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Dell sets sights on the enterprise

Alex Kayle
By Alex Kayle, Senior portals journalist
Johannesburg, 19 Mar 2012

Dell has repositioned itself as an infrastructure solutions provider, delivering Ultrabooks customised for the enterprise as well as data centre solutions.

Dell introduced a range of servers for the data centre environment, including its Fresh Air initiative. This technology lets servers run at 45 degrees Celsius, higher than they would normally run, in order to reduce data centre power and cooling costs by 15%.

Dell has also entered the Ultrabook market with the rollout of its XPS 13 laptop, a 13.3-inch Ultrabook.

Gavin Slevin, Dell SA and developing countries retail manager, predicts that Ultrabooks will become mass-market consumer devices in the next few years. “Ultrabooks are thin, responsive, have a great battery life, smart user experience, and all the attributes of a tablet, but with the performance of a PC.”

Dell's Ultrabooks will be shipped locally at the end of this month, and will be targeted at consumers as well as enterprise and mid-market company end-users, Slevin points out.

“We will offer enterprise customers access to 24/7 support services. Dell will provide integration services for our corporate customers to specify what build they want, as well as specified security software and asset tagging.”

He adds: “Dell will offer corporates high customisation and encryption technologies, which will allow IT managers to secure and manage the Ultrabooks. Most Ultrabooks on the market today don't have these features.”

The XPS 13 is part of Dell's high-end XPS brand, which makes up 20% of the company's total consumer laptop business. According to the PC manufacturer, revenue for XPS laptops increased 207% last year.

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