News: Michael Dell gung-ho on India

(AP 06/04/2006) Oklahoma City - Dell Inc. Chairman Michael Dell defended efforts to hire abroad during a recruiting visit with Oklahoma college students.

Responding to students who asked about whether Dell plans to outsource more jobs overseas, Dell said the hiring is "not so much outsourcing as it is expanding around the world. We believe in global trade, and we're expanding our markets all over the world."

He made the comments as he took a personal hand in recruiting for his computer manufacturing company's new call center, appearing before about 500 college students to tout the technology industry.

Dell Inc.'s Oklahoma City campus, which opened in September, employs about 1,000 people. The company plans to add another 400 over the next several months. Dell said the Round Rock, Texas-based company wants to build new manufacturing facilities in India and eastern Europe. "Those are high-growth markets for us," Dell said. "We haven't made any announcement yet, but we're exploring different locations."

Dell said that while the company plans to have its largest sites in the United States, it cannot ignore the growing markets in Eastern Europe, Asia and Central and South America. "The American economy is a great economy ... but about 96 percent of the people we want to sell to don't live in America. You can't sell to them from here. You have to go there, and we've been globalizing our company since we were a little 3-year-old baby company. That's all part of growing and developing a company."

Dell also said a recent decision by Microsoft Corp. to delay until early next year the release of its new operating system, Windows Vista, will not be problematic. "We're not too entirely surprised," Dell said. "The important thing is that the new operating system, Vista, is released when it's ready," he added.

Dell said the company will help ease the transition by making its new series of XPS systems released over the next few weeks Vista-compatible. He said Microsoft typically develops "bridge strategies ... to allow customers to move from one operating system to another."

Windows Vista is Microsoft's first major update to the company's flagship operating system since Windows XP was released in late 2001. The planned November release was pushed back because Microsoft needed more time to enhance security and other functions.