Tag: Dell

Dell is now the king of storage

Posted on June 11, 2018 by - News

michael-dell-2Grey tin box shifter Dell is officially the King of the Storage World after his outfit moved past Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) as the largest enterprise storage vendor in the world.

Beancounters at IDC have added up some numbers and divided by their shoe size and reached the conclusion that Dell had a 21.6 percent market share in Q1 of 2018, compared to HPE’s 17.7 percent.

Dell posted year-on-year growth of 43 percent for the quarter, with HPE’s share growing 18 percent.

IDC research vice president Eric Sheppard said: “This was a quarter of exceptional growth that can be attributed to multiple factors.

“Demand for public cloud resources and a global enterprise infrastructure refresh were two crucial drivers of new enterprise storage investments around the world.

“Solutions most commonly sought after in today’s enterprise storage systems are those that help drive new levels of data centre efficiency, operational simplicity, and comprehensive support for next-generation workloads.”

IBM was the only vendor in the top five to see its revenue drop year on year, declining 15 percent.

Dell maintained its market lead in the external storage systems market, with a share of 32.9 percent compared to second-placed NetApp’s 14.2 percent.

HPE wades into Dell EMC’s roadmap

Posted on June 1, 2018 by - News

Hereford_Mappa_Mundi_1300HPE Chief Sales Officer Phil Davis has attacked Dell EMC’s storage product plans saying it is unclear which products are for the axe.

Writing in his bog, Davis said that more than two years after the EMC acquisition, Dell is still in the midst of churn and transition, and despite the promise that its product roadmaps would not change drastically.

“The one thing that is clear is that Dell EMC’s storage roadmap is changing; unfortunately for customers, which products will survive is uncertain.”

He added that even with the Dell EMC “product rationalisation” there is still a lot of confusion.

“Back in 2016, when Dell’s EMC acquisition was completed, the company told customers and partners in a letter, ‘because our combination is very complimentary. We do not expect any changes in the product roadmaps except for new products we create that bring all of our innovation together,'” said Davis, who headed up Dell’s enterprise solutions business before joining HPE four years ago.

“Yet today, we see a different reality with Dell EMC suggesting they may reduce their mid-range offering from four products to a single product — leading to portfolio uncertainty. This presents a challenge for customers because confidence in their storage partner is paramount and that can only start with a clear product roadmap.”

Dell worries about Huawei

Posted on May 4, 2018 by - News

wfxclbexksl44fd3lpoeDell has suddenly found a serious rival in the Chinese outfit Huawei.

Dell’s global channel boss Joyce Mullen told the assembled throngs at Dell Technologies World, that Huawei has been “growing like crazy in multiple countries” in the last few years, and predicted that the Chinese vendor would “keep us on our toes for a long time”.

She said that Dell’s added breadth and scale since acquiring EMC and bringing its seven business units together have not made it impervious to the competition and she was worried about a lot of competitors.

“We have to be mindful of the companies that are trying to be as broad as we are. There are a couple out there – maybe they’re not our traditional competitors we think about – but, for example, Huawei is a super-interesting competitor that is going to keep us on our toes for a long time.

“We don’t see them as much in the US, but they’re growing like crazy in multiple countries.We are also potentially vulnerable to specialists. I think about a lot of specialists targeting our server business, a lot of specialists targeting our storage business and our data protection business – all that stuff.”

Last year, Huawei announced plans to launch three PC models to the consumer market, putting the vendor in direct competition with incumbents Dell, HP and Lenovo. Reuters reported that Huawei plans to launch its PCs into 12 countries globally.

Fortunately for Dell, the Chinese vendor has found itself ostracised from the US market over national security concerns. Indeed, in 2017, the Americas was the only region that saw declines for Huawei as revenues fell by 11 percent.

 

Invest in AI suggests Dell

Posted on May 2, 2018 by - News

michael-dell-2Michael Dell told the assorted throngs at Dell Technologies World that they needed to splash out on AI and data. Well he would, wouldn’t he?

Speaking to a room of more than 14,000 delegates including 5,000 channel representatives in Las Vegas, Dell said organisations were going to lose their competitive edge if they didn’t implement AI and machine learning to use data.

“To be competitive in the future, you have got to use software and data and AI. Businesses are starting to use AI and machine learning to use that data much more effectively… Data helps make a product or a solution better, and this allows a company to attract more customers, which then results in more data, and the cycle repeats itself.”

He added: “AI is your rocket ship and data is the fuel for your rocket. If you know how to use it, your data will become your most valuable asset – even more valuable than your applications.”

Dell thought his PC business would continue to thrive despite a push towards emerging technologies such as AI and IoT.

Michael Dell recounted IBM’s departure from the PC business more than 20 years ago. Dell’s CEO said that at the time Biggish Blue declared the beginning of a post-PC era.

“Our PC business is rocking. In the last five years, every year and every quarter we have gained share, and we expect to do so again this quarter. It has been 20 years since IBM declared the post-PC era. Since then, four billion PCs have been sold, so maybe they got that bit wrong. But what they got right is that computing would expand to include embedded devices.”

Dancing Dell spins and IPOs Pivotal

Posted on March 27, 2018 by - News

61275a35f34cd5218929e2ca03610d36Dell’s Pivotal Software has filed for an initial public offering with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

The cloud outfit provides a platform for software development and wants to raise $100m by floating.

Pivotal was spun out of EMC and VMware in 2013 before the merger in 2016 brought EMC and all of its subsidiaries under Dell’s ownership.

GE, Ford and Microsoft have each made a “major investment” in Pivotal over recent years, according to Pivotal’s website, giving each a stake in the vendor.

Pivotal reported revenues of $259 million in 2018 up 22 per cent on the previous year.  However, it is still making a  net loss of $163.5 million.

Dell is currently the majority shareholder and will retain its controlling stake after the IPO via its subsidiaries, the filing said.

 

Dell talks up on-premise clouds

Posted on March 19, 2018 by - News

michael-dell-2Grey box shifter CEO Michael Dell said that software-defined data centre on-premises solutions are more cost effective compared to the public cloud.

He said that when you automate and modernise the infrastructure, software-define everything, and move up to the platform level on predictable workloads, an on-premises solution is much more cost-effective.

Public cloud vendors have built software-defined/automated IT services creating an attractive interface for developers; those great technological advances are “not unique to the public cloud.

The idea of automating and software-defining everything, and autonomous infrastructure operations of is occurring all across the computing spectrum. It’s happening in the private clouds; it’s happening at the edge, arriving at the distributed core, public clouds, Software-as-a-Service, managed services – everybody’s going in that direction, Dell said.

Dell said the issue of the public vs private cloud is a workload-dependent discussion. He pointed to Dell Technologies’ massive deferred revenue growth as evidence of the rise of on-premises private cloud/hybrid cloud momentum.

Solution providers said they could typically deliver on-premises private cloud/software-defined data centre solutions for enterprises that are at minimum 40 percent cheaper than public cloud.

 

Jericho blows trumpets on VMware Dell merger plan

Posted on March 13, 2018 by - News

indexJericho Capital has penned a stiff missive attacking a potential deal that would see VMware acquire Dell.

For those who came in late, Jericho is one of  VMware’s largest shareholders rather hacked off that it might be considering a reverse merger that would see it acquire “dead weight” Dell.

Jericho owns about 1.8 percent of VMware, has made the letter public today, in which it claims that the prospective deal would “likely lead to the significant destruction of shareholder value”.

Parent company Dell has confirmed that it is considering some restructuring options, among them the possibility that VMware acquires Dell or Dell goes public.

Dell owns around 82 percent of VMware but is obliged to declare any potential changes in ownership because VMware is publicly listed.

“There is no doubt in our mind that a reverse merger of Dell into VMware would be a terrible deal for our shareholders”, the letter read.

“Even the most casual observer can see that VMW gains nothing by saddling the company’s faster growth, net cash, highly strategic software business with the dead weight of Dell’s slower growth, heavily debt-laden, legacy hardware-dependent entity.”

Jericho pointed out that VMware’s share price has been “battered” since rumours of the merger broke, falling as much as 28 percent over the following weeks. It did not like the idea that the deal would “effectively amount to a “bailout of Dell and be highly detrimental to VMW shareholders”.

Instead, Jericho suggested five alternative acquisitions targets for VMware: Red Hat, Palo Alto Networks, Splunk, Tanium and Rubrik.

These vendors, it claimed, “have a more compelling acquisition rationale than an acquisition of Dell”.

 

Gelsinger keeps stumm about Dell takeover

Posted on March 6, 2018 by - News

Pat-Gelsinger-300x199For a bloke who might be set to take over Dell, VMware boss “Kicking” Pat Gelsinger is in no mood to talk about it.

When chatting on an earnings call, Gelsinger said he would not comment on “rumours” that VMware could acquire Dell in a reverse merger, after Dell confirmed in February that it was exploring various options.

However, analysts think the reverse merger idea is rather a good one, and the rumours are somewhat more than that.  Gelsinger is not exactly forthcoming and no one wants to get on the wrong side of his mighty boot.

VMware is doing quite well. For the three months ending 2 February, VMware saw revenue jump 14 percent year on year to $2.31 billion. GAAP losses were $440 million (compared with a GAAP profit of $441 million in 2016) as a result of a one-off $970 million tax bill.

Hybrid cloud and software-as-a-service accounted for eight per cent of VMware’s total revenue.

“We are very pleased with customer enthusiasm for our cloud strategy. We believe we have the world’s most complete and capable hybrid cloud architecture, uniquely offering customers freedom and control in their infrastructure decisions.

“We are also pleased with the traction the VMware Cloud Provider Programme continues to gain. The VMware Cloud Provider Programme achieved an annual revenue growth rate of over 30 per cent in the fiscal year 2018.

“We are also experiencing great global customer momentum with our VMware Cloud for IBM with customers such as Amdocs, Ricoh and Vodafone.”

Gelsinger also highlighted the future importance of VMware’s partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS), which recently launched in the US. The CEO said the service is set to launch in Europe next week.

“The VMware Cloud on AWS continues to get great resonance from our customers, and customers see this idea of the best of public and the best of private coming together as a very powerful force”, he said.

“In many cases, it’s this unique way for them to accelerate their move to the cloud without disrupting their applications – being able to do this in a seamless hybrid way to move into the public and back to the private cloud.

“From the business, as we said, it’s not material this year, and it’s starting to build up. We also see that, given it’s a subscription business, that will also delay the direct fiscal impact.”

Notebook sales increase

Posted on February 14, 2018 by - News

Multipurpose-NotebookThe global notebook market is improving with 164.7 million units shipped in 2017 according to TrendForce’s latest market report.

The figure represents a 2.1 percent year-on-year increase, massively surpassing all expectations and forecasts. The reason for the increase has been biddings for notebook contracts in North America and regional economic recovery

HP remains the market leader with more than 24 percent of the market share. Its annual shipments hit a new milestone of 40 million units, a substantial increase of 10.5 percent over 2016.

For 2018, the market share of the top six brands is expected to rise to 89.1 percent, squeezing the room for other brands to develop.

Xiaomi and Huawei recorded growth in the Chinese market, but the results of their overseas deployment are unclear.

Lenovo saw a year-on-year drop of 4.9 percent. It enhanced its sales in Asia and Europe but still cannot make up the shipment decrease in 1H17. This has an impact on the brand’s performance, making its market share down to 20.2 percent, ranking the second.

 

 

Dell EMC wants $50 billion from partners

Posted on February 12, 2018 by - News

dellsigDell EMC says it wants more than $50 billion in sales from its channel this year.

In a partner update the firm revealed that as it stands at the end of its third quarter $43 billion  was generated worldwide through the channel. However Dell wants to see that number grow that further and rolled out a number of incentives and programme enhancements to encourage more activity.

Joyce Mullen, president global channels, OEM and IoT solutions at Dell EMC, said that it estimated the potential size of the addressable market as being worth $3trn and that left plenty of room for more channel revenue.

“We want to continue this phenomenal momentum we have seen in this past year and we know exactly what it takes to get to $50 billion,” she said.

Global channel revenues were up by 9 percent at the end of of the third quarter with partners bringing in an additional 33,000 customers and the contribution from distribution was also up by double digits.

Michael Dell, CEO of Dell EMC, told partners: “We have worked hard to develop a world class portfolio and partner programme but we have just begun to scratch the surface. We are fully committed to winning and growing and becoming number one in the channel.”

The plans for the firm’s fiscal 2018 will be around focusing on profitable growth and there is a push to encourage resellers to sell more of the vendor’s storage portfolio.

Mullen said that the growth for 2018 would come from “attacking the market and taking share” as well as selling servers, storage and services, which she described as a “pot of gold”.

At the end of next month Dell will add more firms to its top tier of partners – the Titanium Black level, which includes Computacenter, Insight, World Wide Technology, SHI, ATEA, Fusion Storm, Bechtle and CDW.

The combined Dell and EMC partner programme was only launched a year ago and the vendor is not planning any major overhauls but is hoping some refinements, often requested by resellers, will make life easier.

 

Flog our big fat servers – Dell’s plea to partners

Posted on February 9, 2018 by - News

Joyce-Mullen-VP-General-Manager-of-Dell%u2019s-Global-OEM-SolutionsDell EMC channel chief Joyce Mullen has urged partners to up sell more of its big fat configured servers.

She told a webcast for partners that that “significant investment” is being made to help boost storage sales and partners needed to be in to win.

“We need you to sell storage all day, every day and we’re making significant investments there in pricing improvements, spiffs and rebates. We want you to sell bigger, fatter, more originally configured servers. We killed it this year, and we can do even more in 2018.”

She also asked partners to sell services into new businesses, while “always” attaching more services to customers’ portfolios. “Services is a pot of gold”, she said.

Mullen said that Dell EMC needed partners’ help in acquiring more customers.

“Keep selling to those new logos and keep expanding the lines of business that you sell to your customers,” Mullen told partners. “Stay focused on these strategies and… we will continue to outpace the market”, she predicted.

“Deal registration and incumbency is your friend. Please register your deals. Dell EMC is updating its rules of engagement to provide further clarity to both partners and the Dell direct sales teams. We’re taking infringement super seriously”, she said.

“In Q4, rules of engagement infraction escalations were down by over 80 percent quarter on quarter. We are proud of protecting our partners and doing what’s right for you and all of our customers, and we are all in”, she claimed.

 

Dell confirms VMWare cunning plan

Posted on February 6, 2018 by - News

michael-dell-2Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell has confirmed that the vendor is considering floating on the New York Stock Exchange or engineering a deal that will see it acquired by VMware.

The move will mean a shake-up of its channel which is still recovering from its integration with EMC.

A filing made by VMware to the US Securities and Exchange Commission said Dell Technologies is: “evaluating potential business opportunities, including a potential public offering of Dell Technologies common stock or a potential business combination between Dell Technologies and the issuer (VMware).”

Accompanying the filing was an internal memo sent by Michael Dell to Dell Technologies employees.

In the memo, the CEO moved to assure employees that the potential restructuring of the group’s ownership was coming from a position of strength, rather than necessity.

He said: “Today, Dell Technologies has made a 13D filing that makes public that our Board of Directors is evaluating potential business opportunities, including business as usual – continue with the existing ownership structure; [a] public offering (IPO) of Dell Technologies Common Stock; [and a] business combination with VMware.”

VMware CEO (Kicking) Pat Gelsinger also released a statement, distancing the vendor from discussions occurring at its parent company.

“We are not in a position to speculate on the outcome of Dell’s evaluation of potential business opportunities. Dell has been a tremendous partner since it became our majority owner and as we’ve accelerated our growth,” he said.

“We look forward to Dell’s continued support as we work to execute our growth plans in the years ahead.”

Dell is obliged to make a statement regarding the discussions because it owns around 82 percent of VMware.

VMware’s share price has plummeted over 20 percent and is yet to recover.

Dell, his outfit’s channel partner revenue, was “up to double digits in [the] first half of FY18”.

 

Exertis peddles StorMagic range

Posted on January 31, 2018 by - News

Blog_headB2B outfit Exertis  has announced the availability of Dell EMC’s new low-cost, hyperconverged appliances from StorMagic.

The two new Dell EMC appliances come fully configured. Each model includes server and storage hardware, Microsoft Hyper-V or VMware vSphere hypervisor, StorMagic’s SvSAN software and includes three years of maintenance and support.

Based on industry-leading servers from Dell EMC in combination with StorMagic’s simple, cost-effective and flexible virtual SAN software (SvSAN), the StorMagic Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) appliances make the adoption of the technology more affordable for SMEs and remote office/branch office environments where small budgets and lack of IT resource are a growing challenge. The two models being announced are StorMagic Dell EMC HCI 640 and the StorMagic Dell EMC HCI 740.

John Glendenning, SVP of sales and business development, StorMagic said that HCI vendors have a reputation of primarily targeting enterprise datacenters and large remote sites, which is apparent in the cost and complexity of these solutions.

“StorMagic is erasing that perception with appliances designed specifically for small datacenters and edge computing with pre-configured, two-server clusters that bring HCI to a price point and level of simplicity that has just not been available until now.”

StorMagic’s SvSAN uses the internal disk drives of any two x86 servers and actively mirroring data between them to enable highly-available, shared storage and the simple, hyperconverged environment desired by many end users. The Dell EMC servers being used, the R640 and R740XD, are ideal platforms to host the hyperconverged appliances because of their reliability, scalability and performance.

Kevin Matthews, Exertis enterprise sales director said that many of its partners are SME focused and their customers often struggle to find a solution that is easy to use and fits their IT budget.

“These appliances enable our StorMagic and Dell EMC partners, and their customers, to consume a more simple and cost-effective alternative to traditional vendor hyperconverged solutions.”

Dell warns about an absence of intelligence

Posted on November 24, 2017 by - News

Michael DellOutfits which do not use artificial intelligence or machine learning to help make their business decisions will be in danger of “doing it wrong”.

Plugging Dell EMC’s Ready bundles, Dell warned that businesses need to be using the capabilities and output from AI, or risk making mistakes.

“In the not too distant future, if you are making decisions in your organisation without machine learning, you are probably doing it wrong”, he said.

Dell EMC is launching “Dell EMC Ready”, which bundles together networking, server and storage solutions that are optimised for AI and machine learning-based applications.

The bundles are optimised to allow applications in areas including fraud detection, image processing and financial investment analysis.

Dell EMC is working on the basis that while a number of organisations globally are deploying AI solutions, very few have the infrastructure to effectively manage the systems and the data they churn out.

The Dell EMC Ready range will be available from the vendor directly, and through channel partners, in the first half of 2018.

 

Dell EMC targets mid-range storage market

Posted on November 8, 2017 by - News

Michael DellThe dark satanic rumour mill has manufactured a hell on earth yarn that Dell EMC’s new storage loyalty programme is part of a cunning plan to take control of the mid-range storage market.

Dell EMC has been improving its SC and Unity ranges by adding two all-flash arrays to its SC range, as well as a range of software to its Unity portfolio.

But it is the loyalty programme which has partners all of a twitter. Dell EMC has also launched The Future-Proof Loyalty Storage Programme which allows partners to provide a three-year satisfaction guarantee to customers buying from the new SC and Unity ranges.

The idea is that partners can offer a degree of assurance to businesses, mainly as the UK will face some problematic Brexit headwinds. Dell EMC claims the programme will give an additional level of confidence around infrastructure investments that are required for all organisations.

It is also offering customers a free year of Virtustream Storage Cloud.

Dell EMC insists that the product upgrades followed partner feedback and providing them with requested new data deduplication software.

However, the word on the street is this is part of Dell EMC’s  “aggressive counterattack” to address moves from other vendors in the market.

Partners have been told to expect further improvements to the partner programme in 2018.