Combined Dell EMC Shows Off Its Enterprise IT Prowess

Now the world’s largest vendor of enterprise IT solutions with the broadest portfolio, Dell EMC showcased some of its products and technologies.

“Let the Transformation Begin” was the theme for the show, and it had multiple meanings, referring not only to the transformation of a bigger, bulkier, more capable EMC-enabled Dell, but also the transformation of organizations from legacy businesses to digital business. The new Dell wants to help companies through that transformation.

The combination of Dell and EMC made the merged company the largest vendor in the fast-growing hyperconverged infrastructure space. By integrating Dell’s PowerEdge servers into the VxRail appliances from VMware, Dell EMC (the name of the company’s enterprise IT business) can offer more configurations, bring hyperconverged benefits to smaller environments and leverage a vast supply chain for its customers.

Dell also bulked up the larger VxRack systems with PowerEdge systems and new configurations, including an all-flash offering.

At the show, Dell EMC officials announced an all-flash offering within its Isilon network-attached storage (NAS) product lineup aimed at unstructured data. It can scale to 92.4PB per cluster and runs the OneFS storage OS.

Dell EMC introduced Elastic Storage Cloud 3.0, which will now run on Dell’s PowerEdge servers, including the DSS 7000 and R730xd.

The company released a software-defined version of Data Domain to enable the data protection and backup capabilities to run on PowerEdge servers and with VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V. In the photo, a Data Domain system is on the left; on the right is VPLEX.

PCs didn’t have a big presence at the show—company executives strongly hinted that new systems were coming at the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show in January. However, they were on display on the show floor, including this Latitude 7370 business laptop.

Dell also showed off the various displays it has on sale, including the P417Q, a 43-inch Ultra HD multi-client monitor that can display images in HD from up to four sources.

In the client technology area on the show floor, Dell showed off technology specific to particular verticals. For example, there was a monitor and keyboard hooked up to a Dell Rugged 12 tablet and designed for harsh environments. The MR2416 monitor was shown running with water pouring over it and the keyboard under water.

Dell is pushing aggressively into emerging markets, including virtual reality. At the show, the company’s Alienware division used an urban assault vehicle to show off its VR ware, including its refreshed AW 15 and AW 17 gaming notebooks.

Alienware also was showing off other VR capabilities, including enabling attendees to don a VR headset and grab handles to use Google’s Tilt Brush applications to paint in 3D in a virtual world.

A VR headset also was used to let attendees play a racing game in a virtual environment.

The internet of things is another area that Dell is quickly moving into. At the show, V5 Systems displayed an outdoor security camera platform that not only includes the camera, but it also holds such components as batteries and analytics capabilities. It also can be powered by the sun—two solar panels are above it, and those panels also can power the Dell Gateway that’s right underneath.

Also on display was a smart soda vending machine, which can help customers choose the drink they’re looking for and alert vendors when the machine is running low on product.

TopGolf, which uses technologies from Dell and other vendors in the smart golf business, was at the show, letting attendees work on their golf game in the comfort of the show floor.

Dell broadcast live from the show floor, conducting interviews with company executives and others at the conference that could be watched live on the Dell EMC World website.

Synnex, a business process services company, invited attendees to have their picture taken with “Donald Trump” and “Hillary Clinton,” which was particularly appropriate given that the first full day of Dell EMC World came on the same day that the actual candidates took swings at each other in their last presidential debate.