ReadWriteEnterprise

For ReadWriteWeb's ninth anniversary last week, our founder and Editor-in-Chief Richard MacManus took a loving look back at how the site has evolved over the years. But RWW isn't the only thing that has stuck around even as it's morphed over the past almost-decade.

The Web has changed dramatically over those nine years, but a surprising number of top issues from 2003 are still prominent in today's news. Back then, we had to deal with a recovering economy, the rise of Dell and Linux in the enterprise, private data collection, and a lack of Web application security. Many of those same issues are still resonating today.

Dell has been busy this week. Today they announced the acquisition of Clerity, a mainframe migration and modernization solution provider, and the intent to fold them into their services division. Clerity is one of the leaders in mainframe "rehosting" or the ability to migrate apps from legacy mainframes to equipment elsewhere that can provide the same service at reduced cost.

Yesterday, the company announced they would acquire Wyse Technology, which sells thin clients and cloud management and desktop virtualization (DVI) management software tools. Wyse also has a huge patent portfolio and has been around since the early days of the PC era. Back then, they sold low-cost green-screen terminals and became second only to IBM in that market. They used this expertise to move into selling thin clients that first worked with Windows Terminal Servers and eventually became more DVI-oriented.

It is hard to believe that Dell's IdeaStorm site is five years old. (It's Feb 2007 launch was covered by us here.) But harder still to realize was that until last week, the venerated ideation site was getting a bit long in the tooth, even though it has had close to 500 different ideas implemented by Dell on various projects and products. Some of the ideas resulted in Dell's first backlit keyboard, wider sales for Dells in electronics stores, rack-mounted blade workstations, and and for Dell to offer Linux pre-installed. This last item has been partially implemented.

Last week Dell did a complete makeover of the site, adding features, reworking the UI, and in general sprucing up the place. We spoke with Bill Johnston, Dell's Director of Global Online Communities, to see what is new and what were some of the lessons learned.

In recent months, we've seen Dell Computer take incremental steps in the server appliance field, most recently through acquisitions. KACE management appliances have paid off well so far, for a company that has desperately needed to reassert itself in the data center where its servers once ruled.

This morning, Dell is taking another step in that direction, and with another company that data centers are already familiar with: SonicWall. It's one of the better-known names in firewall appliances, and it's already built on that reputation more recently with plug-and-play backup appliances and security solutions such as anti-spam tools. Dell's intent to acquire SonicWall could give it a marketing angle against both HP and emerging contender Oracle, countering their out-of-the-box solutions with mix-and-match options that play more to Dell's historical customer base: custom buyers.

With the world's #1 PC maker HP now in full transition mode, now may be the time for Dell to get its full come-uppance. On the enterprise side, it's had two big aces in the hole for a few years now: One is Optimized Deployment, which borrows Microsoft's data imaging technology to enable admins to rapidly deploy fully-configured Windows operating systems and applications to multiple clients in minutes. A 2010 study (PDF available here) showed automated image-based deployment could save businesses up to $337 per PC, in IT management costs alone.

Another is Dell's extraordinary KACE management appliances - literally plug-and-play tools that perform inventory analysis on corporate networks. A KACE tool lets admins deploy applications, patches, and updates to designated systems in the network.

Following the announcement of its partnership with Dell, Cloudera announced a new partner program for resellers and professional services providers. Among the various elements of the Cloudera Connect Partner Program will be a certification program.

Cloudera sells enterprise support for Apache Hadoop and its own Cloudera Enterprise product. The company funds much Hadoop development, and employs Hadoop creator Doug Cutting. The new program is designed to expand Cloudera's reach through partnerships with systems integrators and independent hardware and software vendors.

Cloudera and Dell today announced an agreement to sell a complete Apache Hadoop solution. The package will include Dell hardware (including Dell PowerEdge C2100 servers and PowerConnect switches), Cloudera's Distribution including Apache Hadoop, Cloudera Enterprise and of course support. It should be available for purchase within the next 30 days. Details can be found on dell.cloudera.com.

Dell has published an infographic collecting various statistics about the progress of the consumerization of IT. We've covered some of this data before, such the studies sponsored by Unisys, but this does a nice job of pulling several piece of information together.

I don't care for the conflation of IT consumerization with the labor movement, but it's otherwise a nice visual summary of the changes occurring in the enterprise.

Dell is increasing its crowdsourcing efforts on IdeaStorm, by giving hardware manufacturers more feedback on products and services. "Storm Sessions" are designed to attract a larger business community to the IdeaStorm site, by providing a more focused, structured approach.

Storm Sessions provide a way for Dell to listen to its community, but we are a bit skeptical that the effort will receive significant interest from the business community.