Dell down on big vision of HP, IBM and Sun

Models of utility computing promoted by HP, IBM and Sun need a "reality check", a senior Dell executive has said.

"The reality check is that it's easy to talk about the future," said Bruce E Kornfeld, director of worldwide product marketing with Dell's product group.

Kornfeld was speaking to the press in Singapore, delivering Dell's own vision of enterprise computing as well as trying to debunk his competitors' concepts.

Notions of highly virtualised, single-vendor data centres run from one console - an idea delivered by HP and others - can only be partially delivered with today's technology and then only at huge expense. It also shackles the buyer to the vendor for years to come, said Kornfeld.

As for the picture of on-demand computing painted by IBM, Kornfeld saw it as simple outsourcing.

"It may look really good to spend a $1,000 and $1,500 a month. But with a full financial analysis they'll see they are paying huge interest rates and service fees, just to be able to lose control of their data centre," he said.

For its part, Kornfeld said Dell today aims to bring the same model of success it has found in the desktop PC and workstation world into the data centre: achieving economies of scale through the use of standard, off-the-shelf components.

This has usually meant the use of the Linux or Windows operating systems running on Intel servers, either singly or in clusters. Dell has gained most headway among buyers wishing to replace older servers that use RISC processors, he said.

Dell, too, is working towards its own vision of a highly virtualised data centre, where a myriad of underlying physical resources are viewed and managed as one unit.

Kornfeld said it is working with software firms BMC, Microsoft, Red Hat, Veritas and others to deliver its concept, which he said would take another two to three years.

Dell is looking to boost sales of servers and storage, as well as professional services such as installation and maintenance, to further its goals of doubling revenue to $60bn over the next few years and increasing its market share.

This year's second quarter results show that IBM has 30.4 per cent of the $10.6bn global market, followed by HP, Sun and Dell, according to analysts IDC.