戴尔已经在成为全方位IT解决方案供应商的路上取得了很大的进展。下面是戴尔的Marc Stitt向我们谈论的该公司的发展重点。

　　Marc Stitt曾经在Quest工作，如今是虚拟化和私有云市场部的高级经理，他最近与我取得了联系。他想花些时间谈谈戴尔的前景。由于我不经常与戴尔对话，因此很欣赏他做出的努力。

戴尔的历史定位

　　惠普、IBM、Sun和其他主要系统供应商着眼于提供包含系统、存储、网络、运行系统、开发工具、应用框架、虚拟平台和专业服务的完整环境；而戴尔主要注重划算、高容量的行业标准系统。

　　当一个用户想要全面、完整的系统解决方案时，戴尔必须与合伙人合作，而其他供应商则依据自己的产品和服务组合提供集成服务。

戴尔的新定位

　　戴尔已经清楚地将自己重新定位在依附X86处理器；Windows 和Linux；第三方开发、部署环境和虚拟机器软件的竞争者；为了巩固自己的定位，戴尔已经在过去几年收购了一些公司。明显的目的就是在虚拟化和云就算领域有一席之地。

自2010年起，公司已经收购了以下公司：

　　2010年2月11日收购了KACE网络，给戴尔提供了系统管理装置
　　2010年2月19日收购了Exanet ，使戴尔在存储虚拟化市场的分布式文件系统中有了一席之地
　　2010年7月1日收购了Scalent，使戴尔具备了创建动态虚拟环境的工具
　　2010年7月30日收购了Ocarina网络，给了戴尔另一套存储虚拟化工具。Ocarina注重存储复制和优化
　　2010年11月2日收购了Boomi ，戴尔拥有了一套能集成基于云的应用程序的工具
　　2010年12月13日，戴尔将Compellent加入到存储系统产品
　　2011年1月4日，SecureWorks加入戴尔，给戴尔提供了安全服务
　　2011年7月20日收购Force10，由此戴尔产品中加入了数据中心网络和网络虚拟化

　　特别要指出，戴尔现在不再试图成为全方位的供应商。公司借助自身的访问虚拟化、应用程序虚拟化和处理虚拟化的能力依附于合作者。它已经着眼于网络产品以及网络虚拟化；存储虚拟化；安全性；和管理产品。

戴尔当前的前进方向

　　Stitt说明戴尔如今注重虚拟化和私有云领域。他说，戴尔正在集中提供IT服务管理工具，工作负载生命周期管理和基础设施管理。目的是提供能让客户提高业务灵活性、减少运行成本、更好利用系统资源的工具。

　　在戴尔看来，客户正在转变。他们正在使用“虚拟化”（定义为创建虚拟服务器的虚拟机器软件），以便能够压缩当前的工作量。今天所做的努力将使客户能够决定托管工作负荷的地点。现在这些工作负荷大部分托管在企业内部，但是戴尔正在努力帮助客户在现场创建私有云环境来获得灵活性、自助服务和其他的好处。戴尔将帮助客户把这部分工作量移出企业，来充分利用外包私有数据中心。当这个办法成为最佳办法时，戴尔希望帮助其他客户利用公共云。

快照分析

　　公司已经聚集了能够促进移入虚拟环境的工具，并且从那里进入云中。迄今为止戴尔也没有试图成为全能服务供应商。它正在与合作伙伴共同提供需要的一切来支持客户的IT环境。

　　至于这种方法是否比其他的方法集成更紧密还不清楚。

　　清楚的是，当戴尔只是一个系统供应商时，取得了巨大的进步。

Summary:Dell has made great progress towards being a soup-to-nuts supplier of IT solutions. Dell’s Marc Stitt discusses where the company is focused today.

Marc Stitt, formerly of Quest and now Dell’s Senior Manager for Virtualization and Private Clouds Marketing, reached out to me recently. That he had made a change and wanted to spend some time talking about Dell’s vision. Since I don’t speak with Dell all that often, I appreciated the effort.

Historical Dell Position

Where HP, IBM, Sun and other major system suppliers focused on providing a complete environment that included systems (based upon both X86 and their own processors), storage, networking, operating systems, development tools, application frameworks, virtualization platforms and professional services; Dell focused primarily on cost effective, high-volume Industry standard systems.

When a customer wanted a comprehensive, complete systems solution, Dell had to work with partners while the others could offer a integrated offering based upon their own portfolio of products and services.


Dell clearly has decided to reposition itself as a competitor without losing its reliance on X86 processors; Windows and Linux; third party development and deployment environments and virtual machine software. To bolster its position, Dell has been acquiring companies over the last few years. The obvious goal was to build out a position in virtualization and cloud computing.

Repositioning Dell

Since 2010, the company has purchased the following companies:

　　KACE Networks was purchased February 11, 2010 giving Dell a systems management appliance

　　Exanet was purchased February 19, 2010 giving Dell a position in a distributed file systems segment of the storage virtualization market

　　Scalent was acquired July 1, 2010, giving Dell the tools to create a dynamic virtual environment

　　Ocarina Networks was acquired July 30, 2010, giving Dell another set of storage virtualization tools. Ocarina focused on storage deduplication and optimization.

　　Boomi as snatched up November 2, 2010 to give Dell a set of tools allowing cloud-based applications to be integrated.

　　Compellent was next. December 13, 2010 Dell added the company to its storage systems portfolio.

　　SecureWorks joined the party January 4, 2011 giving Dell security services.

　　Force10 was purchased July 20, 2011 to add data center networking and networking virtualization to Dell’s portfolio.

It is important to note that Dell still is not trying to be a soup-to-nuts supplier. The company relies on partners for its access virtualization, application virtualization, and processing virtualization capabilities. It has focused its efforts on fleshing out a portfolio of networking and network virtualization; storage virtualization; security; and management products.

Where Dell is headed now

Stitt presented Dell’s focus in the area of virtualization and private clouds. Dell is focused, he said, on providing the tools for IT Service Management, Workload Lifecycle Management and Infrastructure Management. The goals were to offer tools that made it possible for customers to improve their business agility, reduce their operational costs, and better utilize their system resources.

In Dell’s view, customers are in transition. They are using “virtualization” (defined as virtual machine software to create virtual servers) so that they can encapsulate their workloads today. Today’s efforts will make it possible for customers to decide where their workloads should be hosted. These workloads are largely hosted on-premise today, but Dell is working hard to help its customers create a private cloud environment on-site to obtain agility, self-service and other benefits of that approach. Dell will help some customers move part of these workloads off-premise to take advantage of outsourced private data centers. Dell expects to help other customers take advantage of public clouds when that approach is best.

Snapshot analysis

The company has gathered together a portfolio of tools that can facilitate a move to a virtualized environment and from there on into the clouds. It, to date, isn’t trying to be a full service supplier. It is working with its partners to offer everything needed to support customer’s IT environments.

It is not clear if this approach will turn out to be better than the more tightly integrated approaches offered by others.

What is clear is that Dell has made great progress from the days when it was only a supplier of systems.