Or maybe it is just a really advanced technology
Dell has just been anointed a “leader” in mid-range enterprise storage. By Gartner!
Gartner’s Magic Quadrant
Companies are just as insecure and twitchy as people are, especially public traded ones. Dell’s been on a downward roll for some time under Kevin Rollins, who just got booted out – after earning several hundred million on his options – in favor of returning Michael Dell to the helm. So some good news from Gartner Group is certainly worth promoting. Gartner’s very profitable Magic Quadrant business measures companies on “Completeness of Vision” and “Ability to Execute”. So if you are big and sell a wide range of products and hire Gartner to do your “vision” work, you’re in clover.
“DELL POSITIONED IN LEADERS QUADRANT FOR MIDRANGE ENTERPRISE DISK ARRAYS
Leading Analyst Firm’s Evaluation Based on Completeness of Vision, Ability to Execute”
Note the qualifiers there: completeness of vision; ability to execute. You don’t actually have to do anything to win this award.
You are big, therefore you must be a leader
Gartner is quoted defining these capabilities as
According to Gartner, “A midrange enterprise disk array vendor in the Leaders Quadrant has the market share, credibility and marketing and sales capabilities needed to drive the acceptance of new technologies. It demonstrates understanding of market needs, is an innovator and thought leader, and has well-articulated plans that customers and prospects can use in designing their storage infrastructures and strategies.â€
Gartner’s “ability to execute†evaluation criteria include a vendor’s product, services, overall viability, market responsiveness, sales execution, pricing and customer experience. Its “completeness of vision†criteria evaluate market understanding, marketing and sales strategy, product strategy, business model, innovation and geographic strategy.
Dell’s been taking it is the chops lately
And for good reason. They turned themselves into the Wal-Mart of the computer industry through low prices (good) and mediocre design (bad). Then Apple and HP come along with better looking products at the mid-range and the white-box folks come along with even cheaper products at the low-end and kicked the stuffings out of Dell. Then Dell proceeded to trash its good reputation for phone support with a lame outsourcing effort to India: spend 40 minutes on the phone with “Darren” and then get told to re-install Windows.
Leader, or all elbows at the trough?
Dell has done some good things with storage over the years. Their deal with EMC has sold a lot of reasonably solid gear to smaller businesses. They are pushing iSCSI, which makes all kinds of sense for the mid-range and below. Theoretically they’ve done something cool with Microsoft, but darned if I can find it on their Byzantine website. So they are in there pitching, but does that make them a “leader” or just another large company in the storage business trying grab more market share?
The StorageMojo take
I don’t consider Dell a thought leader in anything, least of all storage. They are a traditional, stack-’em-high, sell-’em-cheap high-volume vendor. They spend almost nothing on R&D, leaving that to partners. I believe they work hard to make sure the products are reliable and they clearly want to improve their service capability, which are good things. They have a fine business model, but to call it “leadership” is to pervert the meaning of the word.
Yet in this time of turmoil, Dell’s marketing folks should take what pleasure they can in the Gartner kudos. Customers though, shouldn’t spend more than a moment thinking about Gartner’s pointless quadrant.
Comments welcome, as always.
customers shouldn’t waste ANY time with ANY thing that Gartner says: hard to imagine a more useless organisation…
Robin,
Its interesting that they can actually get repeat business when it can take up to two weeks to deliver a spare parts (from Malaysia) to fix my Dell laptop …. cheaper to buy a new one.
I guess it is mostly ‘third party’ support… at minimum cost, driven by the need for better corporate margin.
How much ‘extra’ margin can they derive by reselling EMC ?.
Such ‘double markup’ situation is already a bad concept & can’t last forever without greater added value.
Reselling products seems to be a common concept e.g. SUN, IBM, HP … but at least they strive to add value & have the benefit of higher margin support income. What opportunity is there for added value to EMC manufactured products in order to be able to differentiate from EMC.?
Yes… not much on storage R&D.
It does not fit Dell business model, built around the PC with little R&D supported by low cost labor.
However, there is no ‘white box’ model for storage… as yet. There are no ‘controller’ reference designs or a ‘standardized’ RAID firmware stack…. so they will need to acquire some IP (it takes too long to develop & prove).
They have learned with EMC but need to change … . build or acquire support infrastructure, acquire IP to control & to differentiate their storage products.
Does this mean parting with EMC… I think yes.
Noons,
Gartner used to serve the purpose, and may still, of acting as an IT technology validator. In Geoffrey Moore’s “Inside the Tornado” he discusses the herd mentality of the IT mainstream. I surmise that Gartner has been a clearing house for gathering and disseminating experiences that lead to the “stampede”.
Richard,
I couldn’t agree more. Dell does provide a low-cost channel for products that EMC would be hard-pressed to duplicate, especially given their expensive direct sales force. I’ve commented on white box storage and distribution issues in several posts, most notably EMC, Dell: Dantz with the one who brung ya, Intel Punts Storage? and the optimistic White Box Arrays Are Here. w00t!.
Time will tell whether lightning can strike Michael Dell twice. He correctly saw the commoditization of the PC and the pricing benefits of the direct model and rode them hard, creating the most successful hardware company of the 1990’s (EMC was second). The problem now is, I think, much more complex. The PC market is fragmenting, with huge opportunities breaking off from the mainstream: smart phones; home entertainment; mobile productivity; PC-based scale out. Can Dell tease out these opportunities and make the right moves to get Dell major market share?
Given Dell’s design-challenged culture I suspect they need to stay with IT to succeed. It will be interesting to watch.
Robin