Dell's CEO looks beyond the U.S. and past the company's staple PCs to new opportunities across the globe in wireless, servers, and data storage. Good thing the direct-sales giant is accustomed to remaking itself - fast.
Walk into Dell Corp.'s new four-story corporate headquarters in southwest Austin's West Lake Hills neighborhood and you are struck by the simplicity. Here's this $32.6 billion high-tech giant, and the fanciest thing in the lobby is a couple of plants and a glass case enclosing posted EEOC guidelines. It is a no-frills style fitting for chairman and CEO Michael Dell's direct-sales approach. No wining and dining here. It's about delivering technology, at the right price, fast.

By now, most of us are familiar with Dell's legendary success - a direct-to-the-customer, build-to-order PC business founded in 1984 from its namesake's University of Texas dorm room.

Now, at a still youthful 36, Dell is considered an old-timer in a business environment where successful companies succeed fast, and struggling ones bite the dust just as quickly.

But slow Dell is not. Over the past five years, the company has increased its market share by 22 to 24 percent in every product line, compared with six-tenths of a percentage point by its next four competitors collectively. Dell also recently toppled rival Compaq from its perch as the world's top computer systems maker.

Navigating this landscape successfully has earned Dell a reputation for managerial brilliance that induces many an executive to imitate his change-friendly, turn-on-a-dime corporate culture. And now, Dell's Internet strategy is one more reason business people ask, "How does Michael Dell do it?" The company's online ordering and fulfillment system is so successful that 50 percent of sales come via its Web site, even as the once-golden words "dot-com" have lost their luster. Not that Dell has escaped the slowdown. Sluggish PC sales and a faltering economy resulted in first-ever large-scale layoffs at the company this year.