Cloud Computing: Dell has sold 1M webscale servers in five years
October 31, 2012
Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Derrick Harris.
Dell’s Data Center Solutions group recently shipped its 1 millionth server just five years after coming into existence. It’s proof of how important webscale buyers have become to the server market, as well as how different their demand are than those of traditional IT buyers. Dell is reporting today (on no less than three corporate blog channels) that the company’s Data Center Solutions unit shipped its 1 millionth server earlier this week. The DCS division, which sells stripped-down, energy-efficient servers by the thousands to hyperscale customers, has been a shining star for Dell over the past few years.
DCS doesn’t sell to just anyone, though. The unit’s banner customer used to be Facebook (although it has since begun building much of its own gear, and claims to be off vendor gear entirely for its newest data center), and others include Microsoft, Salesforce.com and eBay. In fact, Dell provided the bulk of the web servers for eBay’s Project Mercury data center that I profiled in April. Outside the web space, Dell’s DCS customers include large oil & gas companies and research centers…
Those types of customers are important. As cloud computing and large web sites have shifted server-sales dynamics over the years, fewer customers account for an ever-increasing percentage of server sales. Thanks to Facebook’s Open Compute Project and other efforts, they’re increasingly demanding high-density gear that packs as much power as possible into the most-efficient footprint. In fact, the company claimed in 2011 that its DCS division, combined with its off-the-shelf PowerEdge C line of energy-efficient servers, would be the fourth-largest x86 server vendor in the world if it were spun off from Dell…
Read more from the source @ http://gigaom.com/cloud/dell-has-sold-1m-webscale-servers-in-five-years/