Dell climbs stack with new software group

Dell has created a dedicated software group and tapped John Swainson, former head of IT services specialist CA Technologies, to run it.

The move, announced on Thursday, is a key step in Michael Dell's plan to transform the company from a hardware specialist into a more rounded services-led organisation.

"As software will be a part of all of our products and services, the group's success will largely be measured by the success of Dell overall," Michael Dell, the company's chief executive, said in a statement. "The addition of software, both within the software group and across all of Dell, will help catalyse our transformation."

Swainson will take up his role as president of the Software Group on 5 March and will report to Michael Dell.

Over the past few years Dell has acquired software companies like Boomi, SecureWorks, and Perot Systems. The software group will help the company mesh these acquisitions together and develop new products.

At Dell's inaugural conference in 2011, Michael Dell set the company on a path of developing software products for the cloud and specific industries. On Thursday, the company said the software group "will add to Dell's enterprise solutions capability... and further differentiate the company from competitors by increasing its solutions portfolio with Dell-owned intellectual property."