Dell and Microsoft Corp. on Monday announced a strategic partnership in which Dell intends to use the Windows Azure platform appliance, introduced by Microsoft, as a part of its Dell Services Cloud to develop and deliver next-generation cloud services. 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.

The News

• Dell Services will begin implementing the limited production release of the Windows Azure platform appliance to host public and private clouds for its customers, leveraging its vertical industry expertise in providing options for the efficient delivery of flexible application hosting and IT operations. Dell Services will also provide advisory services, application migration, and integration and implementation services.
• 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.

Cloud Computing Responds to Changing Business Needs

Dell and Microsoft understand cloud computing delivers significant efficiencies in infrastructure costs and allows IT to be more responsive to business needs. Recognizing that more organizations can benefit from the flexibility and efficiency of the Windows Azure platform, Dell and Microsoft have partnered to deliver an appliance to power a Dell platform-as-a-service (PaaS) Cloud.

Microsoft announced today at its Worldwide Partner Conference here the limited production release of the Windows Azure platform appliance, a turnkey cloud platform for large service providers and enterprises to run in their own data centers. Customers and initial partners like Dell using the appliance in their data centers will have the scale-out application platform and data center efficiency of Windows Azure and SQL Azure offered by Microsoft today.

Dell Data Center Solutions (DCS) has been working with Microsoft to build out and power Windows Azure platform since its launch. Dell will leverage the insight it has gained as a primary infrastructure partner for the Windows Azure platform to ensure that the Dell-powered Windows Azure platform appliance is optimized for power and space to save ongoing operating costs, and performance of high-scale cloud services.

Dell is a top provider of cloud computing infrastructure and its client roster includes 20 of the top 25 most heavily trafficked Internet sites and four of the top global search engines. Dell has been custom-designing infrastructure solutions for the leading global cloud service providers and hyperscale data center operators for the past three years. Through this customer insight, Dell has developed deep expertise about the specialized needs of organizations in hosting, HPC, Web 2.0, gaming, social networking, energy, SaaS, plus public and private cloud builders.

Cloud Services Reduce Complexity and Increase Efficiency

With the combined experience of Perot Systems and Dell, Dell Services delivers vertically-focused cloud solutions, unencumbered by traditional labor-intensive business models. Dell Services operates clouds today, delivering managed and support software-as-a-service to more than 10,000 global customers. In addition, Dell has a comprehensive suite of services designed to help customers take advantage of public and private cloud models. The new Dell PaaS powered by the Windows Azure platform appliance will allow Dell to offer customers an expanded suite of services, including cloud-based hosting and transformational services to help organizations move applications to the cloud.