On the call, two of Dell’s channel marketing managers held up the company’s October 2011 campaign, “Enabling the Evolving Mobile Workforce,” as an example of the sorts of demand-generation materials its partners will be able to leverage. They include customizable PowerPoint presentations, co-brandable marketing messaging materials such as print advertisements, e-mail campaign messages and Web banner ads, and some one-page leave-behinds (which can again be cobranded). You can download the assets from the company’s Campaign Builder site (but I can’t give you the link because I am not a partner and therefore am blocked).

“Our big goal is to make it easier for them to do business with the marketing team,” said Nikkia Despertt, channel marketing manager for enduser computing with Dell.

In the next phase, Dell plans to make more digital assets available. An example is the Mobile Workforce Digital Module, which will include code that can be directly embedded into a partner Web site. The company also is planning to introduce marketing videos, Despertt said.

The Dell marketing team wouldn’t disclose how much more it plans to spend on marketing enablement in 2012 than in the past.

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That philosophy centers on Dell’s new Fresh Air technology. The servers, storage, networking and power infrastructure products that have been validated under this approach are able to operate at higher ambient temperatures and wider humidity ranges than one would typically associate with enterprise IT equipment. Specifically, the technologies are “robust” enough to tolerate up to 900 hours of operation at up to 104 degrees Fahrenheit each year and up to 90 hours at 113 degrees Fahrenheit. Usually the limit is considered to be 95 degrees Fahrenheit. The allowable humidity range for the equipment is 5 percent to 90 percent.

That means, essentially, that if you use this type of Dell equipment you wouldn’t need to run the chillers as long during certain parts of the year. I’m sure this philosophy is being tested to the extreme right now in Texas, where it has been brutally brutally hot and dry.

In any event, I was invited to a brief phone call this week about this philosophy — although I already knew about it by virtue of all the writing I do for my GreenTech Pastures blog.

The Dell team is seeking to make sure that all of its server-certified solution providers are aware of the approach, as it could be a point of differentiation in selling total data center solutions, said Rich Percaccio, enterprise marketing manager, global commercial channel, Dell. How so? Dell figures that focusing on how to help a company use less — and even no — chiller technology can result in operational savings of up to $100,000 per megawatt of IT.

“Our channel partners could really make this a point of differentiation. We want our channel partners to be able to bring this message strongly,” Percaccio said during a briefing. There isn’t a special certification for Fresh Air, but over time the philosophy will be incorporated more deeply into the existing credential process.

There is also something else to keep in mind: If a company already has invested in chiller technology, this isn’t a message that is likely to have impact. Dell is encouraging solution providers to focus their evangelism on greenfield IT infrastructure opportunities. One other thing to note, though, on this front: this conversation won’t necessary work with the IT department alone at customer prospects, you’ll need to get the facilities team involve in order for the total cost of ownership implications will resonate.

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On yesterday’s Oracle fourth quarter  earnings call, there was the usual happy talk about fat margins and great execution. The by-now-expected great software license sales numbers, we all know the drill. 

But the hardware business has not been kind to Oracle and Wall Street is finally taking notice.  

Oracle stock was down nearly 3.57% Friday to $31.30 per share as I type these words. Pundits attribute that to growing anxiety around Oracle’s ability to execute its high-margin hardware push even as it guts Sun’s bread-and-butter commodity hardware lineup. And there is growing irritation among Oracle/Sun shops over the vendor’s support and maintenance policies.

For the quarter, in which Oracle’s direct team put its patented year-end  discount push on Exadata systems, actual sales of hardware systems fell 6% to $1.2 billion.  Oracle co-president Safra Catz said she expects hardware growth to come in between -5% to +5% next year–not including support revenue. Note to Oracle: That is not exactly hitting the cover off the ball.

But back to support. That support and maintenance money is really what this game is all about. If Oracle can persuade companies to move their database workloads to Exadata and their middleware/Java/applications load to Exalogic, it can lock in all of those software AND hardware support loads into very, very lucrative long-term support contracts. And that, is where the real money is.

On the call, the Other Oracle Co-president (OOC for short) Mark Hurd referred to the importance of “attach rates” of software, support and service to Oracle hardware. (For more on the earnings call check out Eye On Oracle.)

The problem for Oracle is customers listened to their savvy VAR advisors or otherwise figured out that these attach-rates equate to vendor lock-in and all the unpleasantness that entails.  

Catz stressed that hardware margins–at least on the stuff Oracle does sell–are a remarkable 56%. The reason? Oracle no longer sells much hardware at a loss or much third-party hardware. Instead,  it “is focused on value-added systems,” aka the Exadata and Exalogic data center appliances, she reminded analysts.

But even figuring in those caveats, the overall hardware numbers were not good. When Oracle closed its acquisition of Sun Microsystems in January 2010, channel sources warned  that digesting a hardware company would be a lot harder than integrating software companies. They have been proven right.

If you listen very hard, you may hear Sun hardware resellers laughing–or they would be if it wasn’t so painful to watch their hardware sale and services business disappear.

Oracle disenfranchised die-hard Sun channel players as it incorporated Sun by taking all support and maintenance revenue direct. Many Sun-only hardware VARs went out of business altogether or reconstituted themselves with new vendor alliances. Some retained their Sun/Oracle ties but quietly shifted more business to Hewlett-Packard, IBM or even (gasp!) Dell hardware.

Many Sun/Oracle shops remain supremely unhappy about what they call Oracle’s scorched-earth support policies. Several started moving hardware sales to rivals last year. Some may kick the tires of Exadata and Exalogic, but I’d bet very few are inclined to commit more of their data center dollars to a company they view as draconian. CEOs and CIOs at those companies must love it when Oracle execs refer to software/hardware maintenance and support as “Oracle’s birthright.”

And they may well disagree that that is the case.

Let us know what you think about the story; email Barbara Darrow, Senior News Director at bdarrow@techtarget.com.

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What remains to be seen is if the big–and even after discounts they are big– hardware deals will make up for the rank-and-file Sun server customers deserting the company. Give Oracle credit though. CEO Larry Ellison has said for a year and a half now that he doesn’t care about commodity hardware and by golly, he’s proved it. There is an off chance that Oracle president and resident ”hardware guy”  Mark Hurd will reemphasize plain-old Sun X86 and Sparc-based servers, but don’t bet the ranch on it.

Still some of these fourth-quarter Exadata deals bear looking into. NetSuite bought Exadata in a move that apparently moved Oracle’s share price.  Here’s some verbiage from NetSuite’s release:

NetSuite “is working with Oracle Corporation to leverage the power of the Oracle Exadata Database Machine for NetSuite’s cloud software solutions. By becoming an Oracle Exadata customer, NetSuite can deliver extreme levels of performance and other benefits to NetSuite customers to power their business growth.”

Wow. Sounds impressive. However, it appears from a May 13 8-K filing that what NetSuite bought was a single quarter-rack Exadata X2-2 HP box. For the record, that’s the smallest Exadata one can buy. The price was $432,100 including $55,000 for annual support and maintenance. 

Given that Ellison owns about half of NetSuite, the deal had to be disclosed. Whether a half-million-dollar sale into company co-owned by the seller’s CEO should boost the seller’s share price is an interesting question.

There was another rumor that Salesforce.com, another company that spun out of Oracle’s orbit, bought a pantload of Exadatas. If true, that would be a blockbuster, given the public thrashing Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff gave Exadata last September.  Benioff, sharing a stage with Michael Dell, noted that Salesforce.com preferred to use lots of reliable, standard Dell servers to run its services and mocked Ellison’s notion that Exalogic (the little brother of Exadata) was really “cloud in a box.”

Asked this week whether Salesforce.com had, in fact, gone X-crazy, Benioff let it fly via email:

“We’re 100% Dell. That’s 100% cheaper. Higher quality, easier, and open. Just like Facebook, Google, et al. is doing. No different. There is no internet service to my knowledge using exadata proprietary mainframes to deliver billions of transactions to customers. Our architecture is based on standard pc architecture. Commodity systems. Our uptime is at http://trust.salesforce.com. Does that help?
Aloha,
Marc”

 

Stay tuned for Oracle’s earnings call June 23, for more information on Exadata/Exalogic momentum.

Let us know what you think about the story; email Barbara Darrow, Senior News Director at bdarrow@techtarget.com.

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Raymond James analyst Brian Alexander explained why a deal like this would make sense for Dell in a note to clients:

“We believe Dell is looking to acquire a networking company given management’s view that owning intellectual property across the data center stack (servers/storage/networking) is strategically important.”

Brocade would come at a price. Last week, the company hit its 52-week high. As of today, Brocade’s market cap stands at $3.36 billion.

More talk about a Dell-Brocade deal here.

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Case in point: Last week, a long-time source called from the Manhattan Apple store. Why? Because his year and a half old HP PC “crapped out.” (I believe that was the technical term used.) The screen was about to go and rather than hassling with HP’s warranty and repair service, this guy–a hedge fund guru and tech follower–sucked what files he could onto a USB stick, and almost on impulse, decided to do something different.

The  57th street store was mobbed with what looked-to-be other business professionals. Not kids, either. In his training session, he said the workstations were packed with other baby boomers, peering through reading glasses at their new laptop screens.

These are the kinds of people whose companies typically provide with a free Dell, HP, Toshiba or Lenovo Windows laptop. And yet, here they were.

“All of that was business lost to HP, lost to Microsoft,” he noted. (To be fair, he did buy Office for the Mac, but still…his will be one of a grwowing number of Windows-free households..) This despite the Windows 7  hype storm.

Now as speculation swirls around Apple’s iCloud announcement, one’s has to wonder–again–why nothing Microsoft (or HP or Dell ) engenders this sort of excitement. When was the last time someone absolutely had to have an HP Pavillion? 

The primary reason to keep buying WIndows–face it–is to stay legal and avoid the piracy police. 

This is not a good thing for Microsoft. Or HP. Or Dell.

Let us know what you think about the story; email Barbara Darrow, Senior News Director at bdarrow@techtarget.com.

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Update:  On Monday morning, Dell finalized its deal to buy Compellent for $960 million or $27.75 per share in cash. As of the end of its third quarter, closing Oct. 31, Dell had just under $13.5 billion in cash on hand.)

Another shoe dropping. Dell and Compellent acknowledged Friday that they’re in M&A talks.

The companies said they’re exclusively talking about a merger valuing Compellent at $27.25 per share in cash.

Now all we have to wait for is Hewlett-Packard to weigh in. I kid! I kid!

Speculation has been rife that Compellent was on the short-list of storage companies remaining to be bought. HP famously outbid Dell for 3Par a few months ago. EMC snatched up Isilon last month. Before snarfing up 3Par, HP bought LeftHand Networks in a move viewed as a knee-jerk reaction to Dell’s earlier buy of EqualLogic.

Had enough?
Let us know what you think about the story; email Barbara Darrow, Senior News Director at bdarrow@techtarget.com, or follow us on twitter.

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ArcSight, which makes security software that monitors computer networks for unusual activity, had been shopping itself around, looking for $42 per share. Its stock was trading for just over $35 on Friday.

If HP closes a deal, it will come on the heels of HP’s hard fought–and pricey–victory wresting 3Par away from archrival Dell.

The HP vs. Dell battle–and the fact that companies can’t earn much on their cash holdings–causes many to expect the M&A activitiy to continue. Since 3Par ended up costing HP $2.1 billion, way more than the company’s valuation before the bidding war, there’s been heightened speculation that other innovative storage and networking companies will be snapped up. Compellent, Isilon, Brocade Communications and other names are mentioned as buyout candidates.

Many thought HP would cool its jets after being slammed for paying too much for 3Par but then Oracle hired former HP CEO Mark Hurd as co-president.  HP’s board is clearly concerned that Hurd will be put in charge of Oracle’s Sun hardware business. News of HP’s interest in ArcSight soon followed that of HP suing Hurd and Oracle.

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For anyone who can remember back that far, Dell’ s initial offer two weeks ago was $18/share or $1.2 billion. Two billion clams: Not bad for a company that has yet to turn a profit.

It will be interesting to see how well (or badly) HP does integrating this latest storage into its already interesting and varied storage lineup.

Dell gets $72 million from 3Par for its trouble.

There’s a lot of talk that HP’s bid is not at all the sort of “disciplined” acquisition the company claimed it will pursue. Many are saying that this is a pyrrhic victory for HP. My storage expert –that would be you Beth–say Dell is a much better fit for 3Par. Dell did a great job integrating EqualLogic while HP has done a much-less-great job with its myriad acquisitions over the past few years.

We’ll see.

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