Dell is offering more than just hardware, with an entire business division focused on cloud computing

IF YOU THOUGHT Dell`s business was just about hardware, think again. Dell has set itself a mission to bring value beyond what is commonly available off-the-shelf from white box vendors through its supply chain, engineering and global operations competencies. The main reason for this is that the company believes the future is here, and the future is cloud computing.

The company established its Data Center Solutions (DCS) division in 2007 in order to respond to its customers` unique needs, particularly in the area of cloud computing. And the company`s recent launch of its next-generation storage and server products is underpinning this drive - all of Dell`s new products offer advanced virtualisation capabilities, and all have been designed to cut costs and increase efficiency.

James Quarles, director of EMEA marketing for Enterprise Solutions at Dell, explains that the company`s cloud computing solution is designed to provide data centre optimisation, increased energy efficiency, and lower deployment and overall management overhead for customers whose IT infrastructure, or compute cloud, is the "factory" for their business.

"As computing architectures evolve, server-centric cloud and large cluster environments are increasingly being utilised to deliver common applications as well as flexible access to powerful compute and storage resources," he explains.

"Cloud computing platforms are also increasingly being deployed by organisations that offer computing resources as well as software and storage hosting services over the internet. In parallel with this trend, traditional clusters employed across a wide range of industries to perform compute-intensive tasks, such as financial risk analysis, geophysical modelling, electronic design analysis, graphics rendering, and medical research continue to grow ever larger."

DESIGN TO ORDER

The DCS division was designed to address a new business opportunity for Dell: the unique needs of businesses operating hyper-scale computing environments that require rack and data centre optimised "design-to-order" technology and services. "By taking Dell`s `build-to-order model` to the next step with a `design-to-order` custom hardware and service solution, Dell engineering enables customers to optimise the performance of their IT infrastructure for their specific applications," says Rick Becker, vice-president of Dell Enterprise Software & Solutions.

This customisation is at the heart of Dell`s cloud offering. "The infrastructure requirements of Web 2.0 companies are distinctive and differ in many ways from the needs of traditional enterprise IT customers. Dell recognises that these customers have unique compute density, power density and manageability needs and the Data Center Solutions division has been created to offer this growing customer segment access to IT infrastructure solutions tailored for their unique business requirements," says Quarles. "Our unique customer interaction, global reach and speed to market position Dell to offer a total `design-to-order` package, optimised for each customer`s needs. We`re maximising the performance of their IT infrastructure and providing tangible value to this growing market segment where IT is not just a business factor, it`s a business driver."

So instead of merely selling boxes, Dell offers its customers the ability to assess the business needs of their customers. In the context of physical and logical limitations, the company builds hardware solutions that are optimised for their specific requirements and even offers onsite Dell support personnel to deploy and service hardware.