Direct2Dell

Last month, my team had the pleasure of visiting the offices of NAB Solutions, a hosting company headquartered in Sweden. NAB Solutions is a SaaS supplier to businesses across the country. The company specialises in hosted services for a range of Microsoft applications such as Microsoft Dynamics NAV business software, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and the Microsoft Office suite.

One of the biggest challenges for companies offering cloud computing solutions is to ensure they have an efficient platform to deliver their SaaS service. For NAB Solutions, their main cloud computing environment had come to the end of its life cycle and needed a platform to support the latest Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization technology, including servers and storage arrays to underpin this advanced infrastructure. It wanted a solution that:

• Reduced energy consumption for greener IT
• Reduced operational costs through simplified management
• Consolidated the existing environment to free space for future growth

For Jörg Wiesemann, Project Manager and Infrastructure-Specialist at NAB Solutions, the deployment of Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V provides a highly flexible IT environment that allows them to respond quickly to client needs and deliver enterprise-class disaster recovery. The storage environment was implemented in just a couple of hours and has Dell support on hand to maximize IT performance for the future.

Additional improvements NAB Solutions is already seeing include:

• Consolidated environment reduces servers by almost 87 percent
• Energy-efficient hardware halves power consumption
• Virtualized infrastructure increases business agility and disaster recovery

For more on the technology used by NAB Solutions, read the full case study.

We at Dell are working hard to make "being green" easier and more cost-effective for our customers. So we were thrilled when industry analyst firm Technology Business Research (TBR) recognized us in its most recent Sustainability Spotlight. TBR provided an overview of Dell's product design and manufacturing strategy, and concluded with this summary:

"In TBR's previous report on Dell's energy usage strategy, we wrote: 'For Dell, sustainability is not a corporate social responsibility issue that sits in a separate office; it is integrated into its business, and managers are expected to incorporate it into their plans.' TBR believes this is also true of the company's product development and manufacturing strategy. While the computer industry as a whole is making strides toward greater sustainability, Dell is clearly establishing itself as a role model, particularly when it comes to taking a comprehensive approach.

"Much of this comes down to Dell's willingness to take a leadership approach. Where other companies - Apple most notably - are coy about releasing details of their sustainability plans and initiatives, Dell releases extremely detailed information about every aspect of its strategy. Dell is also more active than any other computer company in engaging its customer base and other stakeholders in addressing these issues. Because of this, TBR feels that Dell is having an outsized positive impact on the sustainability of the computer industry, as well as the sustainability of industries that are heavy users of computer technology. As such, TBR sees Dell as not just an industry leader in sustainability, but a leader throughout the business world."

This isn't the first time TBR has recognized Dell's Sustainability strategy.  Last May, TBR ranked Dell No. 1 in its inaugural Corporate Sustainability Index Benchmark Report of 40 technology companies.

We're proud of our record, and we're grateful for the acknowledgment from TBR and others. Their opinions tell us we're on the right track, but we understand there's still much work to do.

In my post back in November, I told you all about Dell's exciting new partnership with OPI to produce designs for our laptops in the Dell Design Studio. Many of you were anxious to find out if your favorite nail polish color made the list, so you could match your nails to your e-mails. Today we're continuing the color obsession and adding six new, spicy shades to the batch, all from OPI's newest collection inspired by the city of Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Collection features an eclectic mix of signature shades - from China's traditional good-luck shade of red sizzle to a sophisticated dark green and serene blue.

The new shades include Dim Sum Plum,  Hot & Spicy, Jade Is the New Black, Meet Me on the Star Ferry, Red My Fortune Cookie and Suzi Says Feng Shui. You can view the full set on our Flickr site here. They're all available on all Inspiron and Studio laptops including our new Arrandale-equipped Studio 14 and the new Mini 10 with sleek white base. Also, if you're a QVC fan, select OPI designs will be available on the channel next Monday at 11pm EST.  

Check out the video below to hear from Suzi Weiss-Fischmann, OPI Executive VP & Artistic Director, about why Dell and OPI are the perfect, polished pair:

Dim Sum Plum: "A berry delectable delicacy. One of my friends introduced me to dim sum recently, and I can't get enough!  The restaurant she took me to serves these little delicacies in the traditional way - from a cart - accompanied by Chinese tea.  This shade of plum from the Hong Kong Collection immediately reminded me of dim sum, both because of the rhyme and because it is such a delicious shade." - Suzi

It's been one of those busy product days today. Earlier we unveiled the Alienware M11x portable gaming laptop. Now, I'm going to shift gears a bit to talk about two new products for business customers: the ultraportable Latitude 13 and the updated Dell Precision M6500 Mobile Workstation.

The Latitude 13 builds on the success we've seen with the Vostro V13 and small business customers who value the thin and light design, solid performance and strong battery life. ZDNet even referred to the Latitude 13 as the "Enterprise version of the Vostro V13," which is not far off the mark. The Latitude 13 adds features such as remote manageability and  desktop virtualization through certification from Citrix and VMware to deliver a full PC experience to users in non-standard computing environments such as call centers, regional offices and hotels; Comprehensive systems management with support for BroadcomTruManage technology and Dell ImageDirect service which lets IT create, update and deploy system images 24/7 from a secure online location; Flexible connectivity options from mobile broadband and Wi-Fi via 802.11 g/n; and customized security offerings including solid-state drives (SSD), full disk encryption (FDE), Trusted Platform Module (TPM) control and Computrace software. The Latitude 13 will be available for order in the next several weeks.

Next up is the updated M6500 mobile workstation. When we introduced it originally introduced it in December last year, the M6500 was already the most powerful and expandable mobile workstation we've ever offered. We'll continue to offer quad core i7 processors, but now we're expanding processor options to include Intel's i5 processors. We also continue to offer workstation-class 1GB graphics options from both AMD and NVIDIA (watch Inside Enterprise IT for guest posts from each of those companies very soon by the way). Update: Here are the guest posts from NVIDIA's Shawn Worsell and AMD's Janet Matsuda. It also has 4 DIMM slots for up to 16GB RAM, can support 3 internal hard drives to make RAID 5 a possibility. It also supports an optional RGB LED edge-to-edge 17-inch screen with 100 percent user-selectable color gamut support. And for those that need external bandwidth, you can outfit the M6500 with USB 3.0. 

The dual-core versions of the Dell Precision M6500 will be available for order in the coming weeks. More details are available at www.dell.com/precision.  If you missed this video featuring Autodesk's Steven Roselle about what an M6500 workstation means to graphics professionals.

Customers our employees talk to stress the importance to meet the needs of an increasingly demanding mobile workforce while providing the security and systems management tools required to make it all work. This is a common struggle for all organizations, big and small.

Of particular interest to our customers is how they can better:

• Provide the right tools for the job – How does an IT organization support specialty use cases (24/7 connectivity, tailored computing solutions like convertible tablets and mobile workstations) while maintaining a common level of support?
• Keep a diverse workforce productive and happy –Is there room for individual expression with designs that are as cool looking as they are efficient and easy to manage?
• Manage technology transition without workforce interruption – How does IT support OS migrations and new technologies like desktop virtualization?

The Latitude 13 and Dell Precision M6500 help address these issues not only through the design elements end-users can see but also IT-empowering features such as remote manageability, common imaging, and embedded agents that make implementing desktop virtualization easier.  Click on either of the embedded pictures to see larger versions, or you can click on this set to see both the Latitude 13 and the updated Dell Precision M6500 mobile workstation.

I recall a time not so long ago I sat in the line at Quakecon and marveled at the gaming rigs devout fans brought with them to the BYOC. Some people's systems were stock Dells, some folks had gargantuan XPS systems and Alienware ALX's, and some folks had huge monstrosities apparently created by their own two hands. It was a gaming convention, and these folks were gamers. Power was their main concern, not portability. Like many aching backed attendees, I longed for the day when portability wouldn't necessarily be sacrificed for power in a gaming hardware.

I'm happy to announce that day has finally arrived. You can now own the first genuine mobile gaming solution on the planet: the Alienware M11x!

You may have seen the announcements at CES, or seen us give away 4 of them before you could buy them, or even seen the video I shot with Katie on Engadget. Now customers in the United States, Canada, the UK, France and Germany, Japan and other parts of Asia can order the M11x soon.

Here's a good overview of what you can expect from the Alienware M11x from Bryan Dezayas and Frank Azor from the Alienware team:

I saw that Scatmanbrandt asked whether the M11x could drive an external monitor... yes, through HDMI, DisplayPort or VGA, the NVIDIA GeForce GT 335M supports resolutions up to 2560x1200. I had a chance to catch Lenard Swain, one of the lead engineers on the M11x project, on camera last time I was in the lab. Check it out:

A quick rundown of what you can get on an Alienware M11x:

• Up to an Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 processor
• 1GB GDDR3 NVIDIA GeForce GT 335M graphics solution
• Up to 8GB DDR3 1066MHz Memory
• Up to a 500GB 7200RPM hard drive, or a 256GB solid state drive
• An 11 inch WLED High Definition widescreen "edge-to-edge" 720p display

All this hardware in a machine that weighs about 4.5 pounds, this system truly redefines portability in gaming. I expect to see more than a few of these next time I go to Quakecon, or the next time I hit a LAN party.

For more details you can go to www.alienware.com/m11x.