Continued Enterprise Momentum: Dell Ranked #1 Worldwide Enterprise Storage Systems Capacity Supplier by IDC

The Dell Enterprise business has been the recipient of numerous awards and recognition over the past few months – from innovation awards for PowerEdge VRTX, “best of show” awards for Dell Networking, and multiple reports on momentum with Converged Infrastructure. Today, I’m pleased to share significant recognition for our storage business.

According to leading analyst firm IDC’s Q1 2013 Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker1, Dell was the #1 supplier of enterprise storage systems capacity (internal and external combined) in Q113. The same IDC Tracker also shows Dell to be #1 supplier of external DAS storage systems capacity in Q113. Dell is no stranger to #1 storage rankings – we’ve been the #1 iSCSI storage systems supplier for more than 20 consecutive quarters according to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems tracker.

This latest ranking demonstrates Dell’s ability to successfully offer customers both traditional external arrays and, as storage continues to move closer to the compute node, internal storage from our server business. This is becoming increasingly important as technology advances, and the IT industry evolves into one that appreciates a solutions approach to data center needs.

This acknowledgment further demonstrates that our investments in Dell technology, designed to help you improve the simplicity and costs of managing data and IT, are paying off.  We continue to bring innovative, enterprise-class storage capabilities, previously only available at the high-end, to the mid-market, enabling customers of all sizes to benefit from lower costs and a simpler way to manage their ever-growing data sets.

As the IT industry evolves, the line between servers and storage continues to blur. In June, at our Dell Enterprise Forum, we announced the newest addition to our converged infrastructure family, Dell PowerEdge VRTX. This shared infrastructure platform offers small and midsize business, as well as remote and branch offices of large enterprises, extensive performance and capacity in a single, compact tower chassis. This advancement complements our Dell EqualLogic Blade Arrays, which allow users to converge their data centers by integrating storage, servers and networking inside a single Dell blade chassis. This approach simplifies overall data center management and offers simple scaling to traditional external storage arrays.

With Fluid Cache, Dell also is at the forefront of offering flash storage at the server level and a more holistic approach to data management. In the near future, we’ll enable customers to closely tie together servers and storage arrays seamlessly in a way that offers cost-saving benefits from our innovative automated tiering technology. Our new Dell Compellent Flash-Optimized solution offers a unique flash approach that enhances application performance with the first platform in its class to automatically tier data across MLC and SLC flash drives and traditional rotating drives. 2 The automated tiering between flash drives and traditional spinning disks allows us to offer customers flash performance at the price of disk solutions. 3

These advancements serve as the latest example of our commitment to serving our customers with thoughtful solutions while maintaining innovative leadership in the industry. Our server and storage teams already have delivered a number of exciting new products this year, and we will continue to drive innovation into our roadmaps and announce new solutions driven by customer priorities. Customers of all sizes are finding themselves facing a never ending fire hose of data and seeking the best way to manage it efficiently and cost effectively amidst complex IT environments and options. We’ll continue to focus on just that in a holistic way, improving simplicity and lowering costs of managing data and IT.

1Source: Based on information from the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker Q1 2013.

2 Dell Compellent Storage Center 6.4 is the first storage solution in its class to tier sub-LUN data across traditional rotating drives, write-optimized SSDs and read-optimized SSDs.Based on internal Dell analysis performed in May 2012, comparing similar Dell Compellent offerings to EMC VNX family, HP 3PAR  StoreServe, HP EVA, IBM v7000, IBM XIV, Hitachi Data Systems HUS 100 Family, and Oracle  SUN ZFS Storage family.

3 Internal Dell analysis in July 2013 based on Dell Compellent flash-optimized and spinning disk US list pricing, technical specifications of flash-optimized vs. spinning disk arrays and an internal test performed by Dell in March 2013 with Storage Center v6.3.10 on dual SC8000 controllers running OLTP type workloads using IOmeter with a 100% random, 70/30 read/write mix and 8K.

Travis Vigil

About the Author: Travis Vigil

Travis Vigil is Senior Vice President leading Portfolio and Product Management for Dell’s Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG). He and his team are responsible for Dell’s Server, Storage, Data Protection, CI/HCI, Networking and Solutions businesses. He has over 20 years of Product Management, Marketing and Business Operations experience with technology companies including Intel and Dell. In previous roles at Dell, he served as Senior Vice President for Storage and Data Protection Product Management, and Senior Vice President for Business Operations focused on Dell’s Server, Storage and Networking Businesses. He has a B.S. from Stanford University and an M.B.A. from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.