Compellent Is A Good Buy: Dell Partners

Dell on Monday signed a definitive agreement to acquire Compellent, a move that would give it an enterprise-class storage offering and a built-in channel to sell it. Now, Dell will resell Compellent's storage products in addition to its existing sales of EMC and Dell PowerVault products.

The vendor also has entered into a reseller agreement with Compellent that will bring Compellent's storage technology to Dell's direct and indirect sales channels.

Dell has been bolstering its mid-market business, and earlier during the current fiscal created an SMB sales motion. The Compellent story is around replication and virtualization, and it complements Dell’s EquaLogic “clustering” capabilities. Moreover, Compellent storage centre integrates well with VMware, Microsoft and Citrix in creating and moving virtual storage partitions. This acquisition is important for Dell as it goes about fortifying enterprise NAS, cloud and data duplication areas,” said TR Madan Mohan, Partner, Browne and Mohan.

Partners said that Compellent would enable them to sell virtual storage products at the entry level. According to Ashutosh S Karkhanis, Director of Askari Infotech, a Pune-based Dell storage partner, “Compellent products are aimed mainly toward the mid-range to lower range. This will be an additional product in our kitty of Dell offerings. For emerging market such as India, this tie-up is most welcome.”

According to Karkhanis, the Compellent products would compete more with the products from vendors such as Buffalo and Seagate—essentially where customers are looking for back-up options.

Munner Ahamed, Director of Digital Track, a Chennai-based Dell storage partner agreed. “Dell by EMC is fit for the enterprise, where EMC is a larger brand. In fact, in the Dell-EMC OEM partnership, EMC contributes 90 percent of the business, and Dell cannot afford to lose those customers.”

Offering a contrary view Ahamed said that by bidding for companies such as Compellent, Dell is aiming to create its own niche. “This may impact the EMC business to an extent, but as Dell storage partners, we would be able to focus on one vendor.”

Added Karkhanis, “As far as India goes, Compellent is a fair fit. Its technology is different to what big vendors provide. It fits in $300 to $400 category for storage. Also, considering that Compellent does not have any presence in India, if Dell positions the products right, it would be a good buy here. The products are fairly attractive in the entry level to the mid level for the SMB and the SMEs.”

Added Brad Anderson, Senior Vice President of Dell’s Enterprise Product Group, “Compellent will give Dell new ease-of-use and automated tiering capabilities to help customers increase their storage functionality and reduce storage costs.”