Dell grabs ex-Sun comms chief

On a Lark

By Ashlee Vance in Mountain View • Get more from this author

Posted in Servers, 17th September 2007 18:23 GMT

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Dell 2.0 has acquired former Sun Microsystems corporate communications chief Andy Lark as its new VP of marketing and communications.

Lark, most recently CMO at start-up LogLogic, will report to Dell's CMO Mark Jarvis. This places a Brit - Jarvis - and a Kiwi - Lark - as Dell's marketing leads, which should add some interesting flavor to the Texas-based company's global brainwashing efforts.

As you know all too well, Dell is trying to reinvent itself via a two-year metamorphosis. This plans includes lots of bogging and other Web 2.0-type things such as the IdeaStorm website where Dell takes feedback from customers on what it should do next. We presume Dell will add some Kafkaesque elements to its reinvention as well.

Slapping Ubuntu on Dell machines remains one of the most popular ideas on the IdeaStorm site - a message Dell listened to by placing the Linux operating system as an option on select laptops and desktops. We, however, have a word of caution for any of you that actually want the Ubuntu/Dell combination. Our laptop ordered in late August remains "in process" with a delivery set for sometime this century. Guess we should not have gone with the yellow rig.

We digress.

Lark is a bogging specialist and should fit right in with Dell's marketing plans. In addition, he obviously brings some serious enterprise know-how, having spent a number of years pushing servers for Sun. ®

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