March, 2011

Inside Enterprise IT

Strategic insights on using IT to achieve business goals
  • Inside Enterprise IT

    Dell OEM Solutions’ customer feedback drives business

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    If you’re a Dell customer, you likely know that Dell allocates considerable time and resources to proactively soliciting feedback from customers. Called our Net Promoter Score (NPS), the Dell OEM Solutions team recently finished its most recent customer survey and spent some time assessing the feedback and what it means to our business. First, for those who aren’t aware of what an NPS score is, let me give a quick overview. It is a single score that is formulated based on smaller...
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    Dell, Equinix and Rackspace launch Free OpenStack Demo environment

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    OpenStack , the open source cloud platform based on code donated by NASA and Rackspace, has gained considerable traction since it was launched eight months ago. The community has rapidly grown and there have been several releases. Now its time to get potential customers trying it out and kicking the tires. With the idea of removing friction to adoption and make the testing out of the platform as easy as possible, Dell, Equinix and Rackspace are announcing today the availability of a free OpenStack...
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    Dell Adds Modular Embedded 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) Networking Capabilities To Blade Portfolio!

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    We're on a roll at Dell. A few weeks ago, V3.co.uk published a review of our M-series blade capabilities concluding that our, " blade server system can match anything from HP and IBM" . The 4/5 star review also calls out our support for multiple networking and I/O modules as a key area which allows the Dell M-Series "to stand out from the crowd." Add this to numerous other excellent reviews, including significant power & cooling advantages, and the M-Series continues...
  • Inside Enterprise IT

    All Hail Desktop Virtualization. Really?

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    True, desktop virtualization can deliver the holy grail of enterprise IT access: any-place/any-time/any-device – without putting your data at risk. But that doesn’t mean it’s right for every application. Just try to run a flight simulator or 3D animation on a virtual desktop to see why. 1 The point is, you have to create a targeted strategy before you can decide if desktop virtualization is right you. And your analysis should start with your end users, not your products, vendors...
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    Dell OEM Custom Shop mods a PowerEdge R310

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    When I looked at my ringing mobile phone the Caller-ID said “Dell, Inc.” and I assumed it was a co-worker reminding me about an important meeting I had forgotten. Instead the voice at the other end of the call excitedly whispered in a consciously hushed tone, “I’ve got something you need to see. The world needs to know about it.” Who was this? He sounded vaguely familiar and I asked what he was speaking about to which he responded, “I saw the videos you’ve...
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    Dells Data Center Solutions group turns Four!

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    Dell’s Data Center Solutions group (DCS) is no longer a toddler. Over the weekend we turned four! Four years ago on March 27, 2007 Dell announced the formation of the Data Center Solutions group, a special crack team designed to service the needs of hyperscale customers. On that day eWeek announced the event in their article Dell Takes On Data Centers with New Services Unit and within the first week Forrest Norrod, founding DCS GM and currently the GM of Dell’s server platform division...
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    Intel’s Jason Waxman on Sandy Bridge, Atom and our new Intel-based Microserver

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    World Hosting Days is going on right now outside of Frankfurt and our group is using this event to debut our new PowerEdge C microservers. These new microservers, which come in both Intel and AMD flavors, are right-sized for dedicated hosting applications and provide extreme density and efficiency. Yesterday, we got a shout out during AMD’s session and today Jason Waxman of Intel had kind words for our PowerEdge C5220 microserver during his talk. Jason is Intel’s General Manager, High...
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    Dell OEM Solutions Custom Shop Winter, 2011 update: Part 4

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    In my previous video blogs we saw Ric McKinney discussing custom engineering projects using standard Dell products designed for our OEM Solutions Group customers. We saw the amazing work they did on the PowerEdge M1000e blade enclosure, the PowerEdge R710 tower server, and the Precision Workstation T7500 . All great work resulting from specific requests for our customers. In the video below Ric shows us a different side of our OEM Product Engineering Group. Based on more general requests from...
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    Live from World Hosting Days – AMD’s John Freuhe talks about the AMD based PowerEdge C systems

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    This week, outside of Frankfurt, WorldHostingDays is taking place. A whole delegation of folks from the Data Center Solutions group is there to support the announcement of our new microserver line. A lot of our key partners are there as well. One such partner is AMD . Earlier today, AMD director of product marketing John Fruehe held a session entitled “Core Scalability in a cloud environment.” Above is a three minute section where John talks about the three AMD-based systems that...
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    Storage Solutions for OEMs: Dell’s Compellent and EqualLogic Products

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    Earlier this month I blogged about the benefits of Dell acquiring Compellent and growing our storage portfolio this week, today I want to expand on this discussion by addressing how to start evaluating Dell’s EqualLogic and Compellent products for your OEM solution. When does EqualLogic make sense for OEMs? EqualLogic is about ease of installation and operation – “buy-it and forget-it”. EqualLogic storage is built to provide the right balance of storage capacity, bandwidth...
  • Inside Enterprise IT

    A Walk-thru of our new Hyper-scale inspired Microserver

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    Earlier this morning at WorldHostingDays outside of Frankfurt, we announced our new line of PowerEdge C microservers . While this is our third generation of microservers, its the first that are available beyond the custom designed systems we’ve been building for a small group of hyperscale web hosters. If you’re not familiar with microservers, their big appeal is that they are right-sized for many dedicated hosting applications and provide extreme density and efficiency, all of which...
  • Inside Enterprise IT

    DCS Microserver allows French hoster to enter new market (and grab big market share)

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    Online.net , owned by the Iliad group, is the second largest hoster in the French market. The company had traditionally been focused on the higher end of the dedicated hosting market with services starting at 29.99 euro/month and predominantly based on Dell’s rack mounted servers. About three years ago they began exploring the possibility of providing a lighter weight entry-level offering targeted at SMBs. Online engaged Dell’s Data Center Solutions (DCS) group and the two teams began...
  • Inside Enterprise IT

    OEMs are looking at cloud-based models

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    Over the last month, I attended both the RSA Security Show and Digital Signage Expo . As a Business Development Manager on the Dell OEM Solutions team, I’m constantly attending events to seek out opportunities, network, and learn more about new technology showcased at the shows. One of the unique commonalities that kept appearing at both shows was the continued buzz around “The Cloud”. Many of the exhibitors at the RSA show were looking to move to a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS...
  • Inside Enterprise IT

    Intel, Dell and Microservers

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    Microservers are a class of scaled-out systems that Dell’s Data Center Solutions group has been designing for customers for the last several years. These ultra-dense systems are made up of up to twelve discrete servers within one enclosure and are perfect for dedicated web hosting and telco customers. With a little help from our friends Take a listen to Intel’s director of cloud marketing, Raejeanne Skillern as she talks about how Intel’s been involved in this space and how...
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    Update on Dell OEM Solutions Partner program

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    In a recent ChannelPro article, Greg Davis, Dell’s vice president and general manager, global commercial channels, discussed the advancements made with Dell’s Partner Direct Channel Program since it began in December 2007. In the 3+ years since then, Dell OEM Solutions has quickly grown to a business larger than $1B, with over 250 employees and over 2,000 OEM customers worldwide in more than 40 industry verticals. As Dell OEM Solutions continues to grow and expand our business, the...
  • Inside Enterprise IT

    Rackspace evolves OpenStack governance

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    One of the trickiest things to get right in an open source project is the governance model. Who makes up the various boards and gets what authority is something struggled over and something that virtually no one gets right straight out of the gate. Its particularly interesting if you are a commercial entity sponsoring a project and want to maintain a certain amount of influence over the endeavor but also want it to grow and flourish. Two weeks ago Jonathan Bryce, Rackspace cloud co-founder and...
  • Inside Enterprise IT

    OpenStack Installer Demo at SXSW

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    Last week and this, Austin’s downtown has been taken over by the South by Southwes t festival (SXSW). What started out nearly 25 years ago as a music festival/conference has grown to include parallel film and interactive events as well. During the event every bar and venue downtown is occupied with bands, films or tech companies showing their stuff. Yesterday Rackspace commandeered the Kung Fu Saloon in the name of the OpenStack project. As part of this event, and before the drinking began...
  • Inside Enterprise IT

    Fast and furious – developing an enterprise class environment for Team Lotus

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    You only need to watch a Formula One™ car when it comes into the pits and is surrounded by laptops, to see how reliant modern racing is on technology. As crucial as the driver’s skill is the IT infrastructure behind an F1 team. When the newly formed Team Lotus asked us to help them build a trackside environment, and an HPC solution for their headquarters, it was a great chance for us to start from the ground up and create something really tailored to the needs of modern racing. ...
  • Inside Enterprise IT

    Desktop virtualization just got simpler

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    If you’re a regular on sites like Network World or ChannelInsider , you read about yesterday’s announcement of our new Desktop Virtualization (#DDVS) offering built on Citrix XenDesktop . Below is a guest blog post outlining more about #DDVS and our collaboration with Citrix from Natalie Lambert, Director of Product Marketing at Citrix Systems is responsible for the go-to-market strategy of XenDesktop. In her role, she is driving web based programs and key alliances to ensure broad understanding...
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    Dell storage - What Dell’s acquisition of Compellent means to OEMs

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    With the recent acquisition of Compellent , I wanted to provide more insight on how the acquisition impacts Dell’s OEM customers. Compellent products fill out the high-end of Dell’s storage portfolio providing more storage options. Customers can start with a simple JBOD and go all the way up to enterprise robust storage systems all from the same source – Dell. Here is a closer looker on what the Dell Compellent storage brings to the party to address you storage needs. Enterprise...
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    OpenStack heads into Interstellar Overdrive

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    One small step for OpenStack , one giant step for mankind! Ok, that may be taking it a bit far but today there is some exciting news that Dell and Rackspace have announced. If OpenStack is new to you it’s the open source cloud platform based off of the Nebula cloud code base donated by NASA (hence all the rocket allusions) and the storage code base from Rackspace. The project is now about eight months old and its community is over 50 organizations strong including NASA, Citrix, AMD, Intel...
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    Internet Fr responds to customers 84 times faster

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    When IT is the crux of your business, every switch, server and storage device has an impact on how you measure up against the competition. For hosting providers, high availability is an obvious must, but scalability comes a close second. Reliability has to be paired with simple expansion – not only to accommodate new customers but to support longer term business development. At Internet Fr , great customer service rests on high uptime and expert support . Many customers opt for services...
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    Turn me loose, not my data

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    Turn me loose underneath the western skies… Don't fence me in. — Cole Porter No CIO wants to be the guy who puts the brakes on innovation. Yet doing away with information restrictions in the hopes of spurring innovation could easily lead to much bigger problems. Just ask Mark Zuckerberg. 1 It doesn't take much imagination to play out a WikiLeak-ish scenario in which confidential data on someone’s mobile phone ends up in the wrong hands – and brings a company...
  • Inside Enterprise IT

    The IT Lock Down and Trust

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    Note from Lionel: Below is a guest post from Dave Gardner , Owner/Partner of Gardner & Associates Consulting and Fast Company Expert Blogger. He also attended our first CAP Days session here in Austin. The following post originally appeared on The Fast Company Expert Blog . We thought Dave covered some good ground here and thought we’d bring it to our Inside Enterprise IT readers. With that…here's Dave's post: This blog is written by a member of our expert blogging...
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    And the Oscar goes to: Dell customers

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    While everyone recovers from this year’s Academy Awards , debating over who deservedly won (or lost), at Dell we’re most excited about our customers’ success - customer Double Negative (DNeg) walked away with Visual Effects award for their work on Christopher Nolan’s “ Inception ”, In addition, Pixomondo worked on Oscar-nominated “ Iron Man 2 ”. These customers have helped burst these blockbusters onto the screen, with Dell technology backing them along...
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