Dell's comprehensive transformation toward the cloud

Dell's big IT customers are looking to see how hardware companies invest in third-party companies in the form of a coherent service and solution provider's strategy.

For the moment, this strategy should be clear to top executives at Dell, but the company has made a huge effort to convince IT shops that the company is about to complete a successful conversion, not in terms of indigestion In the death. At this week's second annual meeting, Dell executives provided some up-to-date news on how to meet the challenge of building a modern IT infrastructure.

Executives acknowledge that the changing data center trends mirror Dell, which is a traditional hardware supplier for PCs and data centers. While Dell continues to grow its server, storage and PC line-up, the company acquired Quest Software, Wyse Technologies and SonicWALL in large numbers in 2012 - just to name a few, and Dell is still struggling to figure out and fix the problem as it crafted The history of a cloud and IT services.

Dell acquired Quest for 2.6 billion U.S. dollars last July and continues to tap the company's huge portfolio. John Swainson, president of software group Dell, said "Products and Features and Features and Products."

Dell has integrated some products, but in some cases even Dell experts can not agree on what it is and what is not SKU. Think about Quest's multifaceted fog lamp performance monitoring technology. At present, the characteristics of various versions of products and immature products, in fact, is not clear.

The same Dell has been focusing on key areas such as database tools, Svenson said it will intensify. With backup and recovery products, Quest has four products and Dell has only one. He said "We are creating a family."

At the same time, Quest's VDI customers have been unmanaged, some worried about the future of the company's desktop virtualization software, and Dell continues to promote VDI provisioning for partner Citrix Systems. A VDI client at Quest UK said his Dell-Quest Account Manager plans to offer a "Road Map and Campaign Safeguard" this week.

Dell's strategy is still a mystery

If it seems a bit hard to understand internally, imagine what it looks like to IT professionals trying to understand everything.

Dave Adams, CIO at the Institute of Corporate America, a public policy research firm in Washington, DC, said "[Dell] acquisitions look very fast and they do not seem to know what they have, and I hope they have a coherent plan "

Another IT manager said he would not mind too much about Dell's rapid acquisition strategy. But he said the company can not sell those services. In other words, Dell internal communication seems to be doing well; its customer promotion is not very popular. The customer said he purchased the product from another third party at least once because he did not know Dell had a competitive product.

A director at a large Seattle law firm that asked to remain anonymous said that "Dell needs to be closer to its customers."

From a hardware company to a cloud service or solution provider, it seems that Dell has had a tough fight, taking into account from scratch, competitors such as Amazon, Rackspace, IBM and others. But Dell's Swainson said customers may be sharing their work with Amazon, Rackspace or other companies and in-house.

Some analysts are in favor of Dell having its job objectives and establishing itself as a credible service and solution provider, although the company is not without some assets to take advantage of.

David Daaoud, an IDC analyst with MassMesse, said: "In the enterprise market, Dell makes up a significant share of the enterprise market by leveraging existing customer relationships to raise awareness about cloud management and security services, software and storage products, But the question is: How are they linking these products to a broader range of services and solutions? It's not yet clear. "

Some Dell customers ready to let Dell take the time to find a foothold. Noble Energy, a Houston-based oil and gas company, runs an internal private cloud of virtual machine management. Due to the nature of their business, Noble will not consider public clouds. For them, Dell is important because Dell already uses Enterprise IT.

Because of the Nobel Prize, Dell's position has gone through ups and downs, just like HP. Rolando De La Fuente, a Noble Linux system administrator, said Dell is already in the right direction. Amazon will not jump to Noble's front because "(Amazon) appeared in the Internet age, and is already 80 years old."

But Dell still has to prove to its client base that it is paying more and more attention to cloud services. Customers expect Dell to introduce cloud services, but will they buy it? Adams of the American Enterprise Institute said "I want to see the product first."