Dell buys EqualLogic

Ed and I were supposed to be meeting with our EqualLogic reps today, but that's been pushed back to tomorrow due to this surprising news (at least to Ed and I) ...

ROUND ROCK, Texas (AP) -- Computer maker Dell Inc. said Monday it agreed to buy data storage systems provider EqualLogic Inc. for $1.4 billion in cash to strengthen its position in the growing virtualization market.

I hope this is a good thing.  EqualLogic is one of my favorite companies, Dell better not screw it up ;-)

I guess tomorrow we'll find out more info on what that means for customers like us.

Comments

[Jeremy Good]

I was just doing some research on SAN's tonight and saw the news. I am curious to see how this pans out as well.

[Joshua Gregory]

I'm curious to see how this affects their relationship with EMC...

[Marc Farley]

Thanks Jason for all the support. Customers like you inspire us to be better.

I don't know what you heard from our team today, there hasn't been much time to react and learn what's going on. However, we have been having preliminary brainstorming sessions with Dell people and we are headed in the direction of keeping the EqualLogic team intact within Dell and our products will most likely maintain the EqualLogic brand and will be sold through a channel of VARs as we are doing today.

One of the big challenges will be figuring out how to support the new environment. As you know we have a philosophy of not deflecting calls in support. If a customer has a question about VMware, we take it. Same for switches used in SANs and Microsoft server technologies. When we become part of Dell, there will be new, additional questions about Dell servers and management software. We'll have to figure out how to give the best, support possible for these questions too.