Image Gallery: Dell EMC World

The first Dell EMC World convened in Austin, Texas, this week, with about 8,000 attendees and featured 120 educational tracks, more than 30 hands-on labs and a solutions showcase — all this just one year since the announcement of Dell’s intended acquisition of EMC.

On the first day of the event, Dell EMC partners had their own Global Partner Summit, where the recently minted global channel chief, John Byrne, introduced himself to the audience, talked about his new leadership team and his plans to build the best channel program in the industry. About 1,300 partners learned how Dell EMC plans to merge the company’s currently separate partner programs into a single Dell Technologies Partner Program launching in February 2017.

On Wednesday, Dell EMC introduced a slew of new products that expand its converged infrastructure portfolio, unveiled a new converged endpoint data security and management portfolio, a new Analytics Insights Module, and more.

Click through our image gallery for highlights of the three-day event.

Registration gets underway as attendees convene at the Austin Convention Center for Dell EMC World 2016 and Dell EMC Global Partner Summit. The three-day event was the first for the combined massive $74 billion IT company that unveiled a new single Dell EMC partner program and introduced lots of new products.

Fun fact: As separate companies, Dell and EMC have been working together for many years. Fifteen years ago, in 2001, the two vendors created an alliance called – well, Dell EMC – with the t-shirts to prove it, according to Michael Dell, who added that in the course of more than a decade, the two companies sold over $1 billion worth of Dell EMC storage.

The new Dell EMC Partner Program was introduced at the Dell EMC Global Partner Summit, a one-day event, where John Byrne publically introduced himself to the 1,500 partner attendees.

Michael Dell also made his first appearance of the event to address partners, explain the positioning of the newly combined company and the role of partners. He dropped another factoid: In 2009, he and Joe Tucci, president and CEO of EMC, hired two companies – Bain and McKinsey – to explore combining the companies, and told about secret board-of-director meetings held at strange places. The timing for a deal didn’t pan out.

On Monday night, conference attendees heard several bands at the Dell EMC World Premiere Party, including feature band Alabama Shakes (pictured), hosted by Deloitte. Also not to be missed was an awesome selection of food from Austin’s famous food trucks. Austin boasts more than 1,000 mobile food vendors offering a variety of treats from cupcakes to Korean BBQ, and of course Texas BBQ, sliders, hamburgers, noodles, burritos, etc.

Dell Technologies companies – Dell, Dell EMC, RSA, SecureWorks, Virtustream, VMware – were all touting their wares on the show floor.

As a Dell Technologies subsidiary, VMware, one of the former EMC federated companies, remains a public company post acquisition. The virtualization vendor offers hybrid cloud computing, end-user computing and software-defined data center solutions.

The Women in Technology luncheon featuring Molly Fletcher, sports agent, author and entrepreneur, attracted about 350 people, mostly women — with a sprinkling of male attendees.

Fletcher, a dynamic speaker, shared her business journey as well as wisdom and leadership skills learned along the way. She’s written three books including: A Winner’s Guide to Negotiating; The Business of Being the Best; and, The 5 Best Tools to Find your Dream Career.

Dell’s Alienware “VR Urban Assault Vehicle” and XPS product lines were in command on the Expo floor at the conference.

It was during the keynote session on Wednesday morning, however, that Frank Azor, vice president and general manager at Alienware, a Dell company for 10 years since being acquired in June 2006, not only talked about the company’s 20-year history in the gaming industry, but addressed his commitment to virtual reality (VR), including VR-ready offerings.

Azor noted that VR opportunities in the commercial space, such as health care and real estate, for example, are outpacing those in the gaming space.

A day in the life of a future Dell Technologies customer with the two-minute experience virtualizer. The Total Customer Experience 360-degree virtual reality simulation of the customer experience of the future is always under the microscope of improvement, according to the company.

And, finally, next year in Las Vegas.

The Dell EMC World Conference 2017 is being held at the Venetian, May 8-11. Bye-Bye Austin. After years of being the host city for Dell’s annual conference, the vendor is packing up and taking the show to Vegas citing Austin’s lack of convention space – a loss of more than $8.2 million a year in direct impact for the next three years, according to the Austin Convention and Visitor’s Bureau.