IS DELL the big winner of that navy EDS contract?
Dell Takes Aim At Storage Leaders
(11/14/00, 7:16 p.m. ET) By Steven Burke, CRN
LAS VEGAS -- Dell Computer Corp. CEO Michael Dell wants to shake up the storage market with industry-standard SAN and NAS solutions priced below current levels.
Dell (stock: DELL) wants to set prices for the solutions in some cases at 10 to 20 times less than the current prices from such storage players as EMC Corp. (stock: EMC), he said.
"The interesting thing is that we are seeing the same thing happen in storage that we have seen with all other markets," said Dell in a press conference at Comdex Fall 2000. "If you look out at the show floor here, you will see the componentization of storage technology.
"That's a very healthy environment for Dell," he continued. "As those standards take hold it means that Dell can not only with its own capability, but with partners, deliver world-class storage systems."
Solution providers can now buy silicon and software stacks to bring industry-standard storage solutions to market.
Dell said it would be a "mistake" for storage companies to "underestimate our resolve" in the fast-growing SAN and NAS market.
In the low-end Windows and Unix SAN storage market, Dell claimed his company has already captured the No. 2 spot. In the most recent quarter, Dell said, storage represented the fastest-growing part of the business.
Dell's SAN and NAS sales were up 72 percent in the most recent quarter compared with the similar quarter one year ago.
Meanwhile, Dell, Round Rock, Texas, recently won a large contract to provide the U.S. Navy with 2000 Tbytes of storage.
"This is a very significant win, one that will make a positive dent in our revenues and a negative dent in the competing companies and, yes, I am talking about the companies with three letters," said Dell, referring to storage competitors EMC, IBM Corp. (stock: IBM) and Sun Microsystems Inc. (stock: SUNW). "We are going right after the storage business."
Dell conceded that his company's SAN and NAS sales are solutions aimed primarily at the lower end of the market. |
