Tech giant Dell joins Hedera’s governing council

Technology giant Dell will join the likes of Google, FIS and Abrdn on the governing council of the enterprise network Hedera, a distributed ledger technology that uses a hashgraph consensus mechanism.

“Now you're seeing a whole industry start to grow, lots of investment,” said David Frattura, senior director of technology strategy at Dell. “And for us, it becomes more and more serious for us to pay attention and focus on this.” 

As a part of the governing council, Dell will run a consensus node, which is used to determine transaction ordering. Members of the governing council also manage the software related to the network. 

"The node was actually part of the learning exercise we're going through,” Frattura said. “We’re doing this to understand policy implications, processes. What does it take to be a part of a permissioned public ledger and then, for our IT, how do we actually operationalize this? I can go into all the glorious details, but it takes a lot.” 

Dell also intends to leverage the Hedera network within applications, but that’s still early days. 

“As far as any use case, I think it's a little premature,” Frattura said. “As we get our steam rolling, maybe later this year we'll see some more, but right now, let's just get on the council.” 

'Scale at its core'

“Like Hedera, Dell has innovation and scale at its core," Bill Miller, co-chair of the membership committee for the Hedera Governing Council, said in a statement. "Dell’s insight and decades of computing experience, will bring a great deal of value to Hedera Governing Council.” 

Hedera appealed to Dell because the solution has been designed for a wide range of use cases and has a strong community of industry heavyweights behind it, Frattura said. 

Researchers at University College London found Hedera to be the most sustainable proof-of-stake network compared to others like Algorand, Cardano, Ethereum, Tezos and Polkadot. The focus on ESG appeals to companies such as Dell that are looking to explore how technology can be utilized to help enterprises address environmental and social goals. 

Several other industry players are also leveraging Hedera’s network including IBM, which uses Hyperledger Fabric in its solutions, while digital workflow company ServiceNow is integrating Hedera into its Now platform. 

“The reality is we're looking at this as a technology specific point of interest for us,” Frattura said. “It's not about being a crypto exchange, it's about how does this technology solve problems for enterprises. And for us, as a company, how can we potentially leverage it to better serve our customers and improve our processes and potentially build products.” 

(Updates to clarify IBM's use of Hyperledger Fabric in 10th paragraph.)