Dell plans to spend around $1B this year to build 10 data centers so that it can join the cloud services bandwagon. This year large, enterprise IT vendors are moving to develop cloud services that they can offer to their target markets.
Dell will start producing new products such as pre-sized, validated systems that will allow customers to make their own in-house private cloud. Analysts predict that Dell is eyeing small to mid-sized customers. Dell will provide virtual desktops and hosting services for its customers. It also has Infrastructure as a Service and other services that can help the customers manage their environment.
IBM is another company that wants to bring in more customers into its cloud but it is targeting large enterprises by offering support for SAP that Ric Telford, IBM vice president of cloud services, stated as the true cloud environment.
SAP is the first ERP systems that IBM will offer as part of its cloud services. Telford observed that most customers still keep a portion of their workload in their own data centers. This is one of the reasons why IBM designed cloud models that can incorporate services running in a customer data center as well as in the cloud.
