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Joined on 07/06/2006 Posts: 8
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Unveiling the Data Center Solutions Team

27 March , 01:00 PM

I'm glad to be back on Direct2Dell. Have been spending lots of time formalizing plans for my new team that we announced today, the Data Center Solutions (DCS) team. While we remain committed to designing, building and supporting great general-purpose server and storage products, it's become clear that a set of customers have needs that differ in important ways. These customers are building out fleets of servers with power, thermal, and density issues of such a massive scale that they invite new approaches for optimization. That's particularly true for Web 2.0 companies like Yahoo, Google, Microsoft Live, and Amazon—IT isn't just a part of their business, it is their business.

The initial customer list for DCS isn't just Internet companies… there's a growing list of customers who meet this criteria.

To meet this need, we've created the DCS team and are announcing our first initiative, the Cloud Computing Solution. It is is a computing solution for “Hyperscale” data center environments including “design-to-order” hardware, planning and deployment expertise and customized services targeted to address key needs generally not met by traditional hardware vendors.

For more background, take a look at www.dell.com/cloudcomputing. In this vlog, I share more insight about our new organization. I look forward to providing regular updates from the team via Direct2Dell.

 

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BuzzGuy
12 Jul 2007 11:51 PM
This announcement is empty and a clear sign that Dell does not understand the data center solution space from a service provider perspective.  First of all, the large Web2.0 clients named do not buy DELL, HP, or SUN gear and never will due to price.  Dell should look at what gear they use today and why.  Disposable offshore motherboard boxes is what they use due to the intense volume of machines and cheap prices.  The economics just don't work for either party in a true Hyperscale environment.  Additionally, if Dell could engineer a product for this base of customers, the margins would not be strong enough to justify the outreach/marketing.  Let's hear about high degrees of virtualization, grid computing layers, dynamic resource allocation, etc.  That's the next computing and service level.  Also, what about the control and operational support systems required to support these clients?  That does not come off the assembly line today.  Where will that come from to properly support data center customers?  These operational systems cannot be cobbled together and thrown into operations.  Intense innovation is required there as well.
 
Joe
05 Jun 2007 12:08 PM

Forest

Good Luck on this venture. In truth all clients large and small can benefit from better design and more efficient use of power . Direct Current is certainly an adder to your system. Dell's Direct Current servers, I  am told have a refresh rate of up to twenty times more than their AC counterparts!
 
datacenterguy
13 May 2007 10:21 AM

I am interested to know what the Data Center Solutions Division actually does? If you are targeting the larger clients, you cannot possibly expect to "teach" them anything new otherwise they would not be buying 1,000-10,000 servers per quarter! Secondly, I think the division should really be named the "Server Solutions Division" because this seems like another sales organization within Dell. It would appear that you are not actually solutioning anything within the data center.

 The small and medium clients are the ones who would benefit from a "Data Center Solutions Division" and not the larger ones.
 
Carol S.
12 Apr 2007 11:24 AM
Hey Forrest -- You have some exciting stuff to talk about. Smile some more! And solutions for businesses that sell online make a ton of sense.
 
Joe Customer
09 Apr 2007 06:11 PM
Bla Bla Bla, all talk, give us an example, even if it is just your first sizing exercise.  It looks like you have been put into the back seat to drive this exercise since it will likely will never ship anything due to too low of volume for the design effort. Come on, we are not that stupid.  
 
John
06 Apr 2007 12:29 PM
I think this is a fantastic initiative into a growing market space. I hope the plan of record is to utilize Dell branded products and established Dell operations as much as possible. As mentioned in the video clip, "tens of thousands and even hundreds of thousands" of servers would be a welcome sight to our teams. Google and Yahoo are a significant portion of our volume today and we would love to see that grow. If we have to look at ODM's to provide some of this hardware solution, then we seem to have significant gaps in our product portfolio. Hope to see this volume (in house) very soon.  
 
Paul Hubert
28 Mar 2007 01:41 PM

This sounds like a great (and needed) initiative, but let me suggest that the approach should be scaled so it can also address the needs of smaller data centers... shops that RUN as a data center though the server numbers are smaller.

 Perhaps it could be seen as being similar to GMC's advertisement "Professional Grade".

 Dell could offer services to help lower-end customers with < 100 servers set up an efficient and reliable data center, with well-implemented power supply, backup power, cabinet configuration, and cooling, and even best practices maintenance and administration all optimized for RELIABLE computing and reduced power consumption.

 
What do you think?

Yes, I've posted a number of thoughts on IdeaStorm and continue to participate there.

 
 
Craig
28 Mar 2007 08:00 AM

What about your small to medium clients?  I relize that SMB's don't have the server demand that someone like Yahoo has, but we do have a need to plan floor space and server utilization a little more carefully due to budget constraints.  Yahoo can afford to throw several servers at a problem in several data centers...an SMB may only be able to afford to take a shot at the problem once with one or two servers.

Learning/knowing how to locate equipment in a rack, where to locate the rack it self, securing the rack, etc. is critical to all businesses.  I feel that Dell is leaving out the SMB's when it comes to this.  APC, Gateway, IBM, HP, are making a push for SMB and are offering a lot of the design assistance I am talking about.  Is Dell going to move from an SMB focus to a large enterprise focus?  If so tell me now so I can start switching to someone else.

 -Craig
 
Michael
28 Mar 2007 01:51 AM

The link for cloud computing is incorrect.

http://direct2dell.com/controlpanel/blogs/www.dell.com/cloudcomputing
 
Lionel_Menchaca
28 Mar 2007 01:51 AM
Toby and Michael: Thanks for the heads up... I fixed the link.

 
Toby
28 Mar 2007 01:27 AM
Might want to fix the www.dell.com/cloudcomputing link... I get a 404 when I click on it.