that area.”
