Dell aims to poach Sun customers

In other words: Sun customers, Dell's headed your way.

Dell's ProConsult Infrastructure Consulting service is positioned to offer existing Sun customers "fast, seamless transitions" to Dell PowerEdge Linux servers from UNIX-based systems. Dell believes its PowerEdge servers are a better platform for current Sun and other customers to help reduce costs and increase IT efficiency.

Here's the rundown:

What it is A set of services, tools, guidelines and other resources intended to help businesses effectively migrate from RISC-based systems.

What it consists of End-to-end service, including assessment, advice, planning, design, validation and deployment. Calculators and online tools help customers assess their current IT environment and determine the ROI of implementing new technologies and platforms, including Dell's new "Server Power and Space Savings Calculator," which offers detailed summaries of projected costs savings from migrating to new Dell PowerEdge servers (a UNIX to Linux Migration ROI Calculator is also available). Finally, step-by-step migration guides assist customers with their RISC migration projects.

Who can do it Sun customers can upgrade to Dell’s 11th-generation PowerEdge servers based on the Intel Xeon 5500 series processors, and "away from outdated Sun servers," the company says. Dell is positioning its PowerEdge servers as having more power efficiency (it cites the PowerEdge M710 server, which has a "42 percent performance per watt advantage over competitor's blade server and storage") and better virtualization performance (VMware, Citrix and Microsoft; up to 125 percent more memory and more integrated I/O than previous generation PowerEdge 2950 III).

Why to do it Dell says moving to an open x86 platform can reduce costs and complexity, enhance performance and improve overall management. Sun customers can consolidate older servers by switching to x86 Dell PowerEdge servers, it says.

To justify the switch, Dell cites an independent study (.pdf) by Principled Technologies in which an Oracle database application was migrated to a Dell PowerEdge R900 server with Intel Xeon processors, and away from a Sun Fire V440 with 4 Sun Ultra Sparc IIIi processors. The study found that the Dell system ran more than 14 times faster than the (much) older system.