Michael Dell talks up EqualLogic, EMC and the channel

Days after closing its acquisition of iSCSI storage vendor EqualLogic Inc., Dell Inc. announced a new series of iSCSI-based storage-area network (SAN) arrays. The Dell EqualLogic PS5000 Series offers both virtualization and thin-provisioning capabilities, allowing storage administrators to grow capacity on the fly.

The Dell EqualLogic PS5000 Series storage arrays will be sold through Dell channel partners as well as Dell’s direct sales force worldwide. CEO Michael Dell said that the company’s PartnerDirect program (to be launched in Canada this month) is committed to provide channel partners the tools to sell EqualLogic storage along with Dell’s lineup of data centre solutions.

Current EqualLogic partners will be enrolled into PartnerDirect, and eligible for Dell’s newest partner certification – Enterprise Architecture. System pricing begins at $21,923.

Michael Dell added that the EqualLogic acquisition is his company’s push upstream into the storage SMB and enterprise market, and how that push would affect Dell’s partnership with EMC Corp.

Dell said his company’s $1.4 billion acquisition of EqualLogic, which had about $68.1 million in sales in 2006, was not based on the storage vendor’s current value but on its potential to bring in revenue, given the fast-growing adoption of iSCSI technology.

“IDC has projected that iSCSI will be about 25 per cent of the storage market opportunity in 2011, and that’s about $6 billion in revenues from iSCSI,” Dell said. “When we look at EqualLogic’s technology, we think it’s the best in the industry for everything from high-end, mission-critical iSCSI [needs] to entry-level iSCSI to clustered file systems for large Internet providers.”

According to Dell, the coming adoption of 10Gbit/sec. Ethernet will help create a compelling selling point for iSCSI storage and the PS5000 series, which uses the iSCSI protocol to connect servers to back-end SANs and is aimed at simplifying storage installation.

The PS5000 allows companies with little or no Fibre Channel networking expertise a more easily deployable storage architecture by offering arrays that use existing Ethernet LANs and by offering storage that in many ways self-manages, has on-demand capacity provisioning and is precertified with Dell servers, the company stated in a press release.

The iSCSI protocol is an IP-based specification that allows SCSI commands and data to be carried over Ethernet networks. By using iSCSI instead of Fibre Channel for a server-storage interconnect, companies can avoid installing expensive host bus adapters on servers and Fibre Channel switches to create a storage subnetwork, as well as the need to hire Fibre Channel-qualified network technicians.

But Dell said that his company will continue to offer a full line of both iSCSI and Fibre Channel-based storage products, both its own and those it sells through its long-standing partnership with EMC.

Asked if his company’s expansion into the midrange and enterprise storage market would have any affect on its partnership with EMC — through which it manufactures and resells entry-level AX series and midrange CX series storage arrays — Dell’s chairman said only that “it has been a great partnership for both companies” and that “the partnership continues at least through 2011.”

Dell said his company’s strategy to include iSCSI in its product dovetails neatly with its virtualization capabilities through VMware. Theoretically, both virtualized servers and storage can be managed via a single interface using iSCSI, because it’s based on IP and Ethernet.

Andrew Reichman, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc., said his firm’s user customers have expressed a tremendous need for more efficient use of storage capacity and a simplification of storage infrastructure management.

IT and storage budgets, Reichman said, are “either shrinking to staying flat. A lot of companies are looking at new ways of networking applications servers to storage, and one way is iSCSI.”

Reichman said Dell’s strategy also plays to users that want to deal with fewer partner vendors, but ones that can offer a greater breadth of products and services across the data centre.

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Jim Love, Chief Content Officer, IT World Canada

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