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Dell, in keeping with plans to emphasize its transition to a provider of enterprise solutions, has quietly changed the name of its Dell Storage Forum to Dell Enterprise Forum.
The Dell Storage Forum, formerly known as Compellent C-Drive before Dell in 2011 acquired Compellent, brings together solution providers and customers in a channel-focused event.
The change, first unveiled in a February Dell blog post, comes at a time when Dell is struggling to change its industry-wide perception as a PC vendor to a provider of full end-to-end enterprise solutions.
[Related: Who's Who: The Key Stakeholders In Dell's $24.4B Deal To Go Private]
That struggle has led Dell to move to go private in a $24-billion-plus leveraged buyout.
That charge has been led by Dell CEO Michael Dell, who last year famously declared his company an "end-to-end solutions" company.
Changing the name of Dell's annual combined partner-customer event from Dell Storage Forum to Dell Enterprise Forum is in line with the company's plan to emphasize how diversified Dell's business has become, said Scott Horst, executive director for Dell storage marketing.
The name change stems from a couple of reasons, Horst said.
"We've gotten a lot of requests for more content," he said. "Customers are looking at their data centers and seeing a lot going on. And for Dell, the emphasis is on end-to-end solutions. With our converged infrastructure and Active System offerings, we're getting more and more platforms. And customers want to go deeper on them."
Horst, who came to Dell via that company's acquisition of Compellent, has headed the annual partner-customer event since it was formed as Compellent C-Drive in 2007.
The event was much smaller back then, Horst said. It started out with about 150 attendees, but grew to about 1,200 attendees last year split almost evenly between partners and customers, he said.
It was also a much smaller event under Compellent. The solution provider party in 2009 was held in a bowling alley. "We're too big for bowling alleys now," he said.
NEXT: Dell Enterprise Forum A Break From The Past
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