Dell, which is running to catch up with HP and IBM in servers, has started pushing out its next-generation Nehalem-based servers and workstations, an upgrade that will soon be universal once Intel formally launches the new Xeon chips on Monday. Then everybody can argue about who's got the best data center implementation.

There's chatter about Dell having a new design-cum-engineering philosophy that doesn't just emphasize cost though cost hasn't been lost either - that would be suicide in this economy - but comforting touch points that customers actually want and that Dell discovered it needs to compete.

Getting a punch in early Dell says it's challenging HP's proprietary management framework with a newfangled Dell Management Console (DMC) that comes from Symantec's Altiris.

The widgetry's designed to unite systems management across IT environments into a single console. Dell says HP's solution takes up to nine consoles.

Dell claims its new PowerEdge R710 server has the industry's best performance per watt and all of its eleventh-generation servers are of course great at virtualization, system management and usability, saving users money as well as time.

Embedded in every one of them is the new Dell Lifecycle Controller that provides integrated manageability through a single access point.

It's offering servers ImageDirect, meaning they can come from the factory pre-installed (like PCs) with the server images that customers have created, eliminating bothersome manual configuration. Dell claims it can cut deployment time 45%.

Companies with thousands of servers might appreciate that.

Dell claims its M-series blade architecture costs 27% less to buy and delivers 17% lower TCO per rack over five years than HP's king-of-the-hill c-Class. Guess we'll see. Dell can claim only about 10% of the blade market to HP's 58%.

There are new Dell Precision T7500, T5500 and T3500 tower workstations. Lenovo already announced its Nehalem workstations. Dell's high-end 7500 is a dual-socket configuration with a possible 192GB of memory, five PCI Express slots and a SATA slot.

Counting Dell's new bunch of new EqualLogic PS6000 storage arrays there are 14 new products all told that are - my, my - "designed to free customers from the restraints of costly and proprietary business technology."

Let's see, is it thinking of Sun-IBM, HP or that new arrival Cisco?

The PS6000 series slips into existing EqualLogic SANs to form a virtualized pool of storage. It's got a centralized dashboard that monitors the performance and events of dozens of PS Series groups, potentially more than 10PB of SAN storage called SAN Headquarters.

The new arrays, which include a so-called "affordable" solid state model for the first time, are supposed to be 91% faster on writes and 29% faster on reads.

The arrays can support 500TB per PS Series group as well as Microsoft Hyper-V Smart Copysnapshot builds for Exchange, SQL, VMware and XenCenter and will rapidly recover Microsoft virtual machines. They are also supposed to be VMware vStorage-ready.

Dell's offering both data center and new systems management consulting meant to improve data center operations from server provisioning and maintenance to availability monitoring and service-level management through asset retirement.

The arrays start at $17,000. The SSD model is $25,000. Dell hasn't priced the servers or workstations yet, waiting on Intel.

Servers and networking products brought in about 10% of Dell's revenues last year, services 9% and storage 4%.