Following on the heels of our virtualization launch last week, Dell made a virtualization announcement of their own yesterday.  They announced a variety of third party products they now support and re-announced the blades servers they introduced last week, but this time referring to their virtualization design.  Curiously they compared their two-socket M805 full-height 16-DIMM blade to our four-socket blades, ignoring our two-socket half-height 16-DIMM ProLiant BL495c virtualization blade announced last week.  I guess comparing their blade against an HP blade that is half the size wouldn't have sounded as good.

But what really caught my  attention was their statement in their press release that their strategy is "grounded in choice".  I imagined how this strategy plays out with blades:

Customer "I'd like to choose a UNIX blade please."
   Dell does not offer this choice.

Customer: "I'd like to choose a storage blade please."
   Dell does not offer this choice.

Customer: "I'd like to choose a workstation blade please."
   Dell does not offer this choice.

Customer: "I'd like to choose a half-height blade with 16 DIMM sockets please."
   Dell does not offer this choice.

Customer: "I'd like to choose a two-servers-in one blade for my grid app please"
   Dell does not offer this choice.

Customer: "I'd like to choose a Non-stop blade" please.
   Okay I could go on, but you get the picture. 

As it turns out a lot of customers want these kids of choices.  Why?  Because a blade everything strategy means they can get the time, energy and cost savings BladeSystem offers for more of their IT infrastructure.  They can have a simpler, more consistent way to deploy, maintain, manage and service their infrastructure.  But here again Dell has clearly differentiated themselves, stating that "We are not blade everything".  I guess this is one choice Dell does not want to offer to customers.