Dell moves into digital consulting space

Dell is the latest firm to get into the growing digital consulting space.According to Ad Age, Dell Digital Business Services now pits it against the likes of Oracle, IBM and others. The division will consist of consulting services and technology for firms to revamp their digital operations.A ZDNet piece said that the division will “pull data from analytics, mobile, social media and cloud, and the Internet of Things,” to allow firms to understand end user preferences.This will include its social listening and social strategy tools, as well as a new analytics platform that will help marketers and other departments. Consulting services will be offered on top of this."We're experts in understanding your outcomes, and building an analytics engine to meet your needs. We're innovating with partners that matters to you most: Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, VMware, Hadoop, and Cloudera. We're providing the ramps to get off the ageing, obsolete Unix platform and get onto x86 scale out, modern Linux seamlessly," Michael Dell, founder and chief executive, was quoted as saying at Dell World 2014, of the new offering.Recent times have seen major moves being made in the digital consulting space. One major move is having consulting firm Accenture launch a solely digital arm, looking to take a bite out of growing digital marketing dollars (Read also: Accenture speaks up on its digital ambitions).  This also raised the question if these posed a major threat to digital agencies (Read also: Are agencies irreplaceable? and Competitor alert: Agencies, are you ready?)But the space remains nascent at this point.Dell private in October 2013 and has since been increasingly focused on the services business. It now accounts for about 30,000 of its more than 100,000 employees, according to a Wall Street Journal article. The WSJ also recently reported that the company has been in merger talks with tech giant EMC Corp as well.[Image from Shutterstock]