GEC NEWS WIREBy delivering scalable and yet simple to use cloud and virtualization solutions, Dell is uniquely positioned to address the MEA region’s most pressing business and IT challenges. The emphasis is also on developing service providers’ capabilities.
How is Dell looking at hybrid cloud scenario emerging in the market place?
Today, we see customers move some applications and services to the public cloud. But majority of the applications and infrastructure is in the data center. Here, the customers have a problem, as some data is lying within their premises and some are on the cloud. Hence, most of them have started building hybrid cloud. For example, a lot of customers are creating two copies of their data and keeping one copy each at their data center as well as cloud. But in reality, it doesn’t make any sense keeping two copies. ‘
And that’s where customers are asking us to sync the data from their data center to the cloud. Here, Dell has a solution, called Boomi, which has a lot of adapters to work with Oracle ERP within the customers’ database / data center. Any software that you are running in your data center, this solution will sync it and replicate the changes to all your public cloud providers. No matter what are you using – be it Salesforce.com or Microsoft Azure, public or private – it is synced. Here, you have a real hybrid cloud.
How upbeat are you about the desktop virtualization market?
Every enterprise in this market is done with virtualization of servers, as it is a de-facto standard now. What we have observed in the recent times is that Dell has emerged as a leader in the PC and notebook domain. Till some time back, we had regular customers buying our products in volume. But as of today, the same set of customers keep asking or enquiring us about virtualization and Dell Wyse.
At one side, we work with the likes of VMware and Citrix but on the other hand, we have also acquired a company, called Quest Software. And out of its large portfolio of software, Quest offers a solution called vWorkspace, which provides a virtual desktop environment to customers. If any new customer is looking for an end-to-end solution and at the same time wants to avoid the headache of dealing with multiple vendors, then we propose vWorkspace, as it is from Dell and along with it, the customer gets Wyse thin client, servers and storage from us. In this way, the customer’s virtual desktop infrastructure can all be from the same company. With this, the customer gets one company, one contact, and one support call.
Besides giving an end-to-end solution, we have also released a solution called, Mobile Cloud Client. It’s like a USB stick and if you plug it in any TV in the world, then you get your desktop. It gets connected through Wi-Fi or 3G and all you have to do is to plug it in the HDMI port of your TV. Instead of carrying your tablet or laptop, you can now use Mobile Cloud Client.
We have a customer mix of all sizes. For example, in large telcos and hospitals, people are using virtual desktops. The telcos are using it for their call centers. As far as the hospitals are concerned, one example is of King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Center which is one of our customers using virtual desktop.In the vertical industries like manufacturing, retail, and governmental organizations, we are seeing small and medium customers using virtual desktops.
What has been Dell’s service provider strategy?
Dell has been working on a global scale with several service providers to provide Infrastructure-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service. We have very good relationships and public references with companies like eBay, Google, and Amazon amongst others. In the Middle East, we have yet to see that industry reach the tipping point. The local service providers available today are still much smaller and not using purpose-built hardware.
In the area of ultra dense servers, as per IDC estimates, Dell has emerged as the number one player, wherein we have builtservers very specific for the service providers. Here, we have built a special kind of servers for cloud providers, called PowerEdge C. People who want to offer cloud services, we haven’t seen the pick-up in the Middle East market yet. It is because today the service providers that are available here have still not grown to scale that they require the ultra dense or ultra low power consumption servers. Though we are the number one provider of this solution globally for service providers, we still haven’t sold it in big amount in the Middle East. The service provider market is still maturing and developing here.
Out of all your product lines, which are selling more in this region?
As of today, we are witnessing our standard storage, server, and networking products being sold the most in this region. Anything new takes time to gain both mindshare as well as market share. People need to build the brand and be comfortable with first. For instance, the ultra-dense PowerEdge C servers are not new to the market, as they have been around for three years. But people don’t like it, as they still want color coding, redundancy, and two fans. Hence, we have to take a different type of approach depending upon the size of the customer and the kind of service required.
