Dell, Salesforce target SMEs

Hot on the heels of Dell introducing its first public cloud-based data storage offering with infrastructure-as-a-service solutions in partnership with VMware, Dell is teaming up with Salesforce on a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform targeted towards small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), reports ZDNet.

During a roundtable discussion at Dreamforce 2011 in San Francisco, Steve Felice, president of Dell's consumer, small and medium business sector, said cloud computing is enabling many businesses that stayed local to go global and scale easier in order to compete with larger companies.

Better integration both among cloud apps and with legacy software is critical if cloud computing is to enter the operational mainstream for small businesses, says All Business.

Companies need to be able to rely on cloud computing as a total solution, not just one piece of the solution stack, explained R 'Ray' Wang, CEO of Constellation Research. But even though small companies have the same IT needs as large companies, they don't have the resources to handle complex integration tasks.

The four pillars of the Dell Cloud Business Application offering begin with access to leading soft SaaS applications, beginning with customer relationship management (CRM) software from Salesforce.com, but eventually adding enterprise resource planning (ERP), finance, human resources and other business apps.

The second pillar is integration with different SaaS apps, as well as legacy software that a business may already have, using technology from Dell's acquisition of Boomi in 2010. Third is business analytics capabilities, to enable SMBs to crunch data to inform business decisions. And the fourth pillar is consulting services from Dell and its services partners to support SME customers, according to Network Computing.