What Dell's Purchase of Cloud Company Signals

A little-noted announcement earlier this month could have huge implications for cloud take-up in smaller businesses. Dell has snapped up Boomi, a company that describes itself as a "cloud integrator."

What this means is that Boomi produces software such as AtomSphere that make it devastatingly easy to mix together resources of the cloud and your own existing physical hardware and software. With Boomi it's as simple as drag-and-drop to get everything working smoothly.

It's all part of Dell's (DELL) grand plan to move into the cloud, but two profound realizations come out of the acquisition announcement.

First, Dell could soon be selling you the utility of computing, but not necessarily the physical computer. Next, when companies like Dell begin to offer cloud services, the cloud is probably coming to businesses of all sizes, whether they like it or not. You'd better get ready.

It seems as if Dell plans to bring the cloud down to earth and make it less exotic, with particular relevance to businesses that shy away from innovative approaches to IT.

Here's how it could work: Dell will sell or rent you a complete server package. You'll get physical hardware on your premises for immediate needs and, should you find yourself needing additional capacity in the future, you'll be able to seamlessly plug-into Dell's cloud and get all the computing power or storage that you need. Billing will be done via your existing service contract with Dell.

There'll be no need to research or sign-up to third-party cloud services, and--more importantly--no need for hackish third-party integration software to make everything work nicely together.

This being Dell, no doubt everything will be priced competitively, and there will be fleets of salespersons demonstrating how easy and useful the cloud can be for every size of business. Indeed, Dell should be praised for being brave enough to make a move away from simple box-shifting.

Purely from the point of view of those who understand what cloud computing is all about, Dell's recent cloud announcements are quite simply great news.

Of course, I could be wrong. Cynics might suggest that the inverse is true: Dell bought Boomi to either stop it from falling into the hands of others, or to simply make a show of being savvy about the cloud.

However, Dell makes a lot of money from selling the hardware needed by businesses, and has done for a very long time. Why would it want to throw all that away by trying to get a piece of the already competitive but burgeoning cloud marketplace?

http://www.cio.com/article/634506/What_Dell_s_Purchase_of_Cloud_Company_Signals?source=rss_cloud_computing

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Dell Expands Cloud Strategy

Dell intends to use the Windows Azure platform appliance, introduced by Microsoft, as a part of its Dell Services Cloud

Dell and Microsoft Corp. on Monday announced a strategic partnership in which Dell intends to use the Windows Azure platform appliance, introduced by Microsoft, as a part of its Dell Services Cloud to develop and deliver next-generation cloud services. The Windows Azure platform appliance will allow Dell to deliver private and public cloud services for Dell and its enterprise, public, small and medium-sized business customers. Dell will also work with Microsoft to develop a Dell-powered Windows Azure platform appliance for enterprise organizations to run in their data centers.

The News

* Dell Services will begin implementing the limited production release of the Windows Azure platform appliance to host public and private clouds for its customers, leveraging its vertical industry expertise in providing options for the efficient delivery of flexible application hosting and IT operations. Dell Services will also provide advisory services, application migration, and integration and implementation services.
* Dell will work with Microsoft to develop a Windows Azure platform appliance for large enterprise, public and hosting customers to deploy in their own data centers. The appliance will leverage infrastructure from Dell combined with the Windows Azure platform.


Cloud Computing Responds to Changing Business Needs

Dell and Microsoft understand cloud computing delivers significant efficiencies in infrastructure costs and allows IT to be more responsive to business needs. Recognizing that more organizations can benefit from the flexibility and efficiency of the Windows Azure platform, Dell and Microsoft have partnered to deliver an appliance to power a Dell platform-as-a-service (PaaS) Cloud.

Microsoft announced today at its Worldwide Partner Conference here the limited production release of the Windows Azure platform appliance, a turnkey cloud platform for large service providers and enterprises to run in their own data centers. Customers and initial partners like Dell using the appliance in their data centers will have the scale-out application platform and data center efficiency of Windows Azure and SQL Azure offered by Microsoft today.

Dell Data Center Solutions (DCS) has been working with Microsoft to build out and power Windows Azure platform since its launch. Dell will leverage the insight it has gained as a primary infrastructure partner for the Windows Azure platform to ensure that the Dell-powered Windows Azure platform appliance is optimized for power and space to save ongoing operating costs, and performance of high-scale cloud services.

Dell is a top provider of cloud computing infrastructure and its client roster includes 20 of the top 25 most heavily trafficked Internet sites and four of the top global search engines. Dell has been custom-designing infrastructure solutions for the leading global cloud service providers and hyperscale data center operators for the past three years. Through this customer insight, Dell has developed deep expertise about the specialized needs of organizations in hosting, HPC, Web 2.0, gaming, social networking, energy, SaaS, plus public and private cloud builders.

Cloud Services Reduce Complexity and Increase Efficiency

With the combined experience of Perot Systems and Dell, Dell Services delivers vertically-focused cloud solutions, unencumbered by traditional labor-intensive business models. Dell Services operates clouds today, delivering managed and support software-as-a-service to more than 10,000 global customers. In addition, Dell has a comprehensive suite of services designed to help customers take advantage of public and private cloud models. The new Dell PaaS powered by the Windows Azure platform appliance will allow Dell to offer customers an expanded suite of services, including cloud-based hosting and transformational services to help organizations move applications to the cloud.

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Big IT Vendors Turning to Mergers to Help Take on Cloud

Big IT Vendors Turning to Mergers to Help Take on Cloud

CIO

Hewlett-Packard Co.'s $13.9 billion acquisition of Electronic Data Systems in late-August 2008 was one of the last big tech mergers to close before the latest recession fully arrived.

Less than a month later, HP (HPQ) announced plans to lay off about 25,000former EDS workers, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, and the market fell 504 points -- all on the same day, Sept. 15, 2008.

After that miserable and operatic day, the tech industry entered a new, rarely seen era: It temporarily slammed the brakes on mergers and acquisitions.

In the first quarter of 2009, the value of tech industry deals shrank to $3.1 billion, a pittance compared to a normal quarter over the years, according to New York-based consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

Now it appears that tech mergers are back, and analysts see them continuing -- at least for the time being. Andy West, a principal in McKinsey & Co.'s merger management practice, predicts "a coming wave" of acquisitions because the number of public companies is relatively high and today's average sale price for public companies is relatively low.

West said that cross-segment acquisitions, such as a storage firm buying a networking company, are most likely. Overall, he noted, the technology market "continues to be ripe for consolidation."

But there are mixed reviews -- and some worries -- among users and analysts about latest merger trend. Users, in particular, see a risk that the mergers will stifle competition and could lead to vendor lock-in. But some also also see the emergence of cloud computing as a potential means of escape from the clutches of the growing-by-acquisition major vendors.

The pace started picking one year to the month after HP disclosed its EDS layoff plans. In back-to-back September 2009 announcements, Dell Inc. agreed to buy Perot Systems Corp. for $3.9 billion and Xerox Corp. agreed to buy Affiliated Computer Services Inc. for $6.4 billion.

And in April of this year, HP closed a deal to buy networking firm 3Com Corp. for $2.7 billion .

Tech merger spending had jumped to $21.3 billion in the 2009 fourth quarter, and the pace continued into 2010, with $19 billion in deals in the first quarter, according to PwC.

There are mixed views on what's driving the latest round of mergers, and what they mean for users.

The big vendors believe that IT managers want to deal with fewer vendors, cut back on the task of integrating multivendor products and focus on solving business problems rather than running data centers. To meet such needs, enterprise vendors are looking to buy firms that their executives believe can help them either add to or expand their menus of service offerings, networking tools, management software and business intelligence tools.

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