Open relationships
But fear not, for as ye walk through the silicon valley of the shadow of debt, Dell is there to offer some sweet salvation with its 'open' Business Ready Configurations (BRC), comprised of a choir of server, storage, and networking technologies all singing from the same hymn sheet.
Dell's 'converged' data centre offering offers pre-defined compute, storage and network configurations, but allows its enterprise disciples to choose the various hardware and software components pick'n'mix style from a plethora of different vendors.
Need networking? No problem. Dell can offer you a networking partnership with either Brocade, Juniper, or even its good friend Cisco, because as Asthana kept reminding people, "The word 'choice' is very important."
Customers, he said, "like the idea of infrastructure that's converged, because it makes their life easier. They don't like the idea of having all the hardware coming from one vendor."
"We say: 'Hey, we've taken a number of components and made sure they work well together. If you want to buy them as a unit you can by pressing one button. But you don't have to. You can add in other components."
"We don't restrict you to buying everything from Dell," Asthana repeated.
And if all that has converted you, you'll be happy to know Dell reckons its first BRC should tip up in the US and Canada "within a quarter," following in other countries soon after.
