Thoughts On A Dell Acquisition Of Compellent

The news came out this morning that Dell is in exclusive talks to acquire network storage specialist Compellent for just under $900 million. I will leave it to the real reporters to track the ups and downs of the story; what piques my interest is the value Dell gets from Compellent’s technology and the challenge it poses to the data storage industry.

The Enterprise IT Acquisition Game

Today is the (a?) day of reckoning in the 3Par saga, with Dell widely expected to make a counter-offer higher than HP’s bid. But this mega deal, like the Data Domain war before it, sends a strong signal to the enterprise IT world: It’s open season on data storage companies! But the rising superpowers are also likely looking at networking as an area of expansion. The game is afoot!

Meet the Enterprise IT Superpowers

After years spent focusing on personal technology, businesses are increasingly turning back to the enterprise. The corporate IT market is much more dynamic and competitive, with a few very large “superpower” companies discovering their power to drive purchasing decisions. If a supplier can create an integrated “stack” of hardware and software, they can push product purchases that might otherwise be overlooked or postponed. This is the main reason that enterprise IT acquisitions work so well: Where a small company must fight to sell their product, a large one can hitch it to a much more strategic sale and have it pulled along.

Dell + EqualLogic, Exanet, Ocarina, 3Par = What?

The storage industry got a lot more competitive this morning, as Dell announced plans to buy 3Par. This is the latest round in a well-established race for the enterprise storage dollar, challenging superpower (and Dell partner) EMC in the high-end SAN space. What does this acquisition say about the industry as a whole? Where are we headed?

Podcast 1: Gestalt IT Tech Field Day Overview

Learn more about the Gestalt IT Tech Field Day from the sponsors, delegates, and friends from our November, 2009 event. Includes interviews with John Troyer, Sunshine Mugrabi, Craig Nunes, Sean Derrington, Nigel Poulton, and more!

Considering Ocarina Networks Optimized Data For Virtual Environments

Ocarina Networks presented to us during the Day 2 morning session of the GestaltIT Tech Field Day. Their presentation was a deep dive into storage compression and optimization. If you read my Ideas About Presenting To Engineers from earlier this week, then you’ll know what I mean when I say that Ocarina had “black magic” [...]

The Five Rules of Tech Field Day Club

The GestaltIT Tech Field Day event just wrapped up and it was a very interesting event. Stephen Foskett and Claire Chaplais did a phenomenal job at keeping the wheels on the bus. I realized that the attendees were just as critical as making the event a success above and beyond the vendors. [...]

GestaltIT Tech Field Day – Day 2: Ocarina, Nirvanix and Data Robotics

Day 2 of the Tech Field Day kicked off with a trip to Ocarina Networks. For those who don’t know (a) Ocarina offer a “data reduction” appliance (b) an ocarina is a small oval, china flute. I say data reduction as the Ocarina appliance uses a variety of methods for reducing data size, including [...]

What a Tech Field Day!

Tech Field Day Delegates

Thanks to everyone, the Gestalt IT Tech Field Day was an amazing success. In fact, we were so pleased with it that we are already planning Tech Field Day 2!

Do You Know Ocarina?

Oh, Carina, what do you think of Ocarina? Do you know Ocarina? Answer the following quiz and you’ll be entered to win a prize package, including the new 16 GB Apple iPod Nano with video!