Dell will cover small business with "clouds"

Already every other day after Dell announced the first offer of infrastructure - as - service, it announced plans of promotion of family of cloud software products for small and medium business. Delivery of software to the customer will happen with the participation of Salesforce.com, Microsoft, Intuit and other companies.

Already now the first such service - the CRM system (Customer Relationship Management) on the cloud Salesforce.com resource is available, says the company. Next year Dell is going to offer cloud versions of Dynamics GP ERP (enterprise resource planning) from Microsoft, accounting to QuickBooks software from Intuit and also some other services.

Advantage of Dell is that, using the software of integration from recently Boomi acquired company, it will provide background merge of services so the CRM system of the customer will be able to exchange data with accounting software. It is reported that integration of the cloud applicaions and programs which are owned by the customer will also be carried out. All this those aspects which small businesses, without having big IT department probably to solve and could not.

To the middle of the next year the company is going to offer customers the cloud service of analytics available from all its cloud applicaions, providing to managers "a uniform view" of their business by means of "cross-platform dashboards", said in the announcement of Dell.

According to the industry analyst Ray Wang, the CEO of Constellation Research company, an initiative of Dell looks the reasonable course. She will allow the company to use big base of the small and medium enterprises – her business clients, for creation of business of the cloud software. "A set of the companies of small and medium business do not wish to be engaged in integration of different applications in "cloud", and Dell, integrating software in one set, will make it for them", - told Vang.

The company gave these services the general name Cloud Business Applications. They were announced at the Dreamforce conference of Salesforce.com company in San Francisco. It will be a brand of Dell company, and clients will be able to be registered once in a system for gaining access to all services at once, told Dell.

There is a number of questions, for example, how fast Dell will provide existence of additional services next year. The company management at a briefing for the press and analysts refused to give more detailed information on terms. As they did not answer and questions of that whose software will use Dell as service of analytics and how many will cost access to it after start.

According to Stephen J. Felice (Steve Felice), the president of Dell on the sector of customers and small business, the company offers the standard list of quotations for Salesforce.com and Boomi services. The cost of the packet including five jobs of Salesforce.com and the license Boomi for integration of two applications - $565 a month, is told on the website of Dell. Services of Salesforce.com in implementation begin from $5 thousand.

Paulette Altmaier, the vice president of Dell, noted that Dell itself will not be engaged in a hosting of applications of Salesforce, they will remain in one of own data centers of Salesforce. Dell will attract clients of Salesforce in one of its data processing centers where services of analytics and integration will be placed. Other applications can be available in own data processing center of Dell company, depending on the partners selected by the company, she told.

Felice considers that SaaS (the software as service) becomes a mass trend, and small business needs assistance for decision making in the choice of opportunities and technologies. The purpose of Dell company - to send to the company to that product which she considers "the best in the category". "Being a reliable consultant, we believe that we have the right to such point of view", - Felice told.

Initially these services are aimed at the companies with the number of employees from 100 to 500 employees, but over time Dell is going to service as larger, and the small enterprises. Dell defines mid-size company approximately in 5 thousand employees, told Altmayer.

It is already the second big cloud announcement from Dell for those days that she tries to be beyond simple sale of personal computers on more profitable software market and services.