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New Dell Kace Appliances Address Midmarket

Dell is rolling out a new line of Kace appliances to address the midmarket, along with "pay-as-you-grow" pricing. Kace consists of two families of easy-to-use appliances that meet system management needs, from initial computer deployment to ongoing management and retirement. Targeted at organizations with 1,000 to 3,500 endpoint systems, the K-Series Advanced Appliance line that features quad-core Xeon processors, RAID 5 configuration, high-speed drivers and redundant power supplies includes the K1100-ADV for system management and the K2100-ADV for system deployment. In addition, Dell has collapsed its standard and enterprise support packages into one, ProSupport, which includes unified 24/5 assistance from the company's maintenance and support team.

Under Dell's stewardship, the Kace customer base has grown from 1,200 to more than 4,600 in the past year, and the recent acquisition has just started to expand beyond its U.S. base. A dedicated Kace.com website is now available in four new countries--China, France, Germany and Japan--and the company will continue to expand its international footprint by localizing its solutions in additional countries within Europe and Latin America throughout 2012.

Dell broadened its SMB capabilities in July with the launch of the M300 Asset Management Appliance to address routine IT tasks such as hardware and software inventory, software license compliance, and asset tracking and management. In April, it enhanced the K1000 Management Appliance software (Version 5.3) with easier license management, new Dell warranty integration and an improved Windows agent that simplifies deployment to Windows-based systems.

Between 60% and 70% of customers purchase both appliances, says Dell. The company is also offering a buy-back program for customers with existing appliances, which will probably attract 10% to 20% of its customers who either will want to replace aging hardware or are growing and/or want to future-proof their Kace investments.

The midmarket is a huge opportunity, says Steve Brasen, managing research director for Enterprise Management Associates. EMA defines the midmarket on the low end as organizations with greater than 100 employees and on the high end as businesses that earn less than the top 1,000 revenue makers (i.e., the Fortune 1000). According to the U.S. Census bureau, this range includes roughly 100,000 businesses in the United States alone.

"There is clearly a vast difference, in terms of feature requirements vs. budgets, between the low and high ends of the midmarket, and Dell Kace has developed platforms to address both. The K1100 Systems Management and K2100 Deployment appliances provide basic functionality at a cost-effective price for smaller businesses, and the K1200 and K2200 appliances respectively provide more advanced feature sets for larger support stacks."

However, Brasen adds, there is a critical market that fits between the two--a market that needs to support larger stacks than they can with low-end solutions but one that does not have the budget available to adopt the high-end solutions, he says. "To support these specific organizations, Dell Kace introduced the ADV platforms that extend the capabilities of the low-end solution--including providing support for a larger number of endpoints, performing more frequent inventories, and achieving higher volumes of patching and software distribution--without substantially increasing the cost. It should also be noted that a simple path for migration has been developed among three platforms, so an organization can enter with the low-cost KX100 appliances and then expand to the KX100-ADV and KX200 platforms as IT requirements increase and budgets become available."

Brasen says EMA research indicates only about 40% of midmarket businesses have adopted automation solutions for managing their IT investments. "That leaves roughly 60,000 untapped businesses in the domestic U.S. and a far larger number worldwide. Add to this the potential for Dell Kace to gain market share from competitors, most notably Microsoft, and the result is tremendous opportunity for platform adoption growth."

This market is being driven by enterprise IT endpoints (particularly desktops and laptops) that have become essential for enabling a workforce to achieve business requirements, he says. "Employee productivity and business agility are directly related to workstation reliability and performance. Additionally, there continues to be a growing need for achieving security and compliance objectives. All of these factors coupled with emerging technologies, such as virtualization, mobile devices and cloud services, have significantly increased the complexity of enterprise support stacks. Client lifecycle management solutions, such as the Dell Kace appliances, have become essential to simplifying endpoint support, allowing midsize organizations to meet requirements, compete equally against larger competitors and achieve profitability."