by Sonia St. Charles, CEO and Founder, Davenport Group — February 22, 2011
Watch us grow! Dell’s acquisition of Compellent is now final and the engines are revving on multiple fronts for accelerated growth. Consolidation in the storage sector means rapid expansion of the Compellent product offering via the enhanced marketing and distribution capabilities available through Dell. Growth of Dell’s market share in the storage sector will also occur since the Compellent offering is a natural fit for the enterprise space. My company, Davenport Group, is also expecting to grow as a result of this merger. We have been partners with both Dell and Compellent since 2003 and offer just two storage solutions to our clients, EqualLogic and Compellent. This merger will combine the best of both worlds for our clients, the remarkable innovation and support of Compellent and the maturity, resources, and breadth, that is Dell.
From a business perspective, Dell should see significant growth of their market share in the storage sector from adding Compellent to their offering. The flexibility, power, and scalability of Compellent now provides Dell with a flagship storage product to further penetrate the data center. Compellent’s Storage Center is a perfect fit for the upper mid-market all the way to the enterprise space. Enterprise shops are where the real value of the Compellent product set quickly becomes obvious. As clients deal with hundreds of terabytes of data, Compellent’s ability to gain control at the block level provides the edge that IT professionals are seeking. Compellent’s Storage Center provides end-users the ability to gain control over their data, reduce the complexity, and truly manage their costs. The architecture is a masterful design that delivers the lowest cost per allocated terabyte while being extremely flexible. One of our clients called it “the Lego building blocks of storage,” which may not be the next marketing tagline but it certainly conveys the concept. Compellent’s core value speaks to the demanding needs in every data center, and Dell has the resources and commitment to ensure that Compellent’s innovation continues and that Copilot services only gets better.
Davenport Group has been evangelizing the message of Compellent for 7-plus years. Often we encounter very talented IT professionals who, after a whiteboard session with a member of our team say, “You can’t do that!” Our response is always the same, “Let me show you.” Once the underlying magic of Compellent is properly conveyed, the IT professional is hooked. Davenport Group has prospered on our ability to convey the Compellent message and that was back when people said, “Compellent who?” Now with Dell’s resources and their commitment to the channel, we expect Storage Center to become the biggest selling SAN of all time. It is a bold claim but once people understand Compellent’s capabilities, the growth will occur. Look out world, here comes Compellent!