Dell builds new support "command center"

Dell Inc.'s services group has built a new high-tech command center on its Round Rock, Texas, campus designed to help the company better track its support staff and supply chain and give it a leg up in responding to disasters at customer sites.

The 2,600-square-foot (241-square-meter) center, which will have a staff of 60, was opened last week at the Round Rock campus and primarily is being used to give Dell a centralized place to resolve customer issues in its server and storage business.

"The Enterprise Command Center is looking at where the most available technician is to the site," said Gary Cotshott, "It looks at part stocks to understand where we can get parts from," he said. The center will support customers in the U.S., Canada and Latin America.

With a wall full of huge screens, not unlike a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) mission control post, Dell's center will operate continuously and has been modelled on similar crisis centers set up by emergency response departments and corporations, Dell said.

It will also let Dell be more responsive in getting customers up and running after natural disasters, Cotshott said. For example, Dell will use the center to take a look at which of its customers might be affected by the next major hurricane and to then develop a plan to replace equipment that might be destroyed, and restore the customer's data, he said. "We can go in, look at our database, determine the bevy of parts that we have located in the various remote parts depots."

"We want to do the best that we can to be on top of events that are occurring," Cotshott said. "They could be political, they could be terrorist-related, they could be natural kinds of disasters."