Dell Services Cloud Expands

Dell is offering a cloud-based Platform-as-a-Service as part of its Dell Services Cloud built on the new Microsoft Windows Azure platform appliance. The Dell Services Cloud and the Windows Azure platform appliance were both announced July 12, 2010, at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Redmond, WA.

The Windows Azure platform appliance, available in limited production release, is designed to be a turnkey cloud platform for large service providers and enterprises to run in their own data centers. Customers and initial partners such as Dell that are using the appliance in their data centers will have the scale-out application platform and data center efficiency of Windows Azure and SQL Azure currently offered by Microsoft today.

The Windows Azure platform appliance will allow Dell to deliver private and public cloud services for Dell and its enterprise, public, small and medium-sized business customers. Dell will also work with Microsoft to develop a Dell-powered Windows Azure platform appliance for enterprise organizations to run in their data centers.

This is an expansion of Dell’s cloud strategy. Dell Services will begin implementing the limited production release of the Windows Azure platform appliance to host public and private clouds for its customers. Dell Services will also provide advisory services, application migration, and integration and implementation services. In addition, Dell will work with Microsoft to develop a Windows Azure platform appliance for large enterprise, public and hosting customers to deploy in their own data centers. The appliance will leverage infrastructure from Dell combined with the Windows Azure platform.