Dell saves millions on conference calls

COMPUTER giant Dell has saved "multiple millions of dollars a month" by conducting conference calls on its corporate network instead of using traditional telephone services.

Like most multinational organisations, the company has a large pool of employees who work closely with their overseas counterparts.

According to Dell global chief information officer Robin Johnson, workers typically generate 35-40 million minutes each month on conference calls.

"We pushed our entire conference calling on to our own MPLS (Multi-protocol Label Switching) network," Mr Johnson told The Australian during his visit to Sydney last week. "I can't tell you the rates, but we saved a ton of money . . . it's in the multiple millions of dollars a month."

Dell employs about 100,000 people around the world.

The company installed software by Avaya and uses British Telecom as its sole global conference call provider.

Dell employees engaged in conference calls are given a unique 10-digit phone number by British Telecom.

"You make a call and a British Telecom operator will connect everyone, but the network is Dell's," Mr Johnson said.

He declined to reveal the project cost, but said it took six months to deploy from the third quarter last year. "We had some teething problems, don't get me wrong. But the (voice) quality is great," he said.

"I don't think anyone can notice the difference any more."

Mr Johnson said many CIOs were unaware how much it cost per minute to use the MPLS network for voice calls, nor put a price on conference calls.

He said the migration was "simple" and that "anyone" could do it. "I haven't met anyone else who's done it, but I'm sure there are a few," he said.

Like many CIOs, Mr Johnson is under constant pressure to realign costs, but urged tech executives to re-examine and fine-tune their current business process. Using Dell's conference call example, he said those savings would be ploughed back into the business and were likely to support innovative projects.

"You've got to be re-examining what you do today, not just talking about what's new," he said. "When you change what you do today, the money being freed up can be put into other services or be invested in innovation."

Mr Johnson was well aware of Dell's energy consumption bill. Three and a half years ago, the vendor thought it had to build a new data centre.

Using virtualisation and modular data centre technologies, the company avoided having to spend $US350m building the facility.

He said two data centres at Dell's headquarters in Austin, Texas consumed "40 per cent of all power" on campus.

The company is on a mission to slash $US4 billion ($4.07bn) in costs over two years, a target first unveiled in 2009.