Dell offers channel converged infrastructure choices

Dell is stretching out its converged infrastructure line of solutions in an attempt to address all company sizes.

The channel will also be able to tailor these solutions for specific application and workload use cases. Dell believes this will help channel partners go after businesses with branch offices and SMB. 

IDC forecasts reveal that spending on converged systems will grow at a compound annual rate of more than 54 per cent over the 2011-2016 forecast period, driven by the cost advantages to operations and management of IT.

Marius Haas, president of enterprise solutions for Dell, said one size does not fit all and these new solutions demonstrate a differentiated approach to solution development for customers of all sizes from the small office of five people to the world’s largest hyperscale data centres. 

To date, workload and application-centric IT infrastructure has been engineered for large enterprises, and does not address the remote/branch office SMB customers. According to research commissioned in 2013 by Dell and Intel, U.S. small businesses and startups are more optimistic and planning to grow their companies in the near future and consider access to technology as key to successful growth. Despite this anticipated growth, most businesses surveyed say technology supports day-to-day operations, while only a moderate percentage view technology as a strategic asset. However, the technology solutions often used by these customers – particularly within healthcare, retail and banking industries – and channel partners lack the flexibility, scalability, and ease of management necessary to grow efficiently and compete with larger organizations.

At the heart of Dell’s converged infrastructure line is the PowerEdge VRTX, which is being positioned as a private cloud in a box. It marks the first time Dell has designed a converged IT solution specifically for remote and small office environments.

Dell PowerEdge VRTX enables customers and partners to:

• Servers, storage, networking and management are converged into a single compact chassis, PowerEdge VRTX uses up to 86 per cent fewer cables.
• Updates to Dell OpenManage Essentials for PowerEdge VRTX include remote, agent-free systems management capabilities.
• Dell PowerEdge VRTX addresses a need among channel partners for pre-configured, advanced business solutions that can be enhanced with software and services important to customers in vertical industries.

Dell announced Active Infrastructure for HPC Life Sciences, an HPC solution designed to meet the needs of genomic data collection and analysis. This solution is based on Dell’s work with the Translational Genomics Research Institute to reduce genomics analysis time from one week to one day with an HPC solution designed specifically for the world’s first personalized medicine clinical trial for pediatric cancer.

Dell’s Data Centre Solutions (DCS) practice is launching a new version of its modular architecture, which incorporates Dell PowerEdge servers, with increased operational capacity and flexibility. This new solution builds upon energy efficiency engineered into existing Modular Data Centre (MDC) technology.
The PowerEdge VRTX is available June 26 in Canada. Look for the

• Dell HPC for Life Sciences Active Infrastructure in August, while the Active Infrastructure 1.1 line is available to order shortly. Dell’s megawatt-capacity MDC is now available.