Dell's DCS unit thrives as recession deepens

THE ECONOMIC CRISIS is doing wonders for Dell's Data Center Solutions (DCS) unit, according to its market development manager, Todd Brannon, who claims demand for Internet consumption is actually increasing despite - and perhaps thanks to - the economic meltdown.

Dell's DCS division has proved a real money maker for the firm, specialising in banging together 'one-of-a-kind' hardware platforms for major search engines and web 2.0 clients. In fact, after just two years, the unit can already boast having developed more than 19 different custom systems for its well-to-do clients, which include firms like Facebook.

"Why do people rob banks? Because it's where the money is," Brannon told the INQ, explaining why servers and data centres were Dell's new focus.

Brannon noted that in September 2008 alone, there were six billion photos on Facebook and 250,000 requests per second to serve up those photos. A further half billion photos are apparently uploaded every month, and with 500,000 people a day getting online for the very first time, there is a huge surge in demand for the 'plumbing' that powers the connected web, Brannon told us. Emerging markets are also driving that growth, he said.

The recession is also having a positive effect on Dell's server business, with Brannon quipping "More people out of work means more people busy throwing sheep on Facebook".

Brannon says his team's tailor-made servers don't appeal to just the Facbook, web 2.0 crowd either, with designs made originally for social media companies also starting to sell to commercial computing companies like HPCC, financial firms, oil and gas exploration companies and the big players in the cloud computing business, too.

Brannon claims DCS is seeing a lot of success in China and said "We're providing solutions to people building big clouds," like Vmware and Egenera.

"We see enterprise cloud computing start with private clouds," said Brannon, who added "Everyone is sort of taking what they already have for hardware abstraction and data centre management and are kind of wrapping cloud around it." µ