Unveiling the Data Center Solutions Team

re: Unveiling the Data Center Solutions Team

BuzzGuy — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 04:51:04 GMT

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.

re: Unveiling the Data Center Solutions Team

Joe — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 17:08:52 GMT

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!

re: Unveiling the Data Center Solutions Team

datacenterguy — Sun, 13 May 2007 15:21:44 GMT

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.

re: Unveiling the Data Center Solutions Team

Carol S. — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 16:24:17 GMT

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.

re: Unveiling the Data Center Solutions Team

Joe Customer — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 23:11:24 GMT

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.

re: Unveiling the Data Center Solutions Team

John — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 17:29:13 GMT

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.

Dell heads for the cloud

Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 18:46:38 GMT

Dell hasn't yet rolled out its trailer computer, but this week it did make clear that it aims to compete with the likes of Sun, IBM and Rackable in supplying the heavy metal for the big-ass data centers of the future. On Tuesday, the company announced

re: Unveiling the Data Center Solutions Team

Paul Hubert — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 18:41:34 GMT

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.

re: Unveiling the Data Center Solutions Team

Craig — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 13:00:09 GMT

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

re: Unveiling the Data Center Solutions Team

Michael — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 06:51:04 GMT

The link for cloud computing is incorrect.

http://direct2dell.com/controlpanel/blogs/www.dell.com/cloudcomputing