Michael Dell talks about Servers and China which gives you an idea of data centers

Michael Dell had an interview with Fortune magazine that includes a transcript.

Transcript: Michael Dell addresses Dell's future

July 17, 2012: 3:55 PM ET

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Michael Dell, Chairman and CEO, Dell, was interviewed by Fortune's Andy Serwer at Brainstorm Tech in Aspen. They talked about the PC market, the enterprise, China, and Apple. 

In the interview here was the part that gets my attention.

ANDY SERWER:  Michael, what about your business in China?  What is that like and are you feeling the effects of any slowdown there?

MICHAEL DELL:  It's on the order of a $5-billion business, so it's a sizeable business for us.  It's the largest business outside the United States.  I can tell you that there are some challenges in China right now.

ANDY SERWER:  Be more specific, it's a really important topic I think.

MICHAEL DELL:  I'm going to be there in early September with our board of directors.  I'll give you a better update after that.  But I think, generally speaking, the demand for technology in China is tremendous.  You know, we think about 60 percent of the Chinese Internet runs on Dell servers, and so we have a huge success in selling our infrastructure solutions to those Chinese companies.  Anybody who's doing anything mission critical like stock exchange, a bank, a power grid, you know, those are our customers.  You know, we're designing the IT architecture for, you know, a lot of the key state-owned enterprises with our services group.  And we've acquired Bearingpoint to be able to kind of fuel that.

So, our business is fully integrated in China across all aspects, and it's 100 percent Dell owned.  So, we love the business, it's an important business.  And emerging markets are a big deal for us because the next billion users are coming from these countries and the next ten.

Data Centers are not specifically mentioned.  But, here is another piece of data.  Here are 15 Dell data center engineers who were at 7x24 Exchange who later had a group offsite.  There are some top people recruited from other companies.  Most of these guys were brand new to Dell working on a new data center service.

 

HP and IBM have also been focusing on China data center projects.  It is tough to know who is winning in China, but Michael Dell is confident he has 60% of the server business. 

 

 

One of Dell's customers in China is Tencent.

ANDY SERWER:  I'm digressing, Michael.  Maybe it's a flashback.  In any event.  I want to know what your relationship with the consumer is.  What do you make for the consumer and how important is it?  And how much does it tie into the enterprise from your perspective?

MICHAEL DELL:  It absolutely ties in, and you're right, the consumerization of IT is a big deal.  And the growth in mobility and in smart phones and tablets is absolutely an enormous part of what's going on in IT.  And it has all sorts of implications across the whole, you know, sort of ecosystem.

So, you know, I'll give you an example.  One of our customers is a company in China called Tencent.  And Tencent has like 650 million customers and they're all people who use phones.

Here is a Dell Power and Cooling web page.

Power and Cooling Technologies

 

1. Power and Cooling Technologies
   • The Value of Power and Cooling
     • What are Power and Cooling Technologies?
     • Benefits of Power and Cooling Optimization
     • Case Studies
   • Your Power and Cooling Strategy
     • The Dell Difference
     • Assess Your Needs
     • Design Your Solution
     • Partners
   • Implementing Power and Cooling
     • Deploying Power and Cooling Technology
     • Performance and Functionality
   • Power and Cooling Components
     • Services
     • High-efficiency Servers
     • Cooling and Containment
     • Power Delivery
     • Rack Infrastructure
     • Systems Management
     • Power Management

Dell shrinks the Container Data Center to 45kW, targeting the Military Market

Ever since the 40' container wave started I have made the point that most have not gone through the exercise on what is the right size for a container.  Dell has announced the MDC - Mobile data center - 45 kW of IT capacity.

The Dell press release is here.

Deployable to any location, Dell’s Tactical Mobile Data Center can expand customers’ current data center, used as a back-up or recovery site to provide disaster recovery services or create new data centers in remote locations. The system can operate under a wide range of temperatures and conditions allowing for powerful operations in many environments. 

“Many of our military and government customers are forced to quickly deploy to remote environments, like combat outposts in Afghanistan, or even in more developed communities following a natural disaster,” said Joe Ayers, vice president and general manager, Dell Federal. “In today’s operational environment in order to have access to the tools and information most organizations need to accomplish their mission, they must also have a robust IT infrastructure, and we’ve designed this solution specifically to meet the needs of these very special customers.”

It fits in military airframes and can be forklifted into place. Dimensions look to be 108"L x 88"W x 96"H an ISU-96 size used by the military.

I wonder if Dell will offer the color options that AAR mobile systems does.

Why Dell made a smart move with its ARM Servers, providing a Hosting Service

I've been blogging about ARM in servers for quite a while and have had many conversations with people who think there is a market for little green servers.

Dell announced its ARM Server last week.  The one part that I kept on focusing on is the way Dell is delivering, well not delivering the ARM Servers.

Enabling other customers and developers by providing remote-accessible Copper ARM server clusters deployed in Dell Solution Centers, and through our deep partnership with the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC). These clusters will be in place by the end of the year.

Not only does this provide a low cost way to increase the availability of Dell ARM servers, it provides data to Dell on what customers are doing.

A handful of people are getting ARM servers, and I am sure we won't hear anything from these uses for quite a while.  But, it is a safe bet there is an overlap with the Seamicro customer base.

• Shipping the new Dell “Copper” ARM server through a seed unit program to a select list of customers worldwide. There is no general availability at this time.
• Delivering Copper seed units to key ecosystem partners to support their development activities.

Here is a video to watch on the server.

The Dell ARM web site is here for more info.

Dell drives innovation for the ARM server ecosystem

Enterprises that run large web, cloud and big data environments are constantly seeking new technology to gain competitive advantage and reduce operations cost. This focus is motivating a dramatic interest in ARM-based server technologies as a way to meet these requirements. What is ARM? An advanced RISC machine (ARM) server employs small, low-power ARM processors, typically deployed as systems on a chip (SoC) to reduce space, power consumption and cost. ARM processors are present in billions of client devices, but they have not been previously adopted for use in servers, due to the feature set, performance and limited software ecosystem.  Moving ARM to the forefront Now that the processors have grown in capability, and the basic open source software is available, both customers and developers are anxious to test ARM servers to confirm the potential benefits within real-world environments. In response to customer demand, Dell has decided to enable the Dell “Copper” ARM-based server ecosystems, by: Shipping Dell "Copper" ARM servers to a select list of customers and partners, as part of a worldwide seed program. Systems have already begun shipping, but there is no general availability of the Dell "Copper" servers at this time. Enabling developers worldwide through remote-accessible Dell "Copper" ARM server clusters, in Dell Solution Centers and through our close partnership with the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC – UT). Delivering Dell ARM-supported solutions to the open source community, such as Crowbar on ARM and Crowbar for Hadoopon ARM.
		Dell "Copper" ARM server chassis and sleds
		Dell "Copper" ARM server sled

Dell Announces Scorpio Server Hardware at OCP

Forrest Norrod and Frank Frankovsky are the two Dell employees who founded DCS.

Forrest announced the new hardware, Scorpio for Open Rack.

Here is closer picture of the server.

Dell Data Centers Solutions (DCS) turn 5, congratulations on years of innovation

It is not too long ago that Data Centers were far from people's minds when it came to buying server hardware.  Now, data centers and servers are intertwined in all kinds of ways.  All the OEMs now have data center groups.  And, Dell just turned 5 with its DCS group.

Barton George posts about DCS turning 5.

Can you imagine what things will be like when DCS turns 10?

All the best ideas begin on a cocktail napkin — DCS turns 5

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A little over a week ago, Dell’s Data Center Solutions (DCS) group marked its fifth birthday.  As Timothy Prickett Morgan explains in his articlesubtitled, “Five years old, and growing like a weed”:

DCS was founded originally to chase the world’s top 20 hyperscale data center operators, and creates stripped-down, super-dense, and energy-efficient machines that can mean the different between a profit and a loss for those data center operators.

This team, which now represents a greater than $1 billion dollar business and has expanded beyond just custom systems to include standard systems built for the “next 1000,”  all started on a simple napkin.

The origin of DCS -- Ty’s Sonic sketch - November 2, 2006

Ty Schmitt explain the start and napkin

Ty Schmitt who was one of the original team and now is the executive director of Dell’s modular infrastructure team within DCS, explains:

This was sketch I made over drinks with Jimmy Pike late one night after visiting a big customer on the west coast.