Dell Signs New Partner Deals To Advance Cloud Computing

Dell has announced two new partnership deals that it says will improve its competitiveness in cloud computing. The company has partnered with Joyent, a cloud computing software and service provider, and Aster Data, a data management and analytics firm, to deliver their technology through Dell's Data Center Solutions (DCS) business.

The DCS effort is intended to help customers to built data centers optimized from the beginning for cloud computing, be they a private, public or hybrid model, said Roy Guillen, general manager of DCS, at a news conference Nov. 19 in San Francisco.

Typical DCS customers are large enterprises running hyperscale data centers that deploy Dell hardware such as its PowerEdge-C servers. DCS delivers Dell Cloud Solutions, introduced in March, that are pre-packaged and tested bundles that are said to be easier to configure, deploy and manage.

Aster Data's nCluster integrated data analytics technology will be delivered through the Cloud Solution for Data Analytics that offers linear scaling to analyze large data volumes in order to gain business insights.

InsightExpress, a 90-employee market research firm, deployed the Dell-Aster Data solution in its company. The company analyzes the effect of online advertising through more than just tracking click-through rates. Instead, it analyzes the results of online surveys of consumers on how ads may have influenced them."We collect all that data in house and with the Aster Data solution ... now we have access to richer data. Now we're creating reports that we couldn't create before," said Marc Ryan, senior vice president and chief research officer at InsightExpress.

Another Dell customer, the Canadian Internet service provider Uniserve, uses Joyent's SmartDataCenter cloud software as part of the Dell Cloud Solutions for Web Applications. Beyond just connecting customers for Internet access, Uniserve is expanding into becoming a hosting provider.

"We needed a cloud solution that we could implement right away that was proven and reliable," said Mike Schmidt, president and chief executive officer of Uniserve.

The DCS approach began after Dell heard from customers that it wanted more from the tech giant than just a truckload of servers and desktop computers installed with software, said Dell's Guillen. They wanted Dell to help them build a data center that was efficient, resilient and scalable so they could focus on their business rather than worry about managing their IT.

"It gave us greater insight into their businesses and what they were doing, and to think way beyond just a box and way beyond just a rack," he said.