Dell reveals plans to undercut integrators

Direct vendor's hardware business model is 'threat' to small rivals

Dell intends to go head to head with integrators using its hardware business model to cut up to 25 per cent from professional services projects, such as server consolidation and NT4 migration.

The direct vendor has claimed that by buying spare capacity from professional services companies and breaking projects into standard modules, it can undercut rivals and offer projects with fixed price, scope and duration.

Services offered by Dell include storage consolidation, backup and recovery, server consolidation and Windows migration, Unix to Linux migration, Oracle 9i remote application cluster implementation, and training.

This follows its announcement two months ago about its managed desktop services strategy.

Josh Claman, Dell's vice president of services for EMEA, said the company will apply the disciplines from its product business to services.

"We don't own the field force because we don't want to own warehouses full of professional services consultants. It's a new supply chain model for IT services," Claman said.

Analysts believe Dell's move into services highlights the sector becoming increasingly commoditised, and say integrators should move into higher-margin areas.

Jon Collins, senior analyst at Quocirca, said Dell will be competing with smaller firms that do network integration and upgrades. "Integrators face a series of threats. There's less margin to be generated from the low end. Dell [doing services] is a symptom of that," he said.

But Greg Carlow, director of Repton, said Dell's success will be down to quality of experience. Services, he added, may be more complicated than Dell realises.