Susan Beebe

There has been more change in the storage market in the past five years than there was in the proceeding fifteen years, and the future looks like it is not going to slow down soon. So how does an OEM who is building a solution in their respective market deal with these changes in ways that will provide a competitive advantage while lowering or maintaining a already limited product development budget? Enterprise 3.5” disk drives (HDD) were the only option for over 15 years 3.5” SATA drives proved to be as reliable in the field and less cost per GB New Enterprise 2.5” disk drives solve the power and cooling problems of more powerful servers Solid State Drive (SSD) in all their various flavors are game changers As an OEM it really depends on how important it is for you to control your storage. If building storage subsystem is not core to your product but your product is sensitive to how storage behaves then I propose that you leverage a trusted storage partner to build the right storage... - Susan Beebe

This week, we are excited to share a great recent review from CRN of the Dell Precision T1600, which said the system “delivered excellent performance, generous options and a small footprint. That's why the Precision T1600 is a CRN Test Center recommended product.” In addition to offering high marks for performance, the reviewer rated it as the fastest production PC to ever come through the CRN test Center. Here are a few comments from the review of the Precision T1600: “Also impressive in terms of system performance, the T1600 turned in a Geekbench 2.2 score of 14,891, knocking the T1500 to second place on our list of all-time production PC performers. The T1500 we tested was built around the Intel Core i7 quad-core part, and scored 9,286.” “When measuring video performance using Standard Performance Evaluation Corp.'s Viewperf 11, the Precision T1600 handled video rendering as well as or slightly better than any testbed machine we've seen.” “Servicing the system's innards got easier... - Susan Beebe

When the Dell TechCenter was launched five years ago in the United States, probably nobody would expect it to become such a huge success story: 150,000 unique visitors per month, more than 10,000 registered users (as of December 2011) and a significantly positive impact on Dell’s bottom line. Customers who engage with our tech evangelists at the Dell TechCenter are eager to do more business with Dell than those who don’t explore our wikis, forums and chats (which have grown to thousands and thousands posts and threads over the years). Last year, Dell made a bold step by launching local Dell TechCenter sites in China, Japan and in Germany. I have been in charge of our German site since the beginning; let me recap briefly what has happened since then, what we have learned so far and what cool news we have for you today. The art of creating online communities in EMEA When launching a local online community, our primary question was: “What’s the value of a local site for our customers?”... - Susan Beebe

We’re only a few weeks into the new year, but one of our PowerEdge servers is off to a fast start in earning outstanding accolades. The InfoWorld Test Center has chosen the Dell PowerEdge R715 for a 2012 Technology of the Year Award. Given annually based on product testing and reviews, InfoWorld's Technology of the Year Awards go to the very best hardware and software products in their class.  Click here to read more about this award. With this award the Dell PowerEdge R715 server joins the R815 in garnering high praise. Last year, InfoWorld recognized the PowerEdge R815’s value with a “9 out of 10 Stars” review, and CRN awarded the R815 Server of the Year! Combined, the PowerEdge R715 and R815 represent a great portfolio of 2S and 4S Rack servers to meet a wide range of customer needs. - Susan Beebe

If you’ve been keeping up with CES news recently, it’s no secret that Ultrabooks are the hot topic. Ultrabooks are a specific category of thin, light, and powerful laptops. Dell has officially entered the Ultrabook ring with the sleek and sturdy XPS 13, a harmonious combination of design, performance and mobility. The XPS 13 Ultrabook builds on Dell’s focus on making thin and powerful laptops (like the XPS 15z and the even smaller XPS 14z or the Vostro V131 and the Inspiron 14z). With the XPS 13, Dell’s goal was to blend the mobility and responsiveness of other devices you’re used to with the power and functionality of a full PC. We ended up with a sleek system that offers a brilliant 13.3-inch display in a form factor not much larger than competitive laptops with 11-inch displays. Our design teams put a lot of thought into materials, which results in well-balanced and optimized form and function. Durability was also a key criterion for the laptop. The lid is made of machined aluminum... - Susan Beebe

Last week I directed you to my post on bartongeorge.net and told you a little bit about Dell’s focus in the Web/Tech space and what we’re doing to help the developer community and our developer customers. I also introduced my mini Web Glossary series which is designed to help create better understanding around the Web/Tech industry and Web developers themselves. The three-part series is now live. Take a look and learn more about key projects, topics and trends in the world of Web today.  The glossary is divided into three separate entries that map to the layers of the web stack: Application tier, Data tier and Infrastructure tier. Comment here and tell us what other terms are helpful to know in the developer community. - Susan Beebe

Over the last year, many industry analysts have tried to define Big Data. Some of the common dimensions that have been used to define Big Data are the 3 V’s, Volume, Velocity and Variety. (Volume = multiple terabytes or over a petabyte; variety = numbers, audio, video, text, streams, weblogs, social media etc.; velocity = the speed with which it is collected). Although the 3 V’s do a good job as parameters for Big Data there are other things at play that need to be captured to understand the true nature of Big Data. In short, to describe the data landscape more holistically, we need to step beyond the 3 V’s. While the 3V’s are better classified as the salient features of the data, the real enablers of the Big Insights are technology, economics and business decisions that enable extracting tangible value from the data. In this discussion I will take a closer look at some of the drivers of Big Insights. Technologies: Big Data analysis requires processing huge volumes of data sets that... - Susan Beebe

The big fat review post for Dell Storage Forum London has been posted. Please let me know if I missed something! Once again, it was great to see the community coming together around Dell Storage. Will you be joining us in Boston in June? - Susan Beebe

It's always important to provide examples of how specific storage solutions can be utilized in an OEM environment.  My last post covered reasons why our OEM community might want to consider adding storage but this blog dives deeper into one particular product/technology. The EqualLogic PS6100XSis a hybrid storage array with focused, tiered workloads, packed into just 2U of rack space.  In EqualLogic-speak, that means it has 24 drives, some of which are solid state (SSD) and some of which are traditional spinning media (SAS).  What’s special is that within this single array of drives, the EqualLogic firmware knows how to look at a volume and move busy parts to SSDs, while leaving the less-accessed parts on SAS drives.  This occurs without administrator intervention, and without any alterations to the applications. Read my full blog post (or click on the image below) to learn exactly how particular OEMs especially with OLTP databases benefit from this type of tiering: - Susan Beebe

Krishnakumar P., Executive Director, APJ-CSMB Marketing The team at Digit embarked on the task of determining the most trusted brands as perceived by their readers for the annual Digit Icons of Trust Report of 2012. The Digit readers are among India’s largest technology community and Digit was committed to determining what made consumers trust one brand over the other. By their definition, “we aim to empower the consumer. We cut through the jargon and distill some unbiased, objective and rational advice your way. The Icons of Trust research report is one such effort that collates the collective intelligence of people just like you and in turn empowering you make the right purchases going forward. For tech brands it’s an opportunity to put their ears to the ground and gauge the rumblings of their consumers.” The survey aimed to calculate the trust a brand accumulated by comparing awareness, availability, credibility, satisfaction, loyalty and quality. The categories of products that... - Susan Beebe

Posted on behalf of Ryan Steed, Storage Excellence Center—EqualLogic Product Line Manager When I was a kid, December was always a hard month for me—I just couldn’t stand that annoying 3-week wait to open presents. I wanted those toys now! I can’t help but think some EqualLogic customers may feel the same way about our next-generation iSCSI arrays that launched in August 2011. The speed of business is increasing and IT Department timelines are constantly shrinking, with real results needed sooner and sooner. Sometimes a week is just too long to wait for mission-critical business infrastructure. Dell’s EqualLogic team recognized this need and wanted to find a way to get next-generation iSCSI arrays into your hands more quickly—so they joined forces with the Dell ShipsFast Systems Program. While ShipsFast is common with client and server equipment, this is the first time in Dell’s history a storage array can be had so quickly and easily. The EqualLogic and ShipsFast teams created a... - Susan Beebe