BUGGI, Dell´s own website highlights their position and the progress pretty well.
February 2004:
KEVIN ROLLINS: We have stuck to Intel and not used an AMD or other chip to date, but we do use Microsoft and Linux extensively. In fact, we are the number one provider of Linux on servers today - probably not well-known but a fact. We’re into any open source or low cost technology that a customer will want. When it comes to the AMD chip, if you look at the corporate market, which is where 85 of our business is today, the corporate user has not yet found confidence in AMD and so most of the corporations, 99 percent of them, don't use that technology today, they use Intel. Where AMD has gained good foothold is in the consumer space, so you'll find them in all your retail outlets, but that has not been the primary focus of Dell strategically and so we have not gone to AMD. I will say, however, that we test every AMD product in our labs. We look at the viability of the product in terms of quality, stability and the ability to ramp volume. Then lastly we look at the economics, do we want to do it, does it make more money than not. To date, that equation hasn’t led us to AMD, but we look at it every time and the most recent run with both Athlon and Opteron chips have been better than anything we've seen them do before. We never say never, but to date it hasn't made a lot of sense.
KEVIN ROLLINS: We believe in open standards and we believe that customers are the ultimate deciders of the technologies that will win. And so subsequently customers have expressed great interest in Linux as well as in Microsoft. We are not a UNIX advocate. We believe that Linux and Microsoft over time will erode, as they have been now for some time, the whole UNIX base and infrastructure. UNIX is not going to go away, but we believe it's going to continue to shrink. And so we provide our customers with solutions surrounding both of those operating system platforms. To date we are still fundamentally an Intel shop. We evaluate AMD products on a regular basis. They have some very good products. Most recently we've kind of gotten closer to evaluating and assessing and understanding Opteron/Athlon products. I've not moved toward using those in our technologies yet, but they get better every day. And as customers demand some of those products, then we move our strategies based on customer desire, customer need and obviously overall economics.
I think it´s quite simple: As soon as it makes economic sense for them to jump on board, they will do it. If I was in charge, I´d introduce both a 1U and 2U 2-way server and take over the No.1 spot in the Opteron market in 2-3 quarters. Let´s see what happens, and when :)
The competition has only just started shipping in volume.
BUGGI, that is the most serious Dell rumor I've heard since the early Athlon days! Must be negotiation time for Dell and Intel. That's what happened last time Dell prototyped AMD PCs.
Having been through this before, I'll take a wait & see attitude.
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