Dell is making a deeper investment in providing converged infrastructures to automate data center operations with the acquisition of Gale Technologies. As part of the purchase, Dell plans to create a separate business group focused on enterprise systems and solutions. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Gale Technologies is a privately held company that provides infrastructure automation software. The company automates and orchestrates a company’s compute, storage and networking resources.
Both Cisco and Dell are in the server business, which has increasingly become commoditized. Converged infrastructures give the server makers the capability to offer all-in-one solutions that integrate compute, storage and networking. Though expensive, these big box systems have become a way for customers to consolidate their data centers, which have become expensive to maintain, compared to using a service such as Amazon Web Services.
Gale is one of Cisco’s strategic partners, and it also works with other Dell competitors such as EMC.
Dell will use the acquisition to create a new division that focuses on selling converged infrastructure technologies. The “Enterprise Systems & Solutions ” group will offer services and solutions as part of what it offers.
The hardware players in the market are competing intensively to provide these converged solutions. Dell has expressed its intentions to build data centers for companies. This fits with the overall plan to manage IT operations with its own hardware and associated consulting services.
But the cloud is the story here. Customers will look for ways to offer lightweight services. Will they continue to buy their own hardware? Data has become so deep and voluminous that the hardware can only last so long before it clogs up and slows down operations. Companies like Joyent can make much more sense as it keeps up with Moore’s Law far more effectively than a customer can trying to optimize big box solutions.
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