Dell Technologies World (DTW) wrapped up in late May, and by any measure the event hit the mark. As a former Dell employee who started in a consumer PC sales position in the early 1990s, I have seen the company come a long way, with a unique perspective from both inside and outside the organization. DTW went far this year to demonstrate Dell’s continued maturity as a significant enterprise infrastructure and services provider. I want to share my insights accordingly.

Security and sustainability front and center

I have written about Dell’s security capabilities as one of its best-kept secrets. The “secret” part of that decidedly changed last month with the company’s announcement of its Project Fort Zero, giving it a legitimate seat at the zero-trust table. My colleague Matt Kimball and I often do double duty on security coverage for our firm, and he provides some excellent insights in his own DTW Forbes piece.

At a high level, Project Fort Zero plays to Dell’s strengths—taking an ecosystem approach to bring thirty best-of-breed players together alongside Dell to solve the challenge of securing critical IT and OT environments with solutions that comply with recent U.S. federal government guidelines. What I like about this initiative is that Dell is the single technology integrator, creating a single point of accountability for delivery, deployment and ongoing management.

Another significant focus of the conference was on sustainability, particularly in terms of how organizations can leverage Dell Technologies infrastructure and the company’s partnerships with industry stalwarts such as Intel, NVIDIA and Red Hat to take decisive climate action and curb the effects of global warming through net-zero initiatives. Sustainability as a central theme is not surprising, given that such programs and product enhancements also have a material impact on energy efficiency—a consideration that directly affects the bottom line.

For service providers and mobile network operators, energy consumption represents the single largest operational expense line. Dell Technologies is making a significant impact in improving power management through its telecom business on many fronts, as demonstrated by its announcements at Mobile World Congress Barcelona in February. Enterprises have similar concerns as evidenced by the growing deployment of smart building metering and advanced switching platforms. For the latter, Dell Networking Open Networking switches offer high density that is designed to reduce the overall footprint and power consumption of switching within datacenters.

Wrapping up

I’ll wrap up my insights by going back to Michael Dell’s opening keynote from DTW, which was a testament to the viability of Dell Technologies’ vision and execution. Michael Dell spoke about inspiring new ideas and ensuring that enterprises have access to the latest innovations and strong supply chains, especially given recent disruptions to the latter.

In line with the supply-chain emphasis, Dell Technologies announced a global partnership with Hyundai at DTW. Hyundai is rapidly accelerating its vehicle electrification efforts to become a formidable competitor to Tesla and is partnering with Dell Technologies to enable its digital transformation. The capability of the automobile manufacturer to deliver new functionality via software and over-the-air (OTA) updates is mission-critical for its long-term success. Dell Technologies’ capabilities with edge, cloud, 5G, AI, IoT and more are also enabling a host of use cases for Hyundai, centered on manufacturing automation and digital twinning.

On the surface, it’s a compelling demonstration of Dell Technologies’ maturity. The company journey that began with providing PCs has now matured to provide much more from a total solutions perspective that spans multiple industries and domains. DTW went far this year to shine a light on its continued success.