In the storage world, shipping 100,000 arrays is a pretty big milestone. Dell has hit said milestone as Connexions4London (C4L), a web services provider, recently deployed the 100,000th EqualLogic array. For perspective, when Dell purchased EqualLogic in November 2008, there were 4,000 customers and 8,000 units in the field. In just about five years, Dell has expanded this piece of their storage business to 45,000 customers, an 11X increase.
In the storage world, shipping 100,000 arrays is a pretty big milestone. Dell has hit said milestone as Connexions4London (C4L), a web services provider, recently deployed the 100,000th EqualLogic array. For perspective, when Dell purchased EqualLogic in November 2008, there were 4,000 customers and 8,000 units in the field. In just about five years, Dell has expanded this piece of their storage business to 45,000 customers, an 11X increase.
Dell EqualLogic Storage Blade Array
Dell continues to invest heavily in the EqualLogic platform, announcing several new enhancements over the last many months, including EqualLogic storage blade arrays, new hybrid arrays, support for 10GbE on the PS4000 series, as well as many VDI and application virtualization improvements. The continuing evolution of the EqualLogic platform is a big part of why Dell continues to lead the iSCSI SAN space, with an estimated 28% market share and category leadership for the last 18 consecutive quarters (IDC research). Research also shows this market is growing rapidly, what was a $18 million market in 2003 is a $3 billion market today.
The growth in both the market demand for iSCSI SAN storage is both a catalyst and result of Dell’s success with EqualLogic. As IT generalists in the SMB/SME space struggle to cope with growing data demands, storage arrays that are easy to deploy, manage and grow become critical to organizational success. C4L added the PS6100 arrays to their infrastructure for exactly those reasons and others, but peer scaling and all-inclusive licensing model for predictable TCO were key.
