Scenes From Dell's Future Of Computing Road Show

Dell hosted IT managers and VARs at Pier 60 in Chelsea Piers in New York City last week.

Attendees got to hear Dell's strategy as mobility, storage needs and data center energy consumption become bigger issues for IT professionals.

"Our answer is simplify IT," said Erik Dithmer, Dell's vice president of sales.

Attendees learned what they could use to simplify IT systems at Dell's Future of Computing Expo, where vendors got to display their latest and greatest.

In addition to Dell and its EMC and EqualLogic product lines, attendees could check out what was on offer from vendors like Microsoft, APC, Targus and Intel.

Dell had its Optiplex, Latitude and Precision PC lines on display for attendees to check out, as well as its printer product set.



Here, attendees talk with Dell employees about the latest additions to the laptop and desktop PC product lines.

Dell's Optiplex desktop PCs mug for the camera.

While notebook PCs are growing fast and make up about 55 percent of the corporate market, according to Dell, 45 percent of the PCs sold are still desktops.

Here attendees check out a display on the power consumption of Dell's blade servers.

Incorporating blades and virtualization technologies like VMWare's software can help cut data power consumption, Dithmer told attendees during his keynote.

If left unchecked, data center power consumption in 2010 will have increased 76 percent over power consumption in 2005, he said.

Dell's PowerEdge 2970 blade server with its top off gives attendees a chance to see what's inside.

Intel's business development manager Deborah Hershey was on hand to show attendees how Intel's latest chips were more efficient and used less power than its previous products.

Here, Intel's three chips can be seen processing an application. The yellow line (in the picture upper right)represents its older model, which runs slower and uses more power than its latest and greatest.

VARs and IT pros also got a look at EqualLogic's iSCSI storage arrays at The Future of Computing.

Dell acquired the storage vendor last year.

Vendor Logitech had its wireless mice and keyboards on display for IT pros and VARs to test out.

Here two attendees test out a wireless keyboard.

Dell did have a booth for its Partner Direct program at the Expo, although few appeared to visit and apparently Dell didn't actually staff it full time.

Dell did, however, host a session educating resellers that attended the event on its Partner Direct Program in between one on systems management and another on storage.

The session was attended by a dozen area resellers, a handful of whom are already registered partners.

"We're certainly trying to build trust in the channel," said Brian O'Leary, major accounts manager, solution provider direct, for Dell.