Dell Commits to Open Source Cloud Strategy

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At its Dell World 2012 conference, Dell discussed its cloud computing strategy. The company plans to leverage the open source OpenStack software for its public and private cloud offerings.

ZDNet’s Jack Clark reported, “Dell is turning to open-source software to give it a technological edge in the cloud. The company said its upcoming public and private cloud products will be built around OpenStack, a package of software for running clouds that has received broad backing from the technology industry from companies such as HP, Cisco, IBM, Red Hat and Intel. ‘Dell is increasing its commitment to OpenStack as its open-source cloud platform of choice for public and private cloud,’ Dell said in a statement on Wednesday.”

Talkin’ Cloud’s Chris Talbot added, “At Dell World, the company Michael Dell built released a technical preview of its private cloud, dubbed Dell Cloud Dedicated. Built on the OpenStack platform, Dell Cloud Dedicated promises customers scalability, self-service access and a consumption-based usage model. It was designed to provide customers with private cloud infrastructure that meets the security and compliance needs of large enterprises and vertical organizations. The preview is going to be limited, but any customers interested in checking things out can get in touch with Dell for more information.”

ServerWatch’s Sean Michael Kerner observed, “Dell is no stranger to OpenStack and is one of the founding members of the OpenStack Foundation. The Dell Crowbar open stack project for installing OpenStack is a key part of Dell’s open source contributions and is used by other vendors, including SUSE. Dell has been very active in the OpenStack community since at least 2011.”

The Register’s Timothy Prickett Morgan noted that CEO Michael Dell also used the event to tout the company’s server sales. “In his keynote, Dell, the man, said that as of the third quarter of this year, Dell was the number one server supplier in North America and had taken the number one position in Asia, too. Dell meant in terms of shipments, not revenues, of course, with IBM selling $3.5bn and HP selling $3.3bn of machines compared to Dell’s $2.1bn. But, Dell counts share by shipments, and said it was only 64,000 machines behind market leader HP. ‘So if everybody here buys ten servers, I think we’ve pretty much got it,’ quipped Dell.”