At Davenport Group, we work hard to stay current with the latest technology innovations. Our partners at Dell Technologies, VMware, and Microsoft are leading the way in IT transformation, and we love to talk about their success. Below, we share important news stories and press releases discussing the ever-evolving IT industry.
“We think there’s a very significant play here with regard to Cisco,” St. Charles said. “Cisco has such a large portion of the market, and so many partners are Cisco partners. We think Dell is as good if not better than anything available in the market. Some large data centers are already running on it, and we’re thinking this is an opportunity to really push it.”
“I think Dell will provide end-to-end solutions, and will build common IP [intellectual property] across all the product architectures,” St. Charles told CRN. Dell successfully sold both the EqualLogic and Compellent storage lines for years, and can do so with EMC VNX, St. Charles said.
“It’s more than just the addition of the G13 servers,” Clifford told CRN. “It’s pushing massive IOPS. The upgraded hardware gives Dell a lot of running room for long-term enhancements. Dell is setting it up for Storage Center 7.0. It will have some [exceptional] features, and will need the extra performance.”
With the SC9000, Dell is showing its ability to innovate to make sure customers don’t get left behind, Clifford said. “We’re at that moment in time where the industry is shifting to hybrid flash and all-flash,” he said. “Customers need the IOPS to make it happen, and the SC9000 provides it.”
This new flash storage technology in many ways changes everything about storage, said Paul Clifford, president of Davenport Group, a St. Paul, Minn.-based solution provider and longtime Dell partner.
“It’s not so much the innovation of the new flash memory,” Clifford said. “It’s the major impact it will have on spinning disks. We’ll be able to get more performance with six of these new SSDs than we get with 72 15,000-rpm hard disks. The way we approach capacity and performance today needs a balancing act between flash and spinning disks. For companies with the money, they’ll do what it takes to get the performance they need. For the rest, they want speed, but are concerned about capacity. The new technology lets us take care of both.”
“When Dell talks about working with the channel, we really are the poster child for it,” she said.
“The products stand alone. They’ve got the best products on the market today. You can take them to a small customer or to a Fortune 500 company. There’s something for everybody. It’s open and it’s scalable.”
Clifford said Davenport Group wouldn’t let EMC’s sales team wedge them out of the deal and stayed close to IOMax. After about two weeks of discussions, IOMax made its decision.
In the end, it was support that swayed IOMax’s decision. Although the products and pricing did play an important role in IOMax’s decision-making process, Dell’s technology combined with a Dell channel partner’s level of support led IOMax to uproot its storage infrastructure and start fresh, Bennet said.
The SCv2000 provides a new lower entry point to the Compellent technology, which is a good move to help Dell’s channel, said Paul Clifford, president of Davenport Group, a St. Paul, Minn.-based solution provider and Dell channel partner.
“We can now drop [off] a Compellent solution to a customer for under $20,000,” Clifford told CRN. “That becomes a remote branch office. You can now put SANs in places where they couldn’t be put before.”
The new lower-priced SAN now gives remote-office and branch-office users an alternative to higher-priced hyper-converged infrastructure offerings, Clifford said. “We now have multiple ways to reach such customers.”
Skelley is an “immensely talented person” who will be missed in the Dell channel, said Paul Clifford, president of Davenport Group, a St. Paul, Minn.-based solution provider and Dell channel partner.
“If he has found a great opportunity to build something for someone new, good for him,” Clifford told CRN. Skelley also is a channel advocate, Clifford said, adding that he “balances partner and vendor needs.”
Davenport Group has been looking at working with another developer of storage performance technology that is competitive with Infinio’s and is sold via Dell, Clifford said. “Now we’ll consider looking at Infinio because of Bob,” he said. “Where smart people go, we want to see what’s happening.”
