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Technology Stocks : Dell Technologies Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Koligman who wrote (169648)	5/17/2002 6:40:51 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 176387

Dell readies SAN switches By Dan Neel InfoWorld May 17, 2002 1:50 pm PT EYEING THE NEXT rung on the enterprise storage ladder, Dell next month will introduce three new storage networking switches to its existing lineup. The Dell PowerConnect 5224, 3248, and 3048 are each expected to be fully available from Dell by July 2002, according to a Dell representative in Round, Rock, Texas. Dell has been re-selling switches from Fibre Channel switch vendor Brocade since last September. During that time, the company has gained traction in the mid-range and workgroup SAN (storage area network) market through a combination of reseller partnerships with Brocade and EMC. The new line of OEM'd switches, particularly the PowerConnect 5224, represent Dell's "entry into the enterprise," a Dell representative said. Dan Tanner, a senior analyst for storage and storage management at Aberdeen Group in Boston, thinks Dell will continue to work its way up the enterprise storage ladder as a SAN integrator and component reseller, but believes Dell will stop short of trying to transform itself into a technology development company that designs and builds its own solutions. "I think Dell is always looking to move up through the enterprise, but at the same time I don't think Michael Dell will ever let them become a development company. They are mainly an integration and a channel company," said Tanner. The introduction of the new switches may mean more bad news for competing Fibre Channel switch vendors such as McData, Cisco, and 3Com. The Fibre Channel switch market has fallen on troubled times of late as fewer and fewer companies attempt to build their own SANs from scratch. Instead, companies are moving toward technology integrators such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Sun, which can deliver top-to-bottom SAN configurations that are pretested and ready to provide optimal performance. And although the Brocades, Cisco's, and McData's of the world provide the switch technology that is resold by integrators, margins are lost as the switch vendors lose their direct channels. Dell's ability to beat its competitor's pricing will also create added pain for struggling Fibre Channel switch vendors. Dell's strategy to resell storage technology such as the EMC Clariion storage server and Brocade's switches has paid off the original built-to-order PC maker, according to Ashok Kumar, an industry analyst at U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray, in Menlo Park, Calif., who said such relationships have increased Dell's storage business by 65 percent over the last two quarters. Dan Neel is an InfoWorld senior writer.