Dell didn’t make any announcements last week at its Annual Analyst Conference, but chose instead to refresh its product strategy of “open, capable and affordable.” While some in the industry may say that the message is tired and been around for far too long, Dell with its new acquisitions is giving it new breath and proving that it can work.
Dell’s new servers come preloaded with hundreds of virtual machines
Consider this as a vote of confidence for affordability. Users of Compellent’s Storage Center SAN are a bunch of rabid folks – said in a good way of course. With their purchase of Storage Center SANs, they’ve adopted a licensing model that is approachable. When they plunked down cash for the SAN and associated software, they knew that when they needed to upgrade to new equipment, that their investment in software would follow. They wouldn’t be charged any more for software each time they refreshed their platform, their original investment followed through with the hardware upgrade.
The same affordability message can also be applied to its EqualLogic acquisition. When a customer purchases an EqualLogic PS Series iSCSI SAN, all software – storage virtualization, snapshots and volume cloning, to name a few – is included at no additional charge.
Further, Compellent’s and EqualLogic’s products fit the Dell open model theme. Each Compellent or EqualLogic box made is based on industry-standard components, uses standard’s based protocols (such as EqualLogic’s use of iSCSI) and integrates with existing infrastructure. Compellent’s SANs also exhibit generational consistency – upgrades to new controllers or new drives maintain backward compatibility to previous generations.
The message from Dell was clear – providing products that are open, capable and affordable.
