This morning i saw this press release about Dell/Perot deal. well, Dell acquired an IT services provider to compete with other vendors for the years to come. The game is changing… or more probable, not!
But what does it mean for Us? The answer is obvious:
IBM has Services, hardware and software!
HP owns EDS: Services, hardware and software!
Oracle/Sun: Services, hardware and software! (and probably they will likely add Pillar soon… 
)
Dell and Perot: Services, hardware and software! (indeed, not a lot of software at the moment!)
We can define these IT Vendors as Tier1 vendors: they have an answer for every question… not the better answer but anyway an answer! These kind of vendors are looking to become “The-One-Stop-Shop” for the IT departments! They all are similar to IBM or they tend to become the new IBM! (IMHO), I’m not sure I really understand this strategy and if this is the right one but they are going there!
Can we relocate other IT Vendors at Tier 2? is the game changing? i would like to share some thoughts with you:
CISCO is the first of T2s at the moment! They’re very big.. but not enough! They have good products but nothing about software and services… how can they will gain more marketplace? how can will they fight with T1s for the predominance in the DCs?
And i can’t forget other T2s (the list can be very long), and the questions are the same: EMC, NetApp,Microsoft, HDS… and so on!
T1s will be able to offer complete solutions (form the services to the bare metal) and in, complex cloud virtualized DCs deployments it can be a big advantage!!!!
T2s will forced to offer the best in class solution every time… for the customers who are not satisfied from “not the best answer… but anyway answer!”
The story repeats itself every time!
ES
Sto utilizzando Dell.