Dell continues to simplify IT for customers across EMEA with virtualisation services

Dell recently announced the availability of standards-based virtualisation services and solutions for companies in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) looking to run multiple applications and operating systems on a single server, while reducing costs, maximising resources and increasing IT efficiency.

Virtualisation is a key practice area for Dell's Infrastructure Consulting Services, which helps businesses evaluate, design and optimise their standards-based IT infrastructure.

Integral to the standardised services is Dell's Virtualisation Readiness Assessment (VRA). Virtualised environments enable administrators to quickly move workloads from one virtual workspace to another; easily prioritising business needs while maximising resources and consolidating applications and physical servers.

The VRA provides companies with an effective way to evaluate the impact a virtual infrastructure will have on its data centre.

The VRA assists businesses with the simplification of their IT infrastructure by highlighting how a virtualised environment will improve server management, maximise uptime and streamline deployment enabling the company to simplify and effectively scale operations to meet the present and future demands of the business.

Most importantly, the service indicates potential financial savings that a virtual infrastructure provides to customers. In addition to the VRA, Dell provides customers with a number of other virtualisation services, including 'health checks', infrastructure and migration workshops, as well as design and implementation services that include proof of concept testing through the Solution Innovation Centre, prior to deployment, in order to provide a single source for a tested and partner-validated virtualised solution.

Dell Services provides customers with an end-to end virtualisation solution that focuses on simplifying IT and supporting customers with the design, configuration, testing migration and maintenance, that allows customers to recognise the immediate benefits of virtualisation in their unique environment.

"Increasingly, companies are looking for ways to make themselves more agile and competitive, as well as create the most efficient IT infrastructure within the organisation," said Doug Downing, Enterprise Brand Manager for Dell South Africa.

"By managing and scaling resources as needed, organisations can continually refresh their IT infrastructure to support their dynamic business needs. Dell is committed to working with its customers and partners in order to deliver the most enhanced virtualisation solution on the market, backed up by industry leading support and services."

Working with best of breed strategic partners, including VMware, Microsoft, Redhat and Novell/Suse, Dell is driving development to ensure virtualisation becomes a standard, embedded element of mainstream IT infrastructure, while providing customers with extended choice.

Dell continues to reduce IT complexity by offering virtualisation technology that is fully-integrated with Dell's PowerEdge servers and Dell|EMC storage arrays, designed, implemented and supported directly by Dell.

By integrating virtualisation into a standards-based IT infrastructure built on Dell servers and storage, organisations are able to take on a flexible, cost-effective and pay-as-you grow strategy for their IT requirements.

Customers throughout EMEA have experienced the business benefits of Dell's virtualisation solution implementation, including Deelgemeente Ijsselmonde, a local authority in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, which helps to deliver key community services to its surrounding population, which needed to consolidate its server environment and find a trusted supplier to provide optimum services.

Belgian consultancy ARCADIS has implemented a storage area network complete with a virtualisation solution that makes disaster recovery simpler, and represents a step towards an efficient disaster recovery plan. AZ Vesalius, a hospital in Belgium, is using a virtual server infrastructure to deliver better scalability to support the hospital's growth.

Lastly, when the Marienhaus Klinikum Hospital in Germany needed a dependable IT Infrastructure for its 24/7 medical services, incorporating a solid back-up strategy for business continuity - virtualisation from Dell provided the solution.

The company also announced that customers in EMEA will soon be able to benefit from even more services that will assist in shaping their approach to OS migration.

More details will follow later on in the year. More information on virtualisation solutions offered by Dell can be found online at www.dell.co.za.