Dell details the Efficient Enterprise strategy at OpenWorld

The multifaceted plan for driving out IT inefficiency and boosting innovation is championed by Dell , while Oracle CEO Larry Ellison talked up Oracle and Dell synergies

Dell chairman and CEO Michael Dell touted Dell's "Efficient Enterprise" strategy Wednesday at the Oracle OpenWorld 2009 conference and was joined briefly onstage by Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, who stressed that Oracle is a major user of Dell equipment as well as a partner.

Dell's strategy centers on standardization, simplification, and automation. Standardization involves use of Intel processors, Dell explained. Simplification entails making the complex simple using solutions like virtualization and storage consolidation, while automation is about streamlining service delivery and enabling self-service IT models, Dell said during a keynote presentation at the San Francisco conference.

[ Also at OpenWorld, Ellison and Sun chairman Scott McNealy lauded Sun technologies. ]

He cited figures stating that of the $1.2 trillion spent annually on IT infrastructure, nearly $800 billion is spent on labor and services, while just $400 billion goes to hardware and related software. Meanwhile, just 1 percent of total business spending is left for driving IT innovation, Dell said.

"We believe there's a real opportunity to drive out inefficiency and make technology work harder for our customers, and it forms the basis of what we call the Efficient Enterprise," Dell said. He vowed that Dell would reduce $200 billion of inefficiency out of the $1.2 trillion.

Dell stressed Intel as the industry standard. "The numbers really don't lie. [Intel] x86 is the standard architecture in the datacenter," he said. Dell referred to Intel versus "proprietary architectures" in promoting Intel-based systems.

Ellison briefly joined Dell to stress Oracle and Dell synergies. "We've got so many customers that are Dell customers and also Oracle customers. Our partnership just gets bigger and bigger every year," Ellison said.

Oracle also is a major Dell user, with 20,000 Dell servers that Oracle uses to run its development and testing operations, Ellison said. Dell technology is "working well for us," he said.

Ellison did not address what could be a sticky predicament in that Oracle soon will own the rival Sun Microsystems hardware line if a proposed $7.4 billion merger goes through as planned. Sun hardware is largely based on the Sparc CPU platform, with some Intel-based machines in the mix.

Efficient Enterprise, Dell said, is intended to enable greater spending on innovation and less on maintenance.  Enterprise efficiency also is about giving IT administrators increased visibility into deployed workloads, Dell said.

Virtual machines, Dell said, are becoming key to driving workloads form the client to the cloud. Dell is driving its "virtual-ready infrastructure," he said. The company is delivering automation and flexibility and self-service IT through cloud computing, said Dell. He cited 7-11 as one enterprise that has moved to Dell's managed services to improve service delivery.

This story, "Dell details the Efficient Enterprise stretegy at OpenWorld," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments in open source at InfoWorld.com.