Dell stalls services strategy
Analysts question how vendor will make the transition from its commodity PC roots
Dell has delayed plans to unveil its widely anticipated services strategy, but analysts have already questioned how the vendor intends to make the transition from its commodity PC roots.
Although Dell said it will now not provide details of its strategy for another couple of weeks, earlier this month it told CRN's sister magazine IT Week that it plans to make a two-pronged attack on services.
A managed services group will focus on desktop management, and an integration services group will offer five pre-packaged services, including Windows upgrades and Unix-to-Linux migration.
However, Jon Collins, senior analyst at analyst Quocirca, said Dell could face "service creep" problems and find itself offering a wider and wider range of services.
"Dell doesn't do anything unless it can see it is commoditised. This golden rule is very hard to apply to the services space," he said.
Collins added that services are complicated and most service providers are trying to move up the value chain, while being pushed by their customers.
"If you go to the Dell web site and buy a tightly specified service then it might be able to prevent that creep. But you might argue that is only of limited value," he said.
Anthony Miller, analyst at Ovum Holway, said providing services is a completely different model to providing PCs.
"It's also treading on the toes of [reseller partners] and it screams Computacenter, SCH, Fujitsu Services," he said.
Simon Gay, consultancy practice leader at Computacenter, said services and integration is the area with the best margin.
However, he added: "It will be interesting to see how Dell steps up to the challenge. Moving into integration is not something to undertake lightly."