Posts Tagged ‘Dell’
Dell Adds Storage, Servers and Software to Data Center Assault on Cisco, HP, IBM and Oracle
Building upon its solid base in the data center, Dell is taking on competitors Cisco, HP, IBM and Oracle with new servers, storage solutions and software that ’shatter the virtualization glass ceiling’ and offer intelligent data management, simplified infrastructure management and intelligent infrastructure.
Dell is updating its Advanced Infrastructure Management data center initiative announced last December with new server, storage and software solutions, and services.
This is a hotly contested market where IBM has a strong base, Cisco and HP are rolling out competitive initiatives and Oracle is seeking to breathe new life into its Sun Microsystems acquisition. According to AHV Associates LLP, data centers accounted for more than $15 billion last year, so there’s no shortage of opportunity.
Dell is looking to ’shatter the virtualization glass ceiling’ with a data-center lineup that offers intelligent data management, simplified infrastructure management and intelligent infrastructure, says Dell’s Travis Vigil, Senior Product Manager, Storage (EqualLogic). “Last quarter we started talking about the virtual era.” The data-center market is in transition to the virtual era, and “we want to be a winner in that transition.”
Rob Enderle, Principal Analyst, Enderle Group, believes there is more than enough room in the data center market for Dell.
“The market likes choice and specialization,” he tells Channel Insider. “No one vendor, since IBM owned this market, has been able to be expert enough at all business sizes and types providing room for each vendor to specialize and carve out a market.”
What should be good news for the channel is the customer segment that Dell appeals to, adds Enderle.
“Dell tends to favor firms who want to do much of the work themselves, aren’t particularly interested in global services, and want a hardware vendor who is at arm’s length from software to avoid lock-in,” he says. “There appear to be enough of those folks to sustain Dell.”
Charles King, Principal Analyst, Pund-IT, Inc., agrees that there can never be enough systems vendors.
“If nothing else, a competitive vendor ecosystem tends to keeps business technology interesting and serves as an antidote to IT-related BS. In addition, no single vendor has all the answers for every organization. Diverse offerings from multiple vendors help to ensure that businesses can reliably get the most appropriate and cost-effective solutions to their computing problems.”
Being the alternative to business as usual in the data center – typically proprietary and complex solutions – is a Dell differentiator, states Vigil. “If you look at the history of computing… the open architecture is always the one that wins.”
Dell already has a significant data-center footprint, says King.
“The company has long specialized in x86-based solutions that constitute the largest portion of the server market,” he says. “It was the first vendor to launch a dedicated cloud computing product/sales division; and Dell has reported on numerous occasions that it is the largest reseller of VMware solutions, which have found their greatest success among enterprise clients. Additionally, unlike many data-center players, Dell has no legacy hardware platforms threatened by x86 so its server/data-center strategy is more straightforward and less likely to be compromised.”
Among the products being announced — and scheduled to ship this quarter — are: PowerEdge M610x PCIe expansion module; PowerEdge M710HD blade; PowerEdge R715; Dell EqualLogic Array Software which automatically virtualizes and optimizes resources within the SAN; Dell EqualLogic Host Software which can deliver advanced data protection, high availability and performance and simplified management of application data and virtual machines for Microsoft and VMware environments; Dell EqualLogic PS6000XVS and PS6010XVS PS6000-6010 virtualized iSCSI SANs, that combine low-latency Solid State Disk (SSD) and high performance SAS drives within one array to deliver intuitive data responsiveness for tiered workloads; and the Dell PowerVault MD3200 Series of 6Gb shared storage solutions and MD3200i solution for entry-level storage consolidation in virtualized environments that require high availability.
HP beats IBM for server market share
Hewlett-Packard knocked IBM from the top spot in worldwide server revenue during the first quarter, as the market for x86 systems picked up but sales of Unix and mainframe systems continued to decline, Gartner said. Worldwide server revenue climbed 6 percent from a year earlier, to $10.8 billion. Unit shipments climbed 23 percent to 2.1 million, meaning selling prices were generally lower.
The economy is on the mend and organisations are upgrading older servers, said Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner. New Xeon processors from Intel were an added impetus to buy new equipment, he said. But the industry hasn’t returned yet to the quarterly highs it posted in 2008.
Revenue from servers based on x86 chips was $7.18 billion, up 32 percent, while unit shipments climbed to 2.06 million. Revenue from high-end RISC and Itanium-based servers declined by 27 percent, and the “other” category, mostly mainframes, declined by 15 percent.
Subscribe to Techworld newslettersThe trend favored HP and Dell, who saw the biggest revenue gains during the quarter.
HP’s server revenue totaled $3.39 billion, up 15.9 percent year over year to give it 31.5 percent of the market. IBM’s revenue dropped by 2.1 percent to $3.05 billion, giving it 28.4 percent. In third place was Dell, whose revenue grew by 35.5 percent to $1.67 billion, a 15.6 percent market share.
Dell Pushes Efficient Enterprise at Oracle OpenWorld
CEO Michael Dell aims to cut $200 billion in IT spending by pursuing the concept of the efficient enterprise. Meeting that goal will require standardization, simplification and automation, Dell said at Oracle OpenWorld.
Standardize, simplify and automate—those three words are at the heart of a strategy laid out Oct. 13 at Oracle OpenWorld by Michael Dell.
Dell, CEO of the company that bears his last name, said he wants to battle inefficiency and reduce IT spending with what he called the “efficient enterprise.” Dell has spoken about the efficient enterprise in the past, but this time he announced that the company would aim to slash IT spending by $200 billion per year by focusing on ensuring that enterprises get the most out of their technology.
“There is $1.2 trillion spent annually on IT infrastructure,” Dell explained during his keynote at the conference. “Four hundred billion [dollars] on hardware and related software that comes with it, and $800 billion on labor and services. So for every dollar that’s spent on the hardware, you need [an] additional $2 … just to kind of make it all work.”
According to Dell, changing that goes back to the three words mentioned above.
“Standardization is really about point solutions that leverage accepted industry standards to drive out the costs and inefficiencies from proprietary technologies,” Dell told the audience. “Simplification is all about making the complex simple. It’s about leveraging pragmatic solutions like virtualization, like storage consolidation, to get the most out of your infrastructure.”
On the standardization front, there is the adoption of x86, which has become the dominant platform in the data center, he said. When it comes to simplification, businesses can find savings through server consolidation, with virtualization playing a significant role in that, he added.
The final area, automation, is about streamlining service delivery and enabling self-service IT models so critical business services can be delivered on demand, he said.
“We believe there is a real opportunity to drive out inefficiency and make technology work,” Dell said. He added, “It’s not just about reducing cost. It’s about improving productivity and efficiency and making technology work harder for the customers. It’s the efficient enterprise.”
