Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) announced its new 11th generation enterprise computing solution portfolio to help customers lower the total cost of ownership (TCO) associated with monitoring and managing their IT infrastructures.
The 11th generation portfolio includes new PowerEdge servers and Precision workstations, new blades, a Dell Management Console (DMC) and new EqualLogic PS6000 storage arrays.
Sean Phelan, director of Americas solution group for Dell’s global commercial channels group, said the design goal of Dell’s 11G portfolio is to help reduce the TCO of a business’ IT infrastructure and to make things in it run “better, faster, smarter and more efficiently.”
This announcement comes at a good time especially since businesses are looking for ways to be more efficient, Steve Schuckenbrock, president of global large enterprise at Dell said.
“We want to help customers take costs out of their IT infrastructure environment which focuses on people, time and money,” Schuckenbrock said. “The best way to do this is to simplify and standardize on the IT infrastructure with our new portfolio.”
The new products have all been optimized to simplify system management, virtualization and power and cooling within IT infrastructures, Schuckenbrock said.
Dell’s new Precision workstations include the T7500, T5500 and T3500 tower workstations and use Intel’s next generation of its Xeon processor, which is currently codenamed as Nehalem. Schuckenbrock said the workstations include Nehalem’s Turbo Mode feature, which provides a boost of power to users when they need it. In addition to this, more processor and core states have also been made available to provide more levels of power management, which translates to better energy efficiency, Schuckenbrock added. The workstations also come with graphic controller options from either ATI or Nvidia.
The DMC is powered by Symantec’s Altiris software and will provide partners and customers with lots of flexibility options. Phelan says the DMC is essentially “flat,” so users can plug in many other components to manage virtualized infrastructures, clients, patch management, anti-virus, recovery and more.
“It’s an open, standards-based management platform that can manage Dell and other suppliers’ products,” Schuckenbrock said. “To do the same job as DMC (using another solution), you’d need up to nine consoles, but with DMC, businesses can save money by using only one.”
Because the platform is designed in this way, Dell is also providing a software development kit (SDK) pack to ISV partners so they can plug into this platform more easily, Phelan explains.
“We want to support a heterogeneous IT infrastructure to lower overall costs in managing IT infrastructures,” Phelan said. “We’re giving the channel the tools they need to help do this.”
Dell’s new EqualLogic PS6000 storage array works to recover Microsoft Hyper-V machines in a matter of seconds and also provides smart copy and rapid backup capabilities of the Hyper-V platform, Schuckenbrock said. The PS6000 series integrates seamlessly into existing EqualLogic storage area networks (SANs), to then create a virtualized pool of storage.
Right now, Phelan said Dell is getting its partners up to speed on its 11G platform through various online channel training courses and on-site training sessions.
Partners can start ordering the PS6000 solution from Dell today and quotes for the remaining products in its portfolio will be made available next Monday, Phelan said.
“What we’re seeing globally and also in Canada, is there’s money in the public sectors such as governments, which are putting money into their systems to put money into the economy,” Phelan said. “Small businesses are also the backbone of any recovery, so partners can go to them to propose solutions that will reduce their overall maintenance costs.”
Dell, which announced two distribution agreements on Tuesday, citing Ingram Micro and Tech Data as their multi-year distribution partners for the U.S. and Canada, will not be offering Dell 11G products at this time, Phelan says. For now, the distributors will only be offering Dell’s SMB Vostro PC lineup.
