Dell gave shape on Thursday to its 2013 enterprise strategy, revealing the company’s plan to transition from a manufacturer of hardware rooted in the stalled PC market to a provider of full-fledged networking, storage, and services that can compete with IBM, HP, and Cisco.

Speaking at an event in San Francisco, Dell Enterprise Solutions president Marius Haas stressed the need for intuitive products that cut down on data center complexity while providing scalability and affordability. Noting the $ 12.7 billion Dell has spent in acquisition investments, Hass announced the company’s proposed answer to these needs: the Active Systems platform, a suite of converged infrastructure platforms designed to simplify deployment of virtual desktop infrastructures and private cloud deployments.

Hass stated that businesses of all sizes, from SMBs to large enterprises, can benefit from avoiding the complexity, expense, and lock-in of proprietary systems, illustrating with the claim that HP’s Blade System Matrix and Cisco’s UCS do not provide the “right balance” between price-to-performance outcomes, flexibility, and open architectures. Dell’s accrual of standards-based intellectual property, he said, has equipped the company to offer intuitive, versatile, and power-efficient products.
Network Computing