Sputnik…Wow!!

May 29, 2012

Courtesy of nasaimages.org

We knew that project Sputnik, the idea of creating a developer laptop based on Dell’s XPS13 ultrabook and Ubuntu 12.04LTS, would have appeal but we never could have anticipated the response we’ve gotten.

To put it into perspective, the most cumulative views I’ve had of a blog entry before Sputnik was 2,700.   My post introducing Sputnik, as of tonight, has had over 42,000 views!  And the news has been carried by a boatload of   pubs and blogs around the world (see a partial list below).

Silent but not sleeping

In case you’re wondering, the radio silence for the last couple of weeks  hasn’t been intentional our little team has just been crazy busy.   Not only have we gotten attention outside of Dell but our profile has raised quite a bit inside as well.  Our skunk works team has been scrambling to leverage that attention to see what we can do to put this on a faster track.  We have also had a bunch of meetings with Canonical to talk about the best way forward given the intense interest.

Whole lot of feedback

We have been deluged with comments and suggestions both on my blog and the Sputnik Storm session and while there were plenty of people who said they would  buy it now if it was available, we also received some clear direction on where people would like to see this offering go.   Some of the key areas for improving the offering are:

  • Multi gesture support for the touch pad  (more on that in a second)
  • Screen resolution
  • More memory (8GB+)
  • Matte screen
  • Pricing: don’t make it more expensive than Windows

We are making note of these suggestions as we plot our way through this six month pilot.

The track pad

Its no surprise that the number one complaint has been the lack of multi gesture support in the touchpad.  Canonical and Dell have reached out to the vendor and last week they began working on an open source driver.  The vendor is sending both Dell and Canonical intermediary versions which will allow us to iterate on them as they’re developing and provide feedback about what’s working and what isn’t with the way things are assembled.  Fingers crossed, we hope to see the completed driver by the end of June.

Thanks everyone for their amazing interest Sputnik and look for a bunch more info soon.

Extra-credit reading — some Sputnik coverage

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Posted by Barton George

Copper: Dell goes out ARMed

May 29, 2012

We’ve been watching the ARM market develop over the past few years as these highly efficient chips that have been driving tablets and cell phones have been finding their way more and more into hyperscale servers.   Well watch no more, today were are sallying forth.  Why now?  Because some of our biggest customers have told us that they felt the time is now to start working with these low powered, highly efficient chips for their servers.

HW + SW = Solution

Today we announced that we will be shipping the new Dell “Copper” ARM servers via a seed unit program to select hyperscale customers worldwide.  But a server does not an ecosystem make so we are doing what we can to help partners and developers get started building out applications for the platform.  Given that two of the key areas where the extreme efficiencies of ARM play particularly well are Web front-ends and Hadoop environments, we have “ARMed” key partners like Canonical and Cloudera with units.

Early days

At this point it is still early days in the world of ARM servers so we designed Copper specifically for developers and customers to create code and test performance, not for production.  To help developers get started we have struck a partnership between the Dell Solutions Centers and Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) to provide devs with remotely accessible clusters to develop and collaborate on.  And speaking of developers,  Dells own devs are working to deliver an ARM-based version of our open source infrastructure management software, Crowbar.

Speeds and Feeds

And in case your wondering about the specs of the hardware:

  • Dell Copper servers are a shared infrastructure design, which allows easy deployment and reconfiguration of the sleds.
  • Each ARM server node draws about 15 watts max power, so the total power draw for a full chassis is less than 750 watts.
  • The server nodes discover themselves and interconnect when deployed, so workloads can easily run across the entire 48 nodes.
  • And it’s still powerful, with four ARM server nodes per sled, and 12 total sleds, bringing a total of 48 server nodes to a single 3U C5000 chassis.

Stay tuned for more…

Extra-credit reading

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

Redmonk on Developers and Project Sputnik

May 8, 2012

Today at the Ubuntu Cloud Summit here in Oakland I grabbed sometime with Redmonk analyst Stephen O’Grady.  It was Stephen who originally brought up the idea of creating a Dell laptop running Ubuntu targeted at developers.

I talked to Stephen about how he would characterize today’s world of developers and what he feels project Sputnik needs to deliver on to be successful.

Updated March 22

Extra-credit reading

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

Talking about Project Sputnik

May 8, 2012

Last Friday Cote and I took a break from the mad rush getting ready for today’s Sputnik announce and grabbed a conference room to record a short video.  Below we discuss the project, how it came about, what its goals are and where it could go from here.

-> Weigh in on Dell IdeaStorm: Project Sputnik

Extra-credit reading

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Posted by Barton George

Introducing Project Sputnik: Developer laptop

May 7, 2012

Today I am very excited, I finally get to talk about project Sputnik!  In a nutshell, drumroll please, here it is:

Made possible by an internal innovation fund, project Sputnik is a 6 month effort to explore the possibility of creating an open source laptop targeted directly at developers.  It is based on Ubuntu 12.04 and Dell’s XPS13 laptop.

To put it in context, Sputnik is part of an effort by Dell to better understand and serve the needs of developers in Web companies.  We want to finds ways to make the developer experience as powerful and simple as possible.  And what better way to do that than beginning with a laptop that is both highly mobile and extremely stylish, running the 12.04 LTS release of Ubuntu Linux.

Why a developer laptop

When we first started setting up the web vertical to focus on companies who use the internet as their platform, we brought in Stephen O’Grady of Redmonk to learn as much as we could about the needs of developers.  One of the ideas that Stephen tossed out was a Dell laptop running Ubuntu, targeting developers.  We thought the idea was pretty cool and filed it away.

As we continued talking to customers and developers the topic of Ubuntu kept coming up and we came across a fair number of devs who were asking for a Dell laptop specifically based on it.  To my knowledge, no other OEM has yet made a system specifically targeted at devs and figured it was time to see what that might mean.  When the XPS13 launched we realized that we found the perfect platform to start with and when Dell’s incubation program was announced we knew I had the vehicle to get the effort kick started.

I should also add that Ubuntu was a natural choice not only because of its popularity in the Web world but Dell has quite a bit of experience with it.  In fact Dell has enabled and pre-installed out-of-the-factory Ubuntu on more computer models than any other OEM.

What’s Sputnik actually running?

The install image available for Sputnik contains

  1. drivers/patches for Hardware enablement
  2. a basic offering of key tools and utilities (see the complete list at the end of this entry)
  3. coming soon, a software management tool to go out to a github repository to pull down various developer profiles.

Hardware enablement

In putting together the project, the area that we focused on first was hardware enablement.  As Linux users are all too painfully aware, Linux drivers are not always available for various platforms.  We have been working hand in hand with Canonical, the commercial sponsor behind Ubuntu and identified three main areas on the XPS13:

  1. An issue with brightness
  2. The Wifi hotkey
  3. The touchpad and multi touch support

The first two have been resolved but the last one re the touchpad is still at large.  The issue is a bit of a pain particularly the lack of palm rejection support which can cause your cursor to jump by mistake.  We have contacted the vendor who makes the touchpad and they are sizing the effort to fix this and at the same time we are working with Canonical to find an interim solution.

Developer profile management

Hardware enablement is table stakes but where Sputnik starts to get interesting is when we talk about profiles.  No two developers are alike so instead of stuffing the system with every possible tool or app a developer could possibly want, we are trying a different approach.  As mentioned above, the actual “stuff” on the install image is pretty basic, instead we are working with a few developers to put together a tool that can go out to a github repository and pull down various developer profiles.  The first profiles we are targeting are Android, Ruby and JavaScript.

As a one of our alpha cosmonauts, Charles Lowell, explained (we have been working with three local developers in Austin, Charles, Mike Pav and Dustin Kirkland to put together our initial offering together.   And yes I know Sputnik was unmanned but its our project and we wanted to call the testers “cosmonauts.” )

What I’d like to see is not only a gold-standard configuration, but also a meta-system to manage your developer configuration… The devops revolution is about configuration as code. How cool would it be if my laptop configuration were code that I could store in a source repo somewhere?

After we build the management tool and some basic profiles to get the effort started, we are hoping that the community will take over and began creating profiles of their own.

Getting Feedback and UDS activities

The idea is to conduct project Sputnik out in the open.  There is a Storm Session that went live this morning on Dell Idea Storm for people to discuss the project and submit feedback, comments and ideas.  Later today here at the Ubuntu Developer Summit, Dustin, Mario Limonciello of Dell and I will be hosting a UDS session to discuss Sputnik.  Additionally at UDS there is a coding contest that has been kicked off.  The three people who write the best Juju charms will each get an XPS13.

The Vision: a Launchpad to the cloud

As mentioned at the start, Sputnik is currently a 6month project to investigate an Ubuntu laptop.  If successful, we have big plans for the effort. :)

When we initially pitched Sputnik to Ubuntu’s founder Mark Shuttleworth a couple months ago he really liked the idea.  In his eyes however, he saw something bigger.  Where it got really interesting for him was when this laptop was optimized for DevOps.  In this scenario we would have a common set of tools from client, to test, to production, thereby tying Sputnik via a common tool chain to a cloud backend powered by OpenStack.  Developers could create “micro clouds” locally and then push them to the cloud writ large.

We see a lot of potential in Sputnik to provide developers with a simple and powerful tool.  Only time will tell however so stay tuned to this blog, check out the Sputnik Storm session and weigh in on the project, what you’d like to see and how you think it can be made better.

Pau for now…

Extra-credit reading

Links and notes

Touchpad issue

Current behavior is that the touchpad functions as a basic pointing device, but lacks some desirable functionality:

  1. Pinch, zoom, & flick
  2. Palm negation (esp. important on larger touchpads where it’s easy for your hand to inadvertently touch the surface)
  3. Side/edge scrolling
  4. Two finger scrolling

We have contacted the vendor who makes the touchpad and they are sizing the effort to fix this and at the same time we are working with Canonical to find an interim solution.

Basic Install

== standard meta packages ==

ubuntu-desktop^

standard^

== scm ==

git

git-core

bzr

bzr-gtk

bzr-git

python-launchpadlib

== utilities ==

screen

byobu

tmux

meld

juju

charm-tools

charm-helper-sh

euca2ools

puppet

chef (available post install)

== editors ==

emacs

vim

vim-gnome

== browsers ==

chromium-browser

firefox

== common build tools/utilities & dependencies == fakeroot build-essential crash kexec-tools kvm makedumpfile kernel-wedge fwts devscripts

libncurses5

libncurses5-dev

libelf-dev

asciidoc

binutils-dev

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Posted by Barton George

Ferreting out Innovation

May 2, 2012

If you’ve been following my tweets you may have heard about “Project Sputnik.”  While I’m not quite ready to talk about it, I wanted to give some insight into the program that’s helped get it off the ground.

Innovation Incubation

At the beginning of the year Dell launched an internal incubation fund with the idea of rooting out innovation throughout the company.  The thought was that there are probably a bunch of cool ideas tucked away in the heads of employees at all different levels of the company, ideas that would ultimately benefit our customers if given a little protection and help to get off the ground.

The three Dell employees behind it, Nnamdi Orakwue, Michale Cote and Matt Baker act like a mini  internal VC firm hearing pitches from employees.  Those projects they approve get a small amount of cash to build out their idea for six months.  At the end of six months the projects will either get their training wheels taken off and folded into business units, apply for more funding or disbanded.

Enter Sputnik

The program is just getting started and the first project green lighted was Project Sputnik.  I’m very excited about it and am looking forward to be able to talk all about it in the near distant future.  Stay tuned…

Extra-credit reading

Pau for now…


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Posted by Barton George

DevOpsDays: Crowbar, where its been and where its going

April 25, 2012

Earlier this month at DevOpsDays here in Austin the Dell Crowbar crew hosted a session and gave a demo.  If you’re not familiar with it, Crowbar is an open source software framework written at Dell.  I grabbed some time with Crowbar architect Rob Hirschfeld and got him to recap how far we’ve come in its less than a year and where he sees us going over the next year.

Extra-credit reading

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Posted by Barton George

Addressing eBay’s Project Mercury needs with Dell’s Modular Data Center

April 17, 2012

Back on December12, eBay held their grand opening for their Project Mercury data center in Scottsdale, Arizona.  In attendance were all the partners that contributed along with members of the Data Center Pulse group.  Although the event itself wasn’t secret, the details were held in check until a couple of weeks ago when Derrick Harris posted his article in GigaOm

Some of the details published were the actual PUE numbers around Dell’s Modular Data Center:

Project Mercury gets free cooling year round, even in the heat of summer. On Aug. 23, 2011 — a 119-degree day — one of eBay’s Dell units had a partial-PUE score 0f 1.044 while drawing 520 kilowatts of power. On January 17, 2012, while drawing 1 megawatt, the same unit had consistent partial PUE of 1.018 while the rest of the data center was doing between 1.26 and 1.35.

And the winner is

Today the Uptime Institute announced that this Modular Data Center Product Deployment by eBay and Dell were named recipients of the 2012 Green Enterprise IT Award.

Here is a video I did at the opening back in December with Dell’s GM for our Data Center Solutions group, Roy Guillen.  Roy talks about what eBay was looking for and how we answered the challenge.

Some of the ground Roy covers:

  • The challenge that eBay issued
  • How Dell got involved
  • The evolution of Dell’s Modular Data Center and what eBay proved about the ability to group a whole bunch of workloads that don’t require tier 4 resiliency

Extra-credit reading

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

DevOpsDays Austin — The provisioning panel starring JuJu, Crowbar, Puppet, Chef and Pallet

April 11, 2012

Last week DevOpsDays was held here in Austin.  It sold out in about day after it was announced and had a big waiting list.  The two-day event, which was held at National Instruments (who did an awesome job as host), featured talks and panels in the mornings and “open space” discussions in the afternoons.

The panel on the first day,  moderated by John Willis, was entitled: Provisioning Panel – Meet Juju, Crowbar, Puppet, Chef, Pallet + discussion.  After the panel I caught up with each of the members for a follow-up chat.  Here they are:

Juju – Mark Mimms of Canonical

Crowbar – Rob Booth of Zenoss

Puppet – Dan Bode of Puppet Labs

Chef – Matt Ray of Opscode

Pallet – Antoni Batchelli of Pallet Ops

Stay tuned for more DevOpsDays goodness in the days to come!

Extra-credit reading

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

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

April 11, 2012

A little over a week ago, Dell’s Data Center Solutions (DCS) group marked its fifth birthday.  As Timothy Prickett Morgan explains in his article subtitled, “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

From napkin to “Frankenserver,” to today

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.  We we were working on a concept for a 1U system for them based on their requested requirements.   As you can see by the date (Nov 2006) it was actually before DCS became official … we were a skunk works team called “Sonic” consisting of a hand full of people.   We wanted to take an existing chassis and overhaul it to fit 4 HD’s, a specific MB, and SATA controller.  When we got back to Austin, I modified the chassis in the RR5 machine shop (took parts from several different systems and attached them together) and Jimmy outfitted it with electronics, tested it, and it was sent to the customer as a sample unit.

This first proto was described by the customer as “Frankenserver” and was the beginning of the relationship we have with one of our biggest customers.

A little over five years later, Dell’s DCS team has gone from Frankenserver to commanding 45.2 percent revenue share in a market that IDC estimates at $458 million in sales last quarter.  Pretty cool.

Extra-credit reading:

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

DevOpsDays Austin kicks off, A short history

April 3, 2012

Yesterday, DevOpsDays Austin kicked off at National Instruments.  If you’re not familiar with DevOps, its the idea of using people, processes and tools to break down the wall that traditionally exists between developers and operations with the idea of removing friction and increasing velocity to better support and drive the business.

The Austin event was maxed out the day after it was announced a couple months ago and there was a waiting list of over one hundred people.   About half the crowd was from out of town with a big contingent from the Valley and New York.   Near the end of the day yesterday I caught up with one of the organizers, Damon Edwards to learn more about the event and how it came to be.

Some of the ground Damon covers:

  • How “DevOps” and DevOps Days came to be: How John Allspaw‘s talk at Velocity to Patrick Debois to set up the first event
  • 3:36:  How the event has transformed over time:  from a focus on people to a focus on tools and now back to a focus on people
  • 4:56  Who attends DevOps Days and how the mix between developers and operations folks has shifted over time.

Extra-credit reading

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

EnterpriseDB’s new Postgres cloud database

March 27, 2012

A little while ago, EnterpriseDBs VP of Biz Dev, Sean Doherty popped in for a visit.  While he was here I got him to tell me what EnterpriseDB, the certified professional distribution of the PostgreSQL open source DB, has been up to and fill me in on their new cloud database.

Some of the ground Sean covers:

  • What is EnterpriseDB and what is their business model
  • 1:10 Where does EnterpriseDB fit in the overall database landscape and where is it used
  • 2:00 The release of the Postgres Plus cloud database on EC2 and soon OpenStack
  • 2:44 What EnterpriseDB has got up its sleeve in the way of features and functionality in the next year

Extra-credit reading

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

IDC starts tracking the hyperscale server market

March 26, 2012

In a recent post that highlighted the demise of the midrange  server market, Timothy Prickett Morgan talked about the new server classification that IDC has just started tracking, “Density-optimized”:

These are minimalist server designs that resemble blades in that they have skinny form factors but they take out all the extra stuff that hyperscale Web companies like Google and Amazon don’t want in their infrastructure machines because they have resiliency and scale built into their software stack and have redundant hardware and data throughout their clusters….These density-optimized machines usually put four server nodes in a 2U rack chassis or sometimes up to a dozen nodes in a 4U chassis and have processors, memory, a few disks, and some network ports and nothing else per node.

Source: IDC -- Q3 2011 Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker

Here are the stats that Prickett Morgan calls out (I particularly like the last bullet :-) :

  • By IDC’s reckoning these dense servers accounted for $458 million in sales, up 33.8 percent in a global server market that fell by 7.2 percent to $14.2 billion in the quarter.
  • Density optimized machines accounted for 132,876 servers in the quarter, exploding 51.5 percent, against the overall market, which comprised 2.2 million shipments and rose 2 percent.
  • Dell, by the way, owns this segment, with 45.2 percent of the revenue share, followed up by Hewlett-Packard with 15.5 percent of that density-optimized server pie.

Extra-credit reading

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

On beyond North America — Dell’s OpenStack solution now available in Europe and Asia

March 21, 2012

Last summer at OSCON Dell announced the availability of our OpenStack solution in the US and Canada.  Today at World Hosting Days in Rust Germany we are now announcing that our OpenStack-Powered Cloud Solution is available in Europe and Asia.

If you’re not familiar with it, OpenStack is an open source cloud project built on a foundation of code initially donated by NASA and Rackspace.  The project kicked off a little over a year and a half ago here in Austin and it has gained amazing traction since then.

Dell’s offering

Dell’s OpenStack cloud offering is an open source, on premise cloud solution based on the OpenStack platform running on Ubuntu.  Its composed of:

  • The OpenStack cloud operating system
  • PowerEdgeC servers: C6100, C6105, C2100 and, coming soon, Dell’s new C6220 and R720
  • The Crowbar deployment and management software framework – developed and coded by Dell :)
  • Dell’s OpenStack reference architecture
  • Dell Services

Crowbar software framework

To give a little more  background on the Crowbar software framework, its an open source project developed initially at Dell and you can grab it off github.  The framework, which is under the Apache 2.0 license,  manages the OpenStack deployment from the initial server boot to the configuration of the primary OpenStack components, allowing users to complete bare metal deployment of multi-node OpenStack clouds in hours, as opposed to days.

Once the initial deployment is complete, you can use Crowbar to maintain, expand, and architect the complete solution, including BIOS configuration, network discovery, status monitoring, performance data gathering, and alerting.   Beyond Dell, companies like VMware, Dreamhost and Zenoss have built “barclamps”  that allow them to utilize Crowbar’s modular design.  Additionally, customers who buy the Dell OpenStack-Powered Cloud Solution get training, deployment, and support on Crowbar.

So as of today, customers in the UK, Germany and China can purchase the Dell OpenStack-Powered Cloud Solution.  As customer demand grows in other regions we will be adding more countries so stay tuned.  If the first 18 mos of the project are any indication of whats the pace is like to come, we are all going to be in for a lot more excitement.

For more info, email: OpenStack@Dell.com

Extra-credit reading

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

SXSW: Our final Dev/Tech meet up

March 13, 2012

As I mentioned in my last several entries, during SXSW Michael Cote and I, on behalf of Dell, organized a series of mini meet-ups focusing on developers, tech and social media folks.  These were relaxed informal affairs with the idea of getting people together to learn what they were up to and for us to let them know what had been keeping us busy.

The final meet up was held on Sunday evening at the Hilton bar, Finn and Porter.  Here is a mini-montage from the event:

I asked the folks to say who they are, where they’re from, who they work for and what they hope to get out of SXSW.

The line-up

Extra-credit reading

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

SXSW: Our Saturday night Dev/tech meet up

March 12, 2012

During SXSW Michael Cote and I, on behalf of Dell, organized a series of mini meet-ups focusing on developers, tech and social media folks.  The second event we held was on Saturday on the top level of Speakeasy.  Being Saturday night, this turned out to be the biggest of the three get togethers.

Here is a small sampling of the folks who dropped by (notice the atmospheric lighting, for half of them they were literally lit by candle light):

The Line up

Extra-credit reading

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

Gazzang – One of the 10 Austin startups to check out at SXSW

March 10, 2012

Last night we  held our first SXSW meet up at Opal Divines.  Opals is very close to the worldwide headquarters of Gazzang, which last week was named by GigaOm one of The 10 Austin startups you need to meet at SXSW 2012.  Gazzang focuses on securing your data in the cloud via transparent data encryption.

Given the  proximity and the promise of free beer, I was able to twist the arms of four members of their development team and get them to join us.  Here is a quick video featuring Dustin Kirkland, Sergio Pena, Hector Acosta, and Eddie Garcia.

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

SXSW: Our first developer Chill and Chat

March 10, 2012

This is the 26th year of the SXSW (South by Southwest), the annual music, film, and interactive conference.  Everybody whose anybody, and even a few who aren’t, are here.   Yesterday the 10-day event kicked off.  As a company, Dell is a big participant and sponsor from panels, to music lounges, to an entrepreneur’s UnConference, to education, to gaming.

As for the Web|Tech vertical we have taken our own guerrilla approach to participation in this shindig in our own backyard.  Besides going to parties that customers and partners are throwing, Cote and I have organized a series of informal “chill and chat” meet ups for developers and tech types.

Last night we held our first soiree at Opal Divines.  Here is a mini-montage I made featuring a few of the attendees:

I asked the folks to say who they are, where they’re from, who they work for and what they hope to get out of SXSW.

The line-up

Our next events

If you’re around here’s where we’ll be tonight and tomorrow:

  • Saturday, March 10th  7-9:00pm  – Speakeasy – Downstairs (412 Congress Avenue, Austin, TX)
  • Sunday, March 11th 5:30-7:30pm – Hilton Bar (Finn and Porter)  (500 East 4th Street, Austin, TX)

Extra-credit reading

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

Talking to the CEO of SugarSync — provider of personalized, multi-device cloud storage

March 6, 2012

Yesterday morning, Laura Yecies, CEO of SugarSync stopped by for some meetings here at Dell.  SugarSync, if you’re not familiar with it, provides instant and secure online file sync and backup for your PC, Mac, or mobile device.  Before Laura’s first meeting we grabbed a cup of coffee and did a quick video.  Here it is:

Some of the ground Laura covers

  • An intro to SugarSync: what it is and who it’s targeted at
  • 0:43 — How do you get SugarSync and what’s their business model
  • 1:32 — How Laura got involved with the company and how they’ve been doing
  • 2:06 — How does SugarSync differ from something like Dropbox, how does it work and the power of cross-platform solutions
  • 4:09 — What’s next for the company and the product

Extra-credit reading

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Posted by Barton George

Dell Officially Launches Web|Tech vertical — the 100 second overview

February 29, 2012

Last month I mentioned that Dell was launching a Web|Tech vertical targeted at those companies who use the internet as their primary platform.  Well, a couple of weeks ago at our annual sales kick off (FRS) we debuted our six new commercial verticals to our sales teams from around the world.

At the show, which was held in Vegas, we had booths on the expo floor to talk about our solutions.  We also delivered breakout sessions to present an overview of customer needs and concerns for each of the six — Retail, Manufacturing, Financial Services, Web|Tech, Energy and TME (Telco, Media & Entertainment), as well as for our existing three verticals in the Public space, Government, Education and Healthcare.

Here is a quick overview I did of the Web|Tech vertical from the show floor in a mocked up developer’s cube in our booth.

Extra-credit reading

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

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