Dell Announces Its First Public Cloud Offering

Today at VMworld Dell announced its first public and hybrid cloud offering, with the availability of the Dell Cloud based on VMware vCloud Datacenter Services. Designed to provide a multi-tenant environment for running virtual systems, the new cloud services from Dell offer enterprise-class, secure, public, private and hybrid clouds.

Dell and VMware will provide Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) choice for customer organizations, hosting and outsourcing firms, system integrators and service providers, offering automation, multi-level security and availability in order to manage on-demand capacity, workload scalability, or as a platform to respond to changing business needs more rapidly.

To address the security concerns that often come with cloud implementations, Dell is touting a multi-layer enterprise security solution through Dell SecureWorks and strategic partnerships with VMware and Trend Micro.

Dell protects the datacenter’s infrastructure through the management and monitoring of network firewalls, web application firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention systems, and vulnerability scanning. Virtual datacenters are also protected with security boundaries allocated to specific organizations. Log monitoring and reporting provides visibility into relevant security controls to help customers demonstrate compliance with industry standards.

Dell Cloud with VMware vCloud Datacenter Services includes several options for customers, including:

• Public – Dell Cloud with VMware vCloud Datacenter Service is an enterprise-class, secure offer of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IAAS) hosted in a secure Dell datacenter. This service provides access to vCPUs, memory, storage networks, IP addresses, firewalls, and catalog capabilities.

• Private – Dell will build private clouds at either our customer’s datacenter or Dell datacenters leveraging VMware offerings including VMware vSphere and VMware vCloud Director as well as Dell’s vStart offering.

• Hybrid – Dell and VMware provide a single source to simplify the management of customers’ physical and VMware vSphere-based virtual data center infrastructure adding flexibility to customer requirements. Utilizing VMware vCloud Connector, the hybrid cloud solution provides management of on- or off-premise private cloud and Dell’s Public cloud offering.

Dell’s cloud offering is based on open standards and interoperable technologies that enable portability of workloads between public and private clouds.

Dell is currently offering the Dell Cloud with VMware vCloud Datacenter Service to select beta customers. The solution will be generally available in the United States in Q4 of this year, with availability for EMEA and Asia/Pacific planned for 2012.

Security Resource: Vulnerability Management Buyer’s Checklist: Key Questions to Ask