Dell’s New Midrange Storage ‘Beta’ Receiving ‘Very Positive’ Feedback

Dell Technologies’ new container-based midrange storage line is already generating “very positive” feedback from customers who have tried the product set to be released “very soon,” CEO Michael Dell in an interview with CRN.

“It’s a very important release to us,” said Dell. “We haven’t said too much about what’s coming, except to say we’re super excited about it. We’ve got beta units out there. The feedback from customers has been very positive. You’ll hear more about it very soon.”

The Round Rock, Texas-based worldwide leader in storage first announced the new midrange storage line in late 2018 with the goal of launching products by the end of its fiscal year 2020, which ends Feb. 3. Dell confirmed the new storage line will be released by the end of its fiscal year.

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Although exact details around the storage solution has been limited, Dell Technologies Vice Chairman Jeff Clarke previously described it as a microservice, container-based architecture.

"It is going to be a modern file system and modern software stack – better described as, it's going to be a microservice-based architecture and a container-based architecture," said Clarke, in an interview with CRN in late 2018. "Once we get that foundation in, my ability to iterate new features and new capability is going to be absolutely faster than we've ever done. … [It’s] going to be a platform for us to go from NVMe to NVMe over fabric to storage-class memory to memory persistent architecture over time.”

Robert Keblusek, chief technology officer for fast-growing Illinois-based solution provider Sentinel Technologies, said Dell bringing enterprise-class storage capabilities to the midmarket will create new opportunities for channel partners to modernize customers’ infrastructure.

“We’re seeing a lot of people looking to modernize traditional shared storage. When we look at modern platforms, NMVe has become pretty popular,” Keblusek said. “But when you’re talking about doing things like Fabric over Ethernet and starting to create an opportunity for customers to build data center services on-demand in a modernize platform – probably like what’s behind the curtain of the AWS cloud and Azure cloud – those things can be very appealing to really modernize storage.”

The infrastructure giant reported storage sales up 7 percent year over year, reaching $4.1 billion for its third fiscal quarter.

“Our storage business grew seven percent last quarter,” said Dell. “We were No. 1 in every single category. We’re going to continue the innovation cycle across all aspects of storage. When you compare our growth rate to the growth rate of our competitors, it’s pretty clear that we’re continuing to win and lead that sector.”

Dell said while competitors are seeing storage sales drop, Dell Technologies continues to gain market share.

“Our storage business grew seven percent. When you look at most of our competitors, they were down -- minus-10 percent, minus-15 percent -- we’re clearly gaining share in storage. We’re already bigger than No. 2, No. 3 and No.4, combined,” Dell said.