Tuesday February 23, 8:16 pm Eastern Time
Dell, with partners, expands data storage
line-up
By Eric Auchard
NEW YORK, Feb 23 (Reuters) - Dell Computer Corp. (Nasdaq:DELL
- news) on Tuesday introduced a new line of corporate data storage
equipment designed to position the top-ranked direct supplier of
personal computers for rapid growth in the emerging field.
Dell said it has begun shipping new PowerVault storage area
network systems to customers, expanding the range of the products
it offers to work with powerful computer servers and act as a replacement for higher-cost mainframe data
storage systems.
The Round Rock, Texas-based company entered the market last June with promises to offer competitive
pricing more than 50 percent below those offered by suppliers of existing high-volume storage systems.
''We're driving the storage industry just as we did the computer industry,'' Dell vice chairman Kevin
Rollins said in a conference call Tuesday afternoon unveiling the new products.
He vowed to attack the storage business with the high- volume manufacturing and direct distribution
strategies that have made Dell a major supplier of desktop, server and notebook PCs -- No. 2 in the
United States and No. 3 in the world.
The new products include Dell's PowerVault 50F Fibre Channel switch, PowerVault 35F bridge and Fibre
Channel Optical host bus adapter -- technology that takes advantage of the latest high-speed data
connections to provide large scale corporate data storage at lower cost than traditional storage.
In addition to new products, Dell said that, through a joint effort with Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT -
news) it has developed new software that makes it possible for multiple PowerEdge servers running
Microsoft Windows NT to share a single storage system.
With this technology, called Dell OpenManage Storage Consolidation software, customers can
consolidate important business data onto a single, high-performance storage system, making the data
easier to manage and less costly to maintain.
Dell said it is the first major computer vendor -- rivals include IBM (NYSE:IBM - news), Hewlett-Packard
Co. (NYSE:HWP - news) and Compaq Computer (NYSE:CPQ - news) -- to offer a fibre channel switch
to work on computer systems running Windows NT storage environments.
The new product provides customers up to eight times the performance of most fibre channel hub
products now sold for Storage Area Networks (SANs).
Switches are used in storage area networks to direct data between a computer server and the storage
subsystem equipment.
Dell's new fibre channel switch, the PowerVault 50F, will be priced at about $1,350 per port, which Dell
expects will be 30 percent below most fibre channel switches that run rival UNIX-based computers used
to run key business operations.
The company also announced a range of alliances with makers of data storage equipment and related
systems management software, including Storage Technology Corp. (NYSE:STK - news), Seagate
Technology Inc. (NYSE:SEG - news), Veritas Software (Nasdaq:VRTS - news), which is merging into a
Seagate unit.
Dell products also are designed to work with systems management software from Computer Associates
International Inc. (NYSE:CA - news) and IBM Corp.'s (NYSE:IBM - news) Tivoli.
The strategy brings together many rivals of EMC Corp. (NYSE:EMC - news), the dominant supplier of
high-volume data storage. Despite the move, EMC stock gained $3.75 to near record levels of $107.94
in consolidated U.S. stock exchange trading.
A Dell official said many of its corporate customers are delaying new spending on storage systems in
1999 to focus on fixing potential Year 2000 software glitches, but the company anticipates
experimentation and system redesign to lead to a wave of storage purchases by customers next year.
Dell stock surged more than $3 in afternoon trading before falling back in late-afternoon to trade at $86,
up $1.12 on the day in heavy trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange. |
