One of Dell Computer Corp.’s (NASDAQ: DELL) first channel plays will be its recently released PowerEdge R300 and T300 single socket servers.
According to Sally Stevens, director, Dell PG Enterprise marketing and product management, the new PowerEdge servers are intended for small- and medium-sized businesses and will have a direct and channel sales focus.
Stevens cautioned that since PowerEdge servers will be sold to remote offices inside large enterprises that those sales would be predominantly direct. She did not want to quote indirect and direct sales percentages as the company is new to the channel market.
“There is interest in channel sales and we are excited about increasing the percentage of channel business,” she said.
Dell has officially launched its deal registration program in Canada as of Monday.
Barry Jennings, chief SMB researcher for Dell, said that these new PowerEdge servers are intended for businesses between one and 500 employees. IDC has reported that SMBs spend just one percent of their revenue on new technology acquisitions.
“With businesses spending just one per cent of revenues on IT it limits SMBs. The lack of IT dollars impacts next generation computing and puts them at a disadvantage against larger customers. They are not price shoppers, but value buyers who tie business investment with top business goals,” Jennings said.
Cost does matter to the SMB, Jennings added. The Dell PowerEdge servers start at $999 for the T300. The PowerEdge R300 is $1,249.
“They do not want cheap, but cost does matter. Customers will pay more for reliable products and servers that help their business move forward,” he said.
Jennings added with the SMB spend being so low reliability is key for market acceptance. The Dell PowerEdge server line has been built to eliminate server slow down for companies running a LAN with one server.
Memory and security has also been ramped up on the PowerEdge servers. Both the R300 and T300 servers will offer 24GB of memory, which is three-times the memory capacity of previous single socket servers. The intent of more memory is to help SMBs scale their business for future growth and to handle memory intensive applications such as Exchange, Jennings said.
On the security side, Dell has made improvements to PowerEdge by adding Trusted Platform Module (TPM) for authentication and encryption, an internal lock down USB to prevent data breaches, locking bezels, and a chassis intrusion switch to prevent unauthorized access to the hard drives.