Darrell - I have not seen the same inference from Niles' comments that you have, maybe I have missed something.
Nile's partial answer to some of this is that (a) Dell is becoming an EMC
100% of EMC's business is vendor-independent storage. 0% of DELL's storage business is in that category. EMC is a leader in developing SAN infrastructures. DELL does not have a SAN offering. EMC is the leader in independent storage and in the top 3 in overall storage sales. DELL is not even mentioned in the storage rankings.
What possible reason could there be based on current market conditions or DELL's investment direction to think that DELL will make any inroads into EMC's market?
(b) Dell is becoming a SUNW and moving closer to the high performance challenge both through principled acquistions and innovation
SUN is the undisputed leader in high end UNIX systems. The other players are HP, IBM and CPQ. DELL has no products, services or offerings in that space.
NT based solutions, including Win2K, have not made any inroads into SUNW's customer base. SUNW appears to be solidifying their hold on that market.
Here again, with no DELL products which address the market, no service offerings to "put a nose under the tent" and no plans to do any development to change the situation, why is this anything but an empty daydream?
Dell's latest aquisition was really NOTHING BUT an R&D shop with a product to fit...no not like NTAP or Cisco or Qualcomm or IDC or...God knows who else...(my comment: because Dell is NOT R&D, does that mean that they will not be able to formulate relationships to override various market termed weakeness?)
My sense is that DELL plans on developing offerings in the Linux and MSFT server space, with storage to match. A good idea, and a great segment for DELL, but not any threat at all to EMC or SUNW. |
