Dell on Thursday reported a drop in profits during the fourth quarter of the company's 2010 fiscal year, but growth in revenue, fueled by strong sales of laptops and servers to the consumer and enterprise markets.
Dell plans to offer packages of software and services around its hardware in a bid to increase sales, a company executive said on Friday.
Dell acquired security vendor Kace Networks, a systems management appliance company, for an undisclosed amount on Thursday.
Worldwide PC shipments soared during the fourth quarter, driven by historically low PC prices and an increased demand for laptops and netbooks, analyst firm IDC said Wednesday
Intel unveiled a trio of new Atom processors and a new chipset today. The new Intel chips will enable hardware vendors to create smaller, cooler, more power efficient netbooks and nettops (the desktop equivalent of a netbook).
Dell has launched a dedicated services organization, appropriately named Dell Services, that will focus on midmarket enterprise customers. The company formed the unit by integrating Perot Systems, purchased Nov. 3 for US$3.9 billion, with the enterprise services operation from its own Large Enterprise business unit.
Dell has delayed the closing of a plant in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, by three months because PC demand is rising, the company said on Tuesday.
Server and storage vendors suffered painful revenue declines throughout 2009, but the IT hardware markets are starting to show signs of life and are in position for a small rebound in 2010.
Dell entered the Fibre Channel over Ethernet market last week with OEM deals from Brocade and QLogic and endorsed 10Gigabit Ethernet as a customer's technology of choice.
After a glacially slow start to 2009 in the mergers and acquisitions market, tech companies started buying again in the second half of the year and analysts expect the resurgence in takeover activity to continue in 2010.
Dell will offer Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) network interface cards in all of its servers. The move by the world's largest server provider is sure to bolster adoption of the nascent data transport protocol in enterprise data centers.
Dell added 10-Gigabit Ethernet to its EqualLogic storage line and introduced infrastructure management software in a set of product announcements Thursday to round out its data-center offerings.
The top 10 mergers and acquisitions in the network industry in 2009 all cracked the billion-dollar barrier, and involved vendors in hardware, IT services, collaboration, storage, wireless infrastructure and other segments. IT behemoths such as Oracle, Cisco, Dell, HP, EMC and IBM were among the biggest spenders.
Dell is setting up a new business unit surrounding mobile products as it tries to expand its presence in the communications market, the company said on Friday.
Lifted by fast-growing notebook shipments, Taiwan's Acer grabbed the No. 2 spot in the global PC market for the first time over Dell, according to iSuppli.