Dell heads into the cloud with new offerings

Is Dell (Nasdaq: Dell) the next big name to enter the cloud computing fray? The company's Force 10 Networks data center acquisition earlier this year hinted strongly at its interest. Now, the long-time PC retailer is following through on the product and service front, according to eWeek. The publication noted that Dell made new cloud-related announcements this week at both the Salesforce.com Dreamforce event and the VMworld 2011 conference, the latter of which the entire cloud sector appears to have attended.

Dell said at VMworld that it is hard at work on a public cloud offering with VMware that is set to debut sometime later this year, with Dell data centers hosting VMware's vCloud public cloud systems. One of those data centers already is open in Plano, Tex., and several others are in the works. This effort targets mostly the small and medium-sized business market, where Dell has built strong customer relationships.

Dell and VMware also plan to build private cloud infrastructures for other companies, according to the eWeek story. Dell systems already are in place as components of other companies' public cloud services, too, such as those operated by Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) and Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN).  In addition, Dell and VMware next year plan to offer Microsoft Azure and open-source public cloud offerings, and continue integrating more Dell software and applications into the cloud. Analysts have been largely supportive of Dell's cloud moves, eWeek reported.

At Salesforce.com's Dreamforce event, Dell and the event's host announced a partnership aimed at offering software as a service application under the brand of Dell Cloud Business Applications. The first of these applications, a new CRM app, became available at the conference from Dell cloud integrator partner Boomi.

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-see this eWeek story

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