ENGINEERING

Dell today announced that customers in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) are buying into the scalable enterprise strategy by continuing to choose Dell servers and storage. New implementations throughout the region demonstrate Dell's value as a strategic partner for enterprise technology. The latest technologies and standards have been integrated across Dell's enterprise offerings to provide the most comprehensive portfolio of products and services for customers' core applications. According to IDC, Dell's server shipments in EMEA are growing at over 32% year on year (1). The proven reliability and performance of Dell servers and storage solutions has led to deployment in EMEA across industry sectors, from manufacturing and education, to healthcare, in both the public and private sectors. Customers in EMEA include AMNCH (Ireland), Delta Solutions (Netherlands), De Smet Engineers & Contractors (Belgium), Isotrak (UK), Reader's Digest (Germany), Statoil (Norway), East & North Hertfordshire NHS Trust (UK), The Heathland School (UK) and Weleda (Germany). Andy Rhodes, Head of Enterprise Products, Dell EMEA, comments: "Dell servers and storage solutions give our customers a reliable industry standard platform to support their IT infrastructure. This improves performance and capacity for core business and high-performance applications. As a result we have seen increasing demand for server and storage deployments throughout EMEA." A chart-topping solution from Dell Delta Solutions develops online and offline marketing initiatives for media organisations and provides Web site hosting services to companies with highly specific requirements. Delta Solutions wanted to create a system that monitors and records songs played by television and radio stations in the Netherlands – called Net AVR – revolutionising the speed and accuracy of royalty payments to music publishers, composers and artists. The company created a data centre architecture based on PowerEdge servers and network-attached storage devices from Dell. Peter Ijkhout, Managing Director of Net AVR, comments: "The machines we bought from Dell were robust and reliable. From then on, we have enjoyed a strategic, mutually beneficial business relationship. We will certainly be dealing with Dell again as soon as we have further hardware requirements." Reader's Digest Germany finds a global solution Reader's Digest is a global publishing and direct marketing company that produces and markets magazines, books, audio books, music programmes and videos. In order to ensure a smooth workflow, essential for example for the production of magazines, the technology had to be both reliable and failsafe. Reader's Digest has standardised the company on Dell technology with the deployment of PowerEdge 2450, 2550 and 2650 servers, a Dell PowerVault 136T backup system, plus 72 tapes from the LTO-2 tape library. Harald Stetter, IT Infrastructure & Services Manager, Reader's Digest, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, says: "Dell's direct sales channel means it is the only supplier that can guarantee us the same standards all over the world. Our general agreement with Dell ensures that we get particularly good terms on our purchases in Europe." High-performance computing cluster from Dell, Intel, Scali Statoil ASA, a leading Norwegian oil and gas company, wanted a standards-based, high-performance computing cluster (HPCC) to process seismic data in the company's search for new petroleum resources. The company required a solution that would drive substantial improvements in data quality. A total of 512 Dell PowerEdge 1750 servers will be linked together to form the largest supercomputing cluster in Norway and two Dell / EMC2 CX700 arrays in a storage area network will be attached to the cluster with a capacity of up to 40TB of data storage. Dell will install the HPCC together with Intel and Scali. Arild Halsetrønning, Project Manager, Statoil, comments: "The Linux cluster from Dell will be used for seismic processing to address the huge demand for improved analysis quality and capacity. The cluster will also give us access to increased computing capacity at much lower costs." Building a better IT infrastructure with Dell East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust needed a more cost-effective, reliable IT infrastructure to enable it to meet healthcare schedules outlined by the UK government under the National Programme for IT (NPfIT). This aims to ensure the NHS uses only reliable computer systems that deliver a high quality of patient and public services efficiently and securely. Therefore East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust needed an IT infrastructure on which it could depend, helping it to deliver a better service to the trust's employees and patients. With long-standing technology strategic partner Dell, the trust has procured more than 1 500 desktops over the last five years from the entire Dell OptiPlex range and is implementing a centralised storage solution with a Dell / EMC2 CX500 storage area network. Ollie Morley, IT Desktop Manager, East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust, says: "Dell advised us on the best possible solution and helped us ensure we could get the most out of our new environment. Ease of use and better administration now mean that we can provide a better service to the trust's employees and ultimately East and North Hertfordshire patients." Seamless solution for business-critical data Weleda AG in Germany provides a wide range of consumer health and professional care products specialising in natural personal care products and homeopathic and anthroposophical medicines. The company needs to collect and store hundreds of megabytes of business-critical data every month, with uninterrupted availability of the various IT systems so that production does not come to a halt and goods can always be delivered on time. Weleda AG consolidated its IT infrastructure with a solution from Dell that includes PowerEdge servers, Dell / EMC2 hard disk stack and a Dell PowerVault 132T-LTO-tape drive. Rainer Bigalsky, Network and Systems Teal Leader, Weleda AG, comments: "Under an inclusive agreement, we're sourcing all our devices exclusively from Dell. This means that standards are uniform and ensures that all devices on our SANs are compatible. The quality and price of the Dell products are right for us, and what's more we are extremely satisfied with Dell's standard of service. The excellent support Dell provides also gives us peace of mind." (1) Source IDC EMEA Q3 Final