DELL Extends Retail Solutions - Analyst Blog

Dell Inc. (DELL) recently extended its Retail Solutions portfolio, adding secure cloud support for application integration. The company expects the initiative to be particularly helpful for small and medium businesses (SMBs) that are increasingly turning to the cloud. The solutions are expected to address the SMB retailers' needs for integration of activities and data right from the storefront to the back office.

Dell's retail solutions for the storefront provide support for point-of-sale, digital signage and surveillance. The solutions accelerate the selling process, ensure store safety, reduce inventory shrinkage and enhance customer satisfaction. Dell's retail solutions for back-office operations ensure proper and secured data storage.

Apart from extending retail-based services, Dell is also enthusiastic about providing a full range of information security services to SMBs. As per the findings of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, SMBs are generally prone to hacking, due to limited IT resources for threat prevention. Hence, companies must ensure restricted access to their websites.

To facilitate the identification, monitoring and management of security risks and compliance needs, Dell partnered with SecureWorks, a leading global provider of information security services, in July 2010. Moreover, Dell joined the leading Internet Content Security vendor, Trend Micro Inc., to beef up its security-solutions portfolio. These deals secure Dell's position in the SMB space.

We believe that Dell's SMB customers will clearly gain from its growing expertise, which in turn, would improve the customer retention rate. Revenues from SMB units increased 24.0% year over year in the last quarter.

Dell's SMB exposure is encouraging, but soft demand in the Consumer segment, a high debt level and stiff competition in computing from tech giants such as Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) and International Business Machines Inc. (IBM) keep us on the sidelines.

Currently, Dell has a short-term Hold recommendation, as indicated by the Zacks #3 Rank.

 
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