Dell Canada Inc. officially opened its Executive Briefing Centre North at its Toronto headquarters last month – a move it hopes conveys to enterprises that it is dedicated to IT.
Dell, primarily known within the consumer PC realm, has been making inroads into the enterprise space. According to Don Kerr, director for Dell Canada’s Advanced Systems Group, one-in-three enterprise servers sold in Canada is a Dell.
The new facility joins similar facilities located in Round Rock, Tex., and New York. Kerr said the facility – complete with an executive briefing space and $1-million product showroom – will serve as a liasion with its Canadian and U.S. clients to better understand enterprise requirements.
Kerr also outlined the Dell Scalable Enterprise strategy, which takes a commodity-based approach to enterprise IT.
“Dell has a consistent and customer-focused approach to enterprise computing,” Kerr said, adding the IT market is becoming polarized into two separate camps.
“At one end you have a custom-focused market with high complexity…at the other end you have a standards-focused market which is going to rely on commodity products that interoperate on de facto standards and are easily integrated,” Kerr said.
Since implementing 4,000 Dell PCs and 500 Dell Power Edge servers, Ford Motor Co. of Canada Ltd. has bought into Dell’s bundle strategy.
Mike Ryan, manager, i-Connect Dealer Systems of Canada in Oakville, Ont., said Ford has standardized its 574 dealer sites with Dell technology. Ford i-Connect is the hardware and software technology integrator division at Ford Canada.
Even the existing technology, including switches from Cisco Systems Inc. and printers from Lexmark International Inc., will be replaced in time with Dell products, Ryan said.
IT as a commodity is a model being looking at within the enterprise, according to Vito Mabrucco, group vice-president, products and services research for Toronto-based IDC Canada Ltd.
Dell, as a pure model, standards-based technology firm is in a unique position, particularly as the market shifts towards standardization, Mabrucco said.