Announcing a spate of cloud partnerships, Dell begins to firm up its new identity.

If taking his company private hasn’t made Dell CEO Michael Dell more relaxed and assured, he placed on a resounding facade during his opening keynote Thursday at Dell World.

“Shazam!” Dell exclaimed after Dell Servers VP and GM Forrest Norrod demonstrated the company’s Fluid Cache for SAN storage product achieving over 5 million IOPS, which Dell claimed is a global record.

“If you go cloud, pick Dell. KABOOM!” Dell said in another of his more exuberant moments, lots of which also included references to the R&D freedom the corporate can enjoy now that it’s now not subject to Wall Street’s quarterly scrutiny. Dell can operate like “the world’s largest start-up,” the CEO declared, repeating a line that company executives have used for the reason that buyout was finalized.

But showmanship is par for the course during major tech keynotes. Many one of several thousands of Dell customers in attendance seemed engaged by the CEO’s feisty tone, but many were without doubt asking the identical question: What does all this mean for me and my business?

Dell executives have addressed this concern in recent weeks, but largely in broad terms. On Thursday, the corporate revealed specifics, announcing a number of cloud partnerships and innovation initiatives that CEO Dell said would return the corporate to its heritage: bringing customers the goods they wish at disruptive prices.

The announcements were highlighted by an o.e.m alliance with Red Hat during which both companies will jointly engineer systems that run Red Hat’s version of the open-source OpenStack cloud platform. The corporate also announced partnerships with quite a few public cloud vendors, including Google, Microsoft Azure, and CenturyLink. It’s an imposing roster, even supposing it omits the 800-pound gorilla within the room, Amazon Web Services.

The gist is that Dell, unlike competitors along with HP and IBM, doesn’t see the ease in building out its own public cloud. Instead, the corporate has opted to partner with others, which permits it to highlight simplifying cloud management and orchestration in preference to building out the underlying infrastructure.

[Is Dell’s Venue Pro the best Windows tablet for you? Read Microsoft Surface vs. Dell Venue: Tablet Rivals.]

The partnerships announced Thursday also include a cope with Dropbox. Dell will offer Dropbox for Business through its sales force and pair it with Dell Data Protection Cloud. Dell’s technology encrypts data because it moves out and in of public clouds. Dropbox says greater than 4 million businesses are using its product. Ross Piper, the company’s VP of Enterprise Strategy, told InformationWeek it hadn’t yet been determined when the Dell-backed offering will roll out.

Other Dell announcements included the Dell Research Division and the Dell Venture Fund, two projects intended to spur innovation. The Dell Research Division will consider organic growth with an extended-range focus and could collaborate with leading research universities to harness emerging technologies, Michael Dell said. The $300 million venture fund will identify and support early-stage startups from around the globe.

Dell executives also emphasized that though the company’s future is in software and services, it remains committed to the computer market. Dell is one of many companies which have taken a beating, both financially and within the press, because the PC slump has worn on. But Michael Dell emphasized the promise of recent products, including its Venue tablet line, and claimed the corporate is seeing growth in notebooks.

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