Michael Dell and team members in the original factory with an early PowerEdge server
Twenty years ago, Dell entered the server business, and this month we are celebrating that milestone.
Given that we started out as a PC-selling business, it might have seemed like a risk when Dell began the daunting task of designing, building and bringing servers to market in the mid-90s. In 1995, only 5% of Dell’s revenue came from servers, we had less than 4% server market share and we ranked seventh in server unit shipments. Fast forward 20 years, and Dell’s PowerEdge portfolio is growing at more than 2 times the pace of the industry and we currently hold the No. 2 position in the global x86 server market. To put things in perspective, this market has grown by more than 600% since we first entered it – with Dell selling more PowerEdge servers in 2014 alone than the whole industry did in 1996.
In the short video below, some original Dell Server team members swap battle stories about the exciting, fast paced times and challenges they faced starting this line of business from scratch.
From early on, we made listening to our customers a priority as we developed solutions to meet their needs and help them grow. It was customer input concerning the need for density that led us to getting into the business of building rack servers. We learned from our customers that simplifying management was one of their key priorities, and we developed our OpenManage systems management portfolio in response. Our interactions with customers also led to the design of complete end-to-end solutions instead of “just boxes.” Over time, this customer-centric point of view has evolved into our design-to-value strategy, meaning that we incorporate feedback from thousands of customer interactions when developing new solutions.
To that point, today not only marks the kick-off for our PowerEdge 20th anniversary, we’re also introducing three new modules for the PowerEdge FX portfolio which revolutionized converged infrastructure, helping organizations quickly configure complete workloads using modular building blocks of IT resources. From Tapad, a fast growing company that was named one of Forbes’ most promising American companies for 2015 to a large e-commerce in Asia that purchased more than 10,000 FX servers, the PowerEdge FX is helping customers around the world better manage, scale and budget for infrastructure to meet the needs of the business now and into the future.
To our customers and partners over the last 20 years, my sincere thanks for your business and support. You are at the center of everything we do at Dell, and I’m excited to continue to work with all of you in the years to come.