Dell positioned in leaders quadrant for midrange enterprise disk arrays

Leading Analyst Firm's Evaluation Based on Completeness of Vision, Ability to Execute

Dubai, UAE, 14 February 2007: Gartner Inc. positioned Dell in the "Leaders Quadrant" of its Magic Quadrant for Midrange Enterprise Disk Arrays, 2H06¹ report.

"Customers recognize the exceptional value received when choosing a Dell storage solution," said Paul Kaeley, head of storage, Dell Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). "Dell will continue to change the economics of storage through its PowerVault^TMproduct line and its highly successful partnership with EMC."

Dell takes a solutions-oriented approach to designing and delivering storage systems. Systems are shipped with factory installed SAN components including host bus adapters and Dell/EMC software that simplify deployment and save customers time. Dell also ships systems with Dell and EMC management software designed to reduce the complexities of operations and deliver a complete server and storage package.

Gartner defines midrange disk array products as external controller-based redundant array of independent disks (RAID) arrays that:

Use a dual controller or cluster architecture
Support Unix, Linux, Windows and NetWare environments
Offer no mainframe support
Have an average selling price of more than $24,999

According to Gartner, "A midrange enterprise disk array vendor in the Leaders Quadrant has the market share, credibility and marketing and sales capabilities needed to drive the acceptance of new technologies. It demonstrates understanding of market needs, is an innovator and thought leader, and has well-articulated plans that customers and prospects can use in designing their storage infrastructures and strategies."

Gartner's "ability to execute" evaluation criteria include a vendor's product, services, overall viability, market responsiveness, sales execution, pricing and customer experience. Its "completeness of vision" criteria evaluate market understanding, marketing and sales strategy, product strategy, business model, innovation and geographic strategy.

Reinforcing its position as a preferred partner in the mid-range enterprise segment, Dell is working closely with a number of organisations across EMEA, helping them build scaleable storage infrastructures that address their data management objectives. King's College London, the fourth oldest university in England, uses a powerful storage and back-up solution from Dell that allows it to effectively store and manage its digital archives, making a plethora of historical documents, images and manuscripts freely available through the Internet to researchers and the public alike. The university has to manage new and valuable data on an on-going basis and uses the support of the Dell/EMC CX3-20 storage area network (SAN) solution to ensure that it has ample capacity to manage projects today and in the future. Researchers also have quick and easy access to all the files on the archives without interruption or any impact on performance as the data is mirrored within the Dell PowerEdge server systems that incorporate RAID technology, whereby if one disk should fail, the server continues to function using a single disk, which contains a precise copy of the original disk's data until a replacement second disk is installed.

"A lot of academic time and effort has gone into preparing archive resources. To lose this information due to network issues or disk failing would be worse than disastrous," said Paul Vetch, research fellow, Centre for Computing in the Humanities (CCH), King's College London. "With the Dell storage solution we have the backup and restore capabilities to protect valuable data. We also have a secure way to enable backups without affecting network performance."

For more information on Dell's complete line of storage solutions, please visit www.dell.com/storage.

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About the Gartner Magic Quadrant
The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted 13^th December, 2006 by Gartner Inc. and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the "Leaders" quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About Dell
Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) listens to customers and delivers innovative technology and services they trust and value. Uniquely enabled by its direct business model, Dell sells more systems globally than any computer company, placing it No. 25 on the Fortune 500. For more information, visit www.dell.com/me. To get Dell news direct, visit www.dell.com/RSS.

[1] Gartner Research "Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Midrange Disk Arrays, 2H06" by Stanley Zaffos, Roger W. Cox and April Adams. Dec. 13, 2006

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