Todd Biske: Outside the Box

Full disclosure: I’m attending Oracle OpenWorld courtesy of Oracle.

Michael Dell started by presenting some facts: $1.2 trillion dollars spent annually on IT infrastructure. $400 billion on hardware/software, $800 billion on labor and services. The dilemma is that we spend 70% on keeping the lights on, and only 30% on innovation. The desire is to flip that balance (same message that Ann Livermore of HP delivered yesterday). Dell is making a commitment to taking $200 billion out of the $1.2 trillion spend by enabling the efficient enterprise through: standardization, simplification, and automation.

On standardization, Michael discussed the role of x86 hardware and that today, 90% of all business applications are running on x86 hardware. According to Dell’s calculations, databases run up to 200% better on x86 systems than on proprietary hardware. Oracle and Dell are committed to making the technology work harder, not the user.

Moving on to simplification… the theme is pragmatic consolidation. He talked about Dell’s tiered storage capabilities, including iSCSI, solid state disks, and 10 gigabit ethernet. Similar to the opening keynote, he stated that 20x performance gains are possible with solid state storage technology. He then moved onto virtualization, giving examples of 20:1 server consolidation, 50% operational savings, and 1/3 of IT resources freed up for other efforts.