Hardware News

Handling the hardware market

Dan Farber and David Berlind ZDNet.com

Published: 31 Oct 2003 14:50 GMT

In between sessions and keynotes at Gartner Symposium ITxpo 2003, ZDNet's editor-in-chief Dan Farber and executive editor David Berlind had a chance to catch up with Dell Americas senior vice president and general manager Joe Marengi.

Marengi, formerly the president at networking solution provider Novell, was in the mood to discuss the industry at large. As is usual for Dell executives, Marengi reminded Farber and Berlind of the keys to Dell's success and how those keys enable him to deliver benefit to Dell's customers. Marengi also hinted at some things to look for from Dell in the near term, and took a shot or two at his competitors.

ZDNet: Dell has cleaned up on desktops, notebooks, and servers. What are the gating factors in your other lines of business?

Marengi: Dell is about standards. Absence of standards in any one category ultimately hurts customers and slows adoption. Blades are a good example. HP has its own kind of blade. IBM has another. Sun has its own. If I'm a switch vendor, I don't even know how what size switch to make because I don't know what size rack it will go in. At the very least we should have some uniformity. It would be great to know what we have to fit in, but ultimately, it would be better to standardise on the architecture as well.

ZDNet: Are you referring to the backplane and what the blades fit into?

Marengi: Yes. The only differentiation should be in the speeds and feeds. The industry has to ask itself, "what's the best thing in order for end-users to adopt this?" I like to compare this to the tires on your car. Imagine what it would be like if each tire manufacturer had its own way for getting air into our tires. Our industry has to start looking at this from the point of view of the customers and the problems they want solved. Blades are a perfect example of where standards can solve a major problem. They're a great concept. But if we continue on the current path, we will retard the acceleration of blade growth. They have to be interchangeable.

ZDNet: Do blade standards really solve a problem for customers? Don't standards in a growth sector like blades really serve Dell's purposes? That's traditionally the sort of world that Dell -- because of its efficiencies in supply-chain and manufacturing -- operates in best, isn't it?

Marengi: Yes. But it's best for the customer too. I can plug any PC into any network. It shouldn't be a piece of hardware that's the differentiator. Software, service… those are differentiators. But it shouldn't be the hardware.