Like kids following in their big brothers’ footsteps, smaller enterprises
often take their IT spending cues from their larger brethren.
Dell which introduced five new servers today
in the hopes of capturing a larger share of the small and medium sized
business (SMB) market, sees this trend encompassing even such
enterprise-oriented strategies as server virtualization.
Jay Parker, director of Dell PowerEdge servers, said that SMBs can use
virtualization to consolidate multiple applications on a single server, thus
saving themselves money and, just as importantly, a considerable amount of
space.
During a press conference, Dell detailed the PowerEdge 1900, 860 and 840 and
Dell PowerEdge SC1430 and SC440 servers, all of which feature dual-core
Intel Xeon processors.
Parker noted that the new servers offer dramatic increases in performance,
scalability and power efficiency.
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9th generation family. Source: Dell |
For instance, according to Parker, the PowerEdge 1900 provides a 211 percent
greater performance than a PowerEdge 1800.
Parker also predicted that new products will hit the market in the next 12
to 24
months with “hardware capabilities targeting virtualized environments and
SMBs simultaneously.”
“You’ll see us cater more to the SMB market over time,” he added.
Dell is shipping the servers with versions of Microsoft Small Business
Server software.
The PowerEdge 1900, 840 and 860 servers, as well as Dell PowerEdge SC1430 and SC440
servers, are priced at $1,399, $749, $949, $1,049 and $599, respectively.
Frank Muehleman, vice president of Dell’s U.S. small business division,
noted that Dell is lowering price points to help small businesses adopt
technologies used by larger companies, including virtualization.
“We’re seeing an increasing rate of adoption of these technologies,” he said
during a conference call this morning.
Laurie McCabe, an analyst with consultant AMI-Partners, was somewhat more
restrained in her view.
“The term virtualization itself is confusing to small business owners,” she
told internetnews.com.
But she said agreed that they would be interested once they learn about it
“in plain English,” and said that companies with more than 100 employees are
certainly primed to adopt it.
Muehleman said the Round Rock, Texas, computer maker has increased its share
of the SMB market in unit terms from 10 percent in 2000 to 30 percent today.
That’s not insignificant, as those businesses will spend $98 billion on IT
products and services this year, according to AMI-Partners.
