Irish facility to get 'fraction' of Dell's $1bn investment

A “SMALL fraction” of Dell’s $1 billion global investment in cloud services will find its way to the company’s Limerick facility, according to Eric Velfre, managing director of large enterprise services.

Plans for 12 solution centres to showcase its technologies to customers will automatically include Limerick. The Irish site already fulfils this role, though it will be refurbished and repositioned as a global centre.

Dell also announced plans to build and open 10 “next-generation” data centres across Europe in the “big countries” in the next six months. Ireland is not one of them, according to Mr Velfre, but the Limerick data centre may come into play in a later phase of the strategy.

“We may or may not use it. It will depend on whether we need the extra capacity to serve other countries. Limerick is already there and waiting to be switched on. It’s just a question of whether we need it,” he said.

Yesterday’s global announcement highlights how Dell is following a well-trodden path that has seen heavyweight IT companies like Microsoft and HP move from a focus on selling products to providing platforms for service delivery.

Part of the Dell pitch is to offer customers preconfigured infrastructure bundles, vStart, to help accelerate the move to cloud. Delivered in a single rack, the kit is designed for fast and easy deployment into a data centre, a recurring theme of the Dell cloud strategy, where simplifying IT delivery is the main goal.

Once again, there was much talk about the “consumerisation of IT”, enabling businesses to access applications and infrastructure as a utility service.

Steve Schuckenbrock, president of Dell services, said the “move to disruptive IT models like the cloud are changing the fundamental way businesses operate”.

The scale of the investment signals a major commitment of Dell to grabbing a piece of an emerging market, but anyone expecting a renewed interest in Ireland may be disappointed that the country will miss out on significant foreign direct investment.

In 2009 Dell closed it manufacturing plant in Limerick, laying off 1,900 people and significantly reducing its Irish operations.