compellent

Think of Dell as a storage portfolio player

Last year, Dell went on a storage buying spree. Dell took in Exanet for clustered, multiplatform NAS, Ocarina Networks for extensible, cross platform data compression and deduplication, capped-off with an announced agreement to acquire Compellent's virtualized storage arrays and Fluid Data technology, which closed last month. All tallied, I estimate Dell spent nearly $1 billion last year to flesh-out its storage portfolio, which also includes its EqualLogic virtualized storage arrays and PowerVault systems.

Dell storage executives now believe they have the goods to compete head-on with the major storage players (including EMC) in the following market segments:

Virtualized disk … Read more

Dell acquires Compellent for $960 million

Dell finally got its storage acquisition. On Monday, Dell said it is officially buying Compellent Technologies in a deal valued at $960 million, or $27.75 a share.

According to Dell, the Compellent acquisition will allow it to better focus on data management, thin provisioning and storage for cloud computing shops.

After a failed bid to acquire 3Par--Dell lost out to Hewlett-Packard--the company needed to do something to bolster its storage line-up and remain a top 5 player. EMC is the storage leader and then the field is bunched with the likes of HP, NetApp, and IBM. Dell was … Read more

Last of the storage independents

A recent frenzy of storage acquisitions--with 3PAR going to HP, Isilon to EMC, and now Compellent to Dell--brings storage full-circle. Your next enterprise storage purchase? Almost guaranteed to be from a leviathan.

One of the once-amazing changes in the computer business was the birth of independent storage vendors. For decades there've been a few odd after-market and third-party storage vendors. But they were mere pilot fish congregating around the truly big, important swimmers: systems vendors. When you bought storage, it generally came from the same company that made your computer. That was the natural order.

But in the 1990s, … Read more

Dell working to capture Compellent

Dell, which lost a bid to acquire 3Par to Hewlett-Packard earlier this year, is in advanced talks to purchase Compellent Technologies, a key storage player.

The two companies said in a statement yesterday they are in "advanced discussions regarding a possible business combination involving the two companies."

Dell is talking about $27.50 in cash per share of Compellent but may feel compelled to boost that figure. Dell needs to bolster its storage business and is running out of acquisition targets. Dell is currently No. 5 in storage.

A report from Compellent C-Drive

Compellent's C-Drive event last week drew about 300 storage administrators and IT generalists to downtown Minneapolis one week before EMC World. While that's small show by EMCWorld standards, it was a big event for Compellent customers.

I have yet to meet a more evangelistic group of storage users. Compellent's architecture creates a unique storage management environment. While the architecture supports a variety of RAID levels and RAID-based array configurations, one has to leave pre-conceived notions regarding management and functioning of traditional RAID arrays at the door. These people behave as if they had seen the light and … Read more