ZDNet: There’s More to Dell’s Cluster Success Than Meets the Eye

“At first glance, a story about Dell supplying the computers to
power a 2,008-system cluster at the State University of New York in
Buffalo appears quite remarkable. When a company maker better known
for its business model than its R&D scores a major victory in
the clustering arena, that’s big news- but not for the reasons you
might think.

“In the big picture, this is not a story about how Dell has
suddenly and miraculously turned into a clustering player. Given
Dell’s model, the transformation was inevitable. If the company
didn’t push itself there, it would have been sucked into the space
anyway.

“This is yet another episode in the continuing saga of the fall
from grace of proprietary technologies, the commoditization of
processing power, and the difference between the must-haves and the
nice-to-haves in budget-constrained times. It’s also a signal that
the high-end technical computing space is no longer a sanctuary for
vendors of premium-priced boutique systems…”

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