Success is often defined how quickly a business can deploy new resources, increase efficiency and simplify management. Innovations such as Big Data, cloud, and mobility are making automated hybrid environments key to optimize performance and efficiency. OEMs these days need stable and reliable systems to increase profitability and design competitive solutions. Let me say that changes in the industry are always exciting. They shake things up and, quite frankly, it makes for a healthy competition that leads to better products and improved technologies for everyone.
The Opportunity
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) OEM Solutions has an opportunity to help customers alleviate the uncertainty around the Dell EMC merger which still weighs on their customer’s minds and deliver HPE OEM’s predictability, innovation and partnership qualities across their solutions.
Dell EMC is at a Crossroads
Dell EMC stands at a crossroads, having reached troubling times. At a high level, the merger has made the monolithic company much less flexible. The company is also dealing with a significant amount of debt. At the product level, Dell EMC’s technology is aging, and there is quite a bit of overlap, especially in the company’s hyper-converged offerings. As a result, Dell EMC’s market share is declining, which opens the door for HPE OEM to attack. Here are few points to state the vulnerability of the merger-
- Reverse merger: Dell EMC is considering a reverse merger with VMware to access cash and increase its potential to play down debt. This will inevitably cause disruption and uncertainty for customers.
- Increased bargaining power of partners: This uncertainty means more discounts, and will eventually impact Dell EMC products.
- Reduced investment budgets will limit development: Due to the high amount of front-loaded debt, innovation will be restricted.
- Failed implementation of partner program: Dell EMC is extending program timelines and reducing its requirements - the overall message from EMC partners is that they would like to have pre-merger times back.
- Dell EMC faces attrition of partners: Competitors can take advantage of unhappy partners who are facing uncertainty around its structure and debts.
- At a high level, the merger has made the monolithic company much less flexible
- Dell EMC's technology is aging: There is overlap between products, especially in the company's hyper-converged offerings
According to Gartner Magic Quadrant for General-Purpose Disk Arrays 2017- Managing a disparate collection of Dell EMC storage systems complicates vendor and asset management and adversely affects operational efficiency.
A merger of this magnitude reshuffles the market, and every vendor on the planet is already in attack mode looking to pick off as many customers as possible. There is friction wherever one looks at Dell and EMC. There are too many proprietary charging plugs and codebases that don't fit or don't work together. There are too many national and foreign regulators to satisfy. There are too many overlapping product lines, too many similar jobs, too many salespeople competing with each other and too many redundant solution partners! As they say, let media do the talking, feel free to click on the link and read the original article. What’s Really Happening Inside the Dell/EMC Merger? eWeek, 8 May 2016
HPE OEM Value Proposition and Differentiation
HPE OEM Solutions have attributes that Dell EMC can’t offer –
- Predictive: HPE OEM leverages unique artificial intelligence (AI) for the data center to predict and prevent issues and eliminate the pain of support.
- Cloud-ready: HPE OEM makes it easy to future-proof the IT environment for the cloud, with easy mobility between on-premises solutions and the cloud.
- Timeless: HPE OEM ensures today’s investments are good for the future by offering all-inclusive licensing, guaranteed availability, the flexibility to go anywhere, and much more.
The HPE OEM Solutions program provides OEM customers a “4S Ecosystem”: solutions, supply chain, services and specialists to address these challenges. HPE OEM Solutions enable success with a breadth of compute technologies and processes to match virtually any industry need, ranging from single workload appliances to the latest composable infrastructure.
HPE OEM Solutions – One Vendor, One Integrated Solution
HPE OEM Solutions enable innovative businesses of all types and sizes to harness the incredible power of the industry’s most transformative technology. We utilize our decades of expertise in technology, services, supply chain, and financial innovations to tailor our industry-renowned solutions to customers’ unique requirements.
The Complete and Robust Flash Storage Portfolio
Dell EMC is struggling with massive debt, archaic platforms, and an unclear roadmap moving forward. HPE’s strategy is to take a greater piece of the storage market with an incredibly strong storage portfolio. HPE has the most complete and robust flash storage portfolio including HPE 3PAR, HPE Nimble Storage, and HPE SimpliVity all with integrated data protection. These products deliver distinct performance benefits without compromises, and uniquely converged into simple, unified solutions that work better together across all market segments.
Server Management System
As far as server Management systems are concerned, HPE’s Management tool is Integrated Lights Out (iLO), and Dell EMC’s is iDRAC. They both give remote access similar to a NVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) setup, though with much more comprehensive capabilities. Dell’s iDRAC is no longer uses Java after iDRAC 7, and the web interface is spontaneous and easy to use. However, the console is not ideal. As far as licensing is concerned, iDRAC requires a physical license, which can be bought in the secondary market and prevent being locked in again with the OEM after the end of life (EOL). However, some users have reported issues with iDrac reliability and crashes. On the other hand, HPE’s ILO console is subjectively better as it requires a license key for ILO advanced, which can lock you in with the OEM if your servers go EOL, as you can’t buy them from the used market.
Why HPE OEM
- Lowest risk: HPE OEM Solutions have a proven track record of delivering innovative, future-ready solutions and services. The Dell merger with EMC leaves many unanswered questions including how their overlapping portfolios will be reconciled, what “non-core” business will be sold to reduce debt and how current relationships will survive the merger.
- Converged IT: HPE OEM has invested heavily in converged, hyper-converged and composable infrastructure and offered a variety of solutions. Dell and EMC do offer converged and hyperconverged solutions but there is some overlap, and the solutions rely on partnerships that may not survive the merger.
- Investment protection: HPE OEM offers stable products that customers can deploy in traditional environments and utilize when transitioning to highly virtualized and cloud environments. With the incorporation of Dell and EMC, it is not known which products will move forward, be eliminated or sold.
Catalyst for change
It is highly recommended that Dell EMC customers evaluate their needs, and HPE OEM’s offerings, before committing to new investments with Dell EMC. HPE OEM Solutions has recognized and invested in significant trends in IT and understands the importance of speed, agility, and flexibility. HPE OEM offers compelling hybrid infrastructure solutions that are robust environments for customer’s applications whether they are deployed in traditional, mobile or cloud environments. These secure solutions support both the connectivity needed in the today’s developing mobile, interconnected world and the powerful analytics to support real-time decisions.
Audrey Cox
WW OEM Communications & Brand Awareness
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
