10 InFocus Topics You’ll Want to Remember From 2020

2020 has thrown all of us many curveballs and challenges, but as we look back, there are also things we can be proud of, things we’ve learned from – things we’ll want to remember and even refer to again.

I’ve recently moved to Services Marketing after having spent time leading Field and Partner Marketing in Latin America and found one thing is very clear across all organizations – our team members are deeply committed to working closely with our customers to help them navigate through difficult times and find ways to turn potential IT obstacles into opportunities. Throughout the year, customers came to us for advice on how they could quickly adopt a work from home strategy for their organizations in the most expedient, efficient and least disruptive way. They also sought guidance from our Services SMEs on topics like return-to-site, team member collaboration and data security.

Our InFocus authors served as another important source of valuable information throughout the year. Many of them were in the trenches (virtually) with our customers during this time of transition and shared guidance based on that experience. As we prepare for 2021, and all that the new year will hopefully bring, please join me in a look back at our top 10 blogs and the themes that were important to our readers. These blogs are worth remembering and earmarking so you can refer to them to again.

Can You Guess the Most Popular Theme? Work From Home Tops the Chart

It’s no surprise that blogs addressing how to enable employees to communicate, collaborate and be productive while working remotely led the way with our readers.

Tips for Enabling Remote Workers with Microsoft Office 365 –  Microsoft Office 365 applications are critical enablers for enhancing the productivity of remote workers as detailed by Dave Carlson. And a bonus – there’s a link to a podcast on the topic.

5 Basic Tips for Enriching Your Experience Using Microsoft Teams – Matt Roberts noticed some patterns that help make the implementation of Microsoft Teams successful and shared five best practices he thinks everyone should embrace.

5 Steps for Helping Remote Workers Embrace Collaboration Technology. – Mustafa Hamid recommended the 80/20 rule for enabling remote worker collaboration – find and implement the most common and impactful changes for your employees – those that are most critical for them to perform their roles.

Tell Us How You Did It – Customers Look to Real World Examples of Success

We’re all keen to learn from the experiences of our peers in IT, and with the acceleration of priorities this year, those examples became even more valuable. Blogs featuring case studies on two of our healthcare customers and the experience of our Dell Digital (IT) organization in enabling a remote workforce and moving to a cloud-based infrastructure were also very popular this year.

How App Retirement and Data Archiving Helped Baptist Health Meet Compliance Requirements, Mitigate Risk, and Save Millions – Learn how Dell managed a data archiving project at Baptist Health that has driven costs and risk from the organization at, as Scott Malson described it, warp speed.

Dell Technologies Services Helps Major Health Partners Reinvigorate Their Microsoft Office 365 Investment – Mike Shea shares his experience re-designing Major Health Partners’ OneDrive for Business, implementing Teams, and completely modernizing their intranet using SharePoint Online.

SD-WAN: A Key Factor In Scaling 120,000 Dell Technologies Team Members To Connect Remotely – Dell IT’s modernization of the company’s wide area network was key to enabling work from home and demonstrates the importance of modernizing your network to have the flexibility to meet whatever future demands arise. Learn how they did it from Jason Chan.

Follow Us to the Cloud Using Dell Technology: Our Multi-Year Journey Is Mapping the Way – Kevin Herrin documented Dell IT’s journey of moving from a traditional data center infrastructure to a flexible, agile, cloud-based infrastructure. Check out his four-part series featuring insights and lessons learned that can help guide your cloud journey.

Speed, Simplicity and Sustainability Were Top of Mind Too

In addition to blogs providing insights and guidance on how to tackle critical IT priorities, we published content that introduced new services and capabilities to help our customers transform faster, mitigate risk and stay socially responsible. These were the most popular.

Pre-Configured Servers Reduce Time Onsite and Speed Deployment – To ensure speed, consistency and precision in your server deployments, Steve Seserman recommends leveraging our new offer – Dell EMC PowerEdge Configuration Services.

Simplify Risk Mitigation at Scale for Enterprise Systems with MyService360 – Tania Ward offered a tour of MyService360 and the integrated advisory remediation management that provides customers with the right details and remedies for their Dell EMC systems.

2B Pounds of Electronics Recovered—And We’re Just Getting Started! – Bob Feiner explained our “moonshot” social impact goals for sustainability and provided a great primer on our existing recycling programs.

As I continue to immerse myself in all things services in my new role, I know I’ll look to our InFocus blogs as insightful, valuable resources. We invite you to stay engaged with us as our bloggers lead us into 2021 with compelling discussions, advice on how to “stay digitally fit and relevant,” and provide expert counsel on the next generation of IT breakthroughs. Make reading InFocus blogs part of your New Year’s resolutions and subscribe to have new content delivered directly to your inbox.

We’re incredibly proud of how our work this year has helped customers as they pivot to their digital future and excited to help them be ready for what’s next. Thank you!

About the Author: Ricardo Calderon

Ricardo Calderon serves as Vice President Marketing for Dell Technologies Services, based in Dell’s headquarters in Austin, Texas. He is responsible for leading the Marketing strategy and programs that drive our Services brand perception, short and long-term demand generation and customer satisfaction through Marketing vehicles for Services Globally. Mr. Calderon shares a passion for driving results through innovation, diversity and talent development. Mr. Calderon joined Dell Inc. nineteen years ago after graduating from the Master degree program at the University of Texas at Austin. His first position at Dell was as an Enterprise Brand Manager, developing the PowerEdge brand of Servers and introducing to the Latin America market our Storage and Switches lines. Later in his career he took over Channel Marketing both for Latin America as well as Global Go To Market. He became VP of Marketing in 2016. Prior to joining Dell, Calderon was a Regional Category Manager for Procter and Gamble in Peru, and was responsible for customer and point of sale marketing. He developed trade-marketing strategies for the introduction of Pringles in Peru and for the brand upgrades of hair care, respiratory and feminine protection product categories. Mr. Calderon has an MBA from University of Texas at Austin and a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering from Universidad de Lima in Peru. Proud husband and father of two young kids.