Dell Continues Cloud Push, Partners With China-Based Infobird

Through the pairing, Dell and Infobird will jointly provide cloud computing-based enterprise-level Internet communications platform services to companies. The partnership will leverage Dell's small- and medium-enterprise footprint and offer customers a cloud service platform from Infobird.

According to a statement from both companies, Infobird will provide Qitongbao, its contact center-focused cloud management platform, to Dell's existing enterprise clients through Dell. Dell with then be able to offer customers a new value proposition using Infobird's platform, essentially making Dell a service provider.

Infobird's Qitongbao enables companies to manage contact center operations, customers, sales and conversion rates in the cloud while also monitoring and managing quality of service and effectiveness in realtime.

With computer sales continuing to fall, Dell is looking to make up ground in other areas and has started to transform itself more into a services company. Cloud computing has been identified as one of Dell's three biggest focus areas for the next 10 to 20 years.

Dell's first foray into cloud computing came in October when the computer giant paired up with Salesforce.com to offer cloud-based CRM for SMB customers, a move that brings an enterprise-class offering to small-business customers starting at $9 per user, per month.

Like the Salesforce.com partnership, Dell's Infobird alliance is a move to deliver enterprise-class, cloud-based solutions to businesses traditionally unable to afford such technologies.

The Salesforce.com partnership followed Dell revealing just months before that it is eyeing the cloud to break away from the shackles of being seen as just a computer maker, and instead is morphing into a computer maker that offers the software and services that help power the cloud.

Along with the Infobird and Salesforce.com partnerships, Dell has also continued to advance its virtualization play by releasing several new virtualization hardware products in 2009. Dell also unveiled a host of virtualization services available for solution providers to take to customers last year as a building block to a broader cloud strategy.