Large or small, Dell's Cloud vision is intended to encompass all forms of organisation as it makes an IaaS and an SME play within 48 hours.
First up, announced at VMworld in Las Vegas, was Dell Cloud, a public Cloud offering aimed at providing a low-risk means for enterprises to evolve into and adopt hybrid Cloud environments. The service is aimed at enterprise customers who want a low-risk, enterprise-grade public Cloud offering that will easily integrate with on-premise VMware technology.
This will be based on a standard set of VMware products as part of the vCloud Datacenter Services Programme. Dell becomes the seventh certified vCloud provider, joining the ranks of Singapore Telecommunications, Softbank, CSC, Bluelock and Verizon.
Dell Cloud should be available to beta customers next month, US customers later this year, and customers in Europe and the Asia Pacific region from regional data centres next year. It will come in three delivery options - pay as you go, reserved and dedicated. Pricing has yet to be determined but the rates will be publicly available on Dell's website.
Dell’s chief technology officer Mark Bilger said that Cloud services based on Microsoft Windows Azure and OpenStack are likely to follow in 2012, but the first iteration of Dell Cloud plays to the relationship between Dell and VMware:
Lower down the corporate food chain. Dell is announcing at Dreamforce its Dell Cloud Business Applications, a set of integrated SaaS applications with cross-application Cloud analytics supported by end-to-end Dell services.
The total solution includes:
- Access to leading SaaS applications, beginning inevitably with Salesforce.com, but with planned additions in other functional areas including marketing and accounting. Dell is expanding its partnership with Salesforce.com to deliver an integrated CRM solution by connecting the Salesforce Sales Cloud to a variety of back office applications including financial software such as Intuit QuickBook and Microsoft Dynamics GP.
- Integration with existing software - on premise and in the Cloud - through Dell Boomi Real-time business visibility and analytics to provide one unified window into business performance across multiple functions using cross-application dashboards and reports delivered as a Cloud service.
- Comprehensive services with implementation packages are available in Basic, Professional and Premier Editions to address a variety of customer needs.
Dell Cloud Business Applications will be delivered through a Dell-branded cloud service complete with business grade single sign-on and security. but will also be supported by a network of SaaS systems integrators and consultants. Pricing and availability
