Dell edges up the stack

Dell has integrated a range of bought-in storage, networking and archiving technologies into its line-up, as the hardware specialist seeks to climb the enterprise stack.

Not content with being a volume server maker and seller, Dell has spent the past few years acquiring companies to bring in services and higher-value hardware and so provide a more end-to-end portfolio. On Wednesday, it gave details on how technologies from Compellent for enterprise storage, Force10 for networking and Ocarina Networks for compression and deduplication had been integrated into its products and services.

"We are moving more and more as an industry toward application-specific solutions," Dave Johnson, Dell's senior president for corporate strategy, told ZDNet UK. 

To that end, Dell announced the Dell DX6000G Storage Compression Mode, scheduled for release on 18 October. The product uses file deduplication and compression software from Ocarina Networks to give Dell a storage compression server to work alongside its existing DX6000 range.

Alongside that, Dell announced that Compellent and Force10 technologies will be integrated into its vStart pre-packaged virtualisation hardware and software products, with availability scheduled for the start of 2012.

Dell has no plans to go down the appliance route, as typified by integrated boxes from Oracle and HP, according to Forrest Norrod, manager of Dell's server division.

In a slight to companies such as Oracle with its Exa-series of appliances, Norrod told ZDNet UK that packaged systems promise a future they cannot deliver and threaten to lock customers into the vendor's products. 

"The problem with really locking things together is you are saying you are promising your customer something that nobody can promise," he said. "You're saying 'I will always be better than anybody else in the industry'... I don't have the arrogance to claim that."