Dell Unveils Enterprise Vision For the Future; Investments in Best-In-Class Infrastructure and Integrated Computing Platforms Result in the Launch of New Active System Solutions

To do this Dell utilizes a standards-based architecture that optimizes the use of IT resources, anticipates growth, and supports future expansion. Dell’s core server, storage and networking infrastructure elements enable scaled-out solutions to be built from standard hardware building blocks and innovative software solutions.

The enterprise strategy, outlined today at an event in San Francisco, brings together hardware, software and services developed by Dell and gained through acquisitions under a common design philosophy to offer customers a robust and easy-to-manage data center infrastructures. The company also announced its next wave of converged infrastructure offerings, Active Systems, that provide an intuitive, flexible and power efficient foundation for application, virtual desktop infrastructure and private cloud deployments.

Dell’s scalable design point is built upon, and requires, industry standards. Through the acquisition and development of its own IP, Dell has built a set of unique assets to deliver the scalable IT infrastructure of the future based on standardized technologies. As a result, organizations can avoid the expensive lock-in of closed architectures that rely on proprietary shortcuts. Dell, in contrast, combines its innovative intellectual property and standards-based hardware to deliver intuitive solutions, where customers get the feature benefits of Dell IP and the efficiency levels of an industry standard approach.

“Dell’s intuitive and efficient approach to data center infrastructure builds on our leadership position,” said Marius Haas, president of Enterprise Solutions Group, Dell. “Our scalable design focus and powerful offerings from the Dell Software and Services groups uniquely position us to capture this market. Customers are voting with their wallets in endorsing Dell’s innovative approach.”

Active Infrastructure Family Speeds Implementation and Increases Agility Dell’s new converged infrastructure family, called Active Infrastructure, helps IT organizations more rapidly respond to business demands, improve data center efficiency, and strengthen IT service quality. It is ideal for businesses that are standardizing on x86 server architectures and need a more dynamic infrastructure operated in a simplified and automated fashion. Dell offers two ways to deploy Active infrastructure:

Pre-integrated systems – pre-engineered, pre-assembled, and pre-tested systems coupled with enterprise deployment services

Active System Architectures – customizable blueprints for building virtualized infrastructure

Dell also offers optimized and validated Active Solutions for private clouds, virtual desktop infrastructure, and enterprise applications such as Microsoft Lync, Exchange and Sharepoint 2010.

Part of the Active Infrastructure family, the new Dell Active System offers an intuitive, highly flexible, and comprehensive approach to converged infrastructure. Central to all Active Systems is the new Active System Manager, an intuitive tool for the most common infrastructure administrative tasks. It delivers substantial operational benefits such as helping to eliminate up to 75% of steps needed for “power on to production.”[1] Active Systems are built with the following best-of-breed infrastructure elements that deliver real results compared to competitive offerings:

The PowerEdge M1000e chassis and 12th generation blade servers provide up to 2.3X greater compute density per rack[2]

Dell Compellent or EqualLogic storage, including the new EqualLogic Blade Array

A new plug-and-play blade I/O module – the PowerEdge M I/O Aggregator – that is optimized for virtualization and delivers up to six times the bandwidth to the data center network[3]

Optimization at the system level that delivers up to 45% better performance per watt[4]