Last week, I was in New York City for some meetings and Interop.

A good friend asked me to look into Dell at Interop with the comment that the group showcased out there, Dell OEM Solutions, might just surprise me. Never one to shirk a challenge, I decided to go there.

At Dell OEM Solutions, I met with Franklin Flint, Global Enterprise Technology Evangelist for this group.

In an hour-long session, I was briefed on what Dell OEM Solutions was, and what they do. Contrary to my assumptions, Dell OEM Solutions wasn’t the purchasing arm of OEM’d products, but a division at Dell charged with OEMing Dell products to prospective companies out there.

“Really?” asked Yours Truly.

“Really!” was the reply I got.

Surprised, I asked if there were any public design wins that I might know about. There were.

• Polycom,
• IronPort,
• Enterasys,
• Websense,
• Kiosk Information Systems, and
• Google Search Appliance

An impressive list.

Going further, I wanted some figures.

I was told that Dell OEM had sales of ‘well’ over $1 billion. Exact number remains a mystery, since division numbers are not broken down. Moreover, about 40% of Silicon Valley firms building appliances were using Dell OEM’d servers. An embedded version of the server, I was told, powers those red video rental kiosks that are becoming ubiquitous. The division goes after deals at all revenue levels, and can customize the products from design to custom fulfillment. Bare-metal provisioning is also available, he added.

At this point in time, I just had to ask a nagging question: “Was Michael Dell a fan of this?” He loves the OEM Solutions Group, was the answer I got.

While it is easy to see Dell as a box-mover – also my current view of the company – I wanted to know if Dell brought any valueadd to the solutions they were offering.

I was told that Dell OEM Solutions is especially known by software appliance startups for their quasi-VC chops. They are able to go to startups with their portfolio of products, help with engineering of hardware and best practices library, and help those same startups remove the task of developing Tier-1 hardware for their appliances. Hardware technical support is also performed by Dell, allowing the startups to focus on their products, offloading that to Dell’s global support organization.

I am very impressed, and I hope not only to keep the conversation going, but also to meet with these OEM customers with a view to getting more of their assessment(s) of Dell.