Steve Denegri, formerly the star storage analyst at Morgan Keegan, now RBC Capital Markets, sent StorageMojo.com this comment on the recent Dell financial shortfall:

My thoughts on the Dell shortage as far as the enterprise segment goes: Dell customers who are Clariion users likely held off purchasing new storage these last few months, since one of the worst-kept secrets in the industry was the new 4 Gb/s upgrade announced by EMC last Monday. In fact, this upgrade was well known by customers at EMC World the last week of April.

Another factor impacting Dell at the enterprise level is the delayed rollout of the next-gen Bensley processor family by Intel, which impacted the timing of new server offerings by Dell. It’s still not fully clear that Intel will deliver on Woodcrest and Blackford in the current fiscal quarter for Dell, even though Intel committed to a May rollout at their semi-annual Developer Forum in March. Provided Intel delivers as promised this quarter the way EMC did, Dell should achieve a modest rebound in their enterprise business in the July period.

So Dell is still a lean, mean, money-spinnin’ machine. They just need some help from their friends.