It’s been almost a year since Dell’s acquisition of KACE, so how’s integration going?
It’s gone really well. We were a start-up in the systems management space, which means we help companies manage their end point devices. We’ve doubled our employees and tripled our revenue. We’ve also doubled our total installed base since being acquired.
So it’s been a good fit with Dell’s customers. MSD Capital [Dell CEO Michael Dell’s personal investment company] bought one of our products, and that got us in the door. Dell had identified that systems management was a gray area for them, adjacent to the desktop and server infrastructure they were selling. We were in a mature space but offered a disruptive value proposition, which was far easier to use and far more affordable than the alternatives.
How hands-on is Dell?
Dell has been on a bit of an acquisition spree over the last year or so and we were one of the first. In our instance, they made a decision to keep it relatively standalone; we were on a good growth trajectory and they didn’t want to break what wasn’t broken.
We’ve been given a lot of autonomy to do things the way we did in the past, but at the same time take advantage of Dell’s resources, such as a very large sales channel and strong relationship with customers. We’re integrated from a financial and tech support point of view and a couple of other horizontal areas.
What did Dell see in you? What sets you apart from the competition?
The reason the market finds us appealing is the same reason Dell does. We went in to an existing space – systems management has been around for as long as there have been two computers strung together – with a disruptive value proposition, one that was far easier to use and far less expensive. Because of that we’re the fastest growing systems management company in the marketplace. The easy, complete, affordable message fits with Dell’s Best Value Solutions strategy.
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How have you managed to enter the market with, as you claim, a product that is cheaper and easier to use?
A lot of it comes down to market focus – where has the market left the customer behind? We created a product and go-to-market approach that served the midsized enterprise. We packaged it up into an appliance, so it is software built into a physical hardware appliance, which makes the deployment process much easier. The web-based UI or the way we do user-defined scripts, so you don’t need to know scripting language, make the product easier to use.
That sounds a bit like a Web 2.0 approach.
It is. A lot of what defines success in a marketplace isn’t necessarily being the first in an area. Starbucks didn’t invent coffee, for example, but they’ve created a formula that works for people. McDonald’s didn’t invent the hamburger, but they hit a nerve with the customer. We weren’t the first and we can’t check as many check boxes as IBM, but we focus on the 80% of stuff that people want and make it super easy to use.
The acquisitions from Dell recently have increased the competition between you, IBM and HP. How do you see that playing out?
I think a company of our size is not afraid to take on HP and IBM head on, however I think Dell has an opportunity to do something different and better than the other companies. While we are competing to be the pre-eminent global technology supplier we are looking to do it in a way that is different. It’s not just about creating the next monolithic enterprise-class whizzbang gizmo, it’s about delivering a unique value proposition to the customer.
When we talk to our readers at Dining Club events, they often say that the management of virtualised environments is not as advanced at the virtualisation technology itself. You can create new VMs by clicking a couple of buttons. That raises issues with auditing. Does the management industry need to catch up?
I think they are probably right, in general. We offer virtual versions of our appliance and we enable virtual endpoints to be updated and managed, monitored, you can deploy software on the VMs and you can run security configuration changes. For us the manageability of the guest operating system is just native in what we do, it doesn’t matter if it’s sitting on a virtual platform or a hardware platform.
I would guess that if your readers are talking about management within a virtual environment they are talking about managing the virtual infrastructure itself, such as the hypervisor. I think that is an area where the market is behind the times.
How is the UK performance going?
[Seann Gardiner, EMEA sales leader, Dell KACE] We’re focusing on what we call medium business – customers above 100 endpoints, up to 500. Public sector is an interesting market for us, even with the spending cuts they still have computers to manage. We’re working with Cambridge University and other education and healthcare organisations. Tighter budgets mean no hiring and that means more pressure of the existing team, so we expect to carry on doing well there, we’ll find pockets of opportunity.
You’ve mentioned your impressive growth figures since the acquisition. How will you keep that going?
[Rob Meinhardt] We’ve not fully fanned out inside Dell so not everyone there is fully aware of our product. Some of the pockets we see for growth are in the large enterprise sector, where we’ve not done well before. Federal government is another one, as is growth in foreign markets where we’ve not had a presence before. That includes UK, Ireland, France, Germany and in to Asia and Australia and New Zealand.
