• Austin American-Statesman, Wednesday, March 25, 2009 11 AM

Dell is launching a new generation of enterprise products today that represents a slight but potentially important shift in its approach to design and engineering. It is giving its product development teams more leeway to spend on the details that matter to customers, Dan Zehr reports. "There has been an increasing emphasis on design as a differentiator at Dell," points out Charles King, senior analyst at technology research firm Pund-IT.

Hewlett-Packard, IBM and other server companies are expected to release a new collection of enterprise products in the coming days. All of them will claim that their products will deliver the most improved productivity, easiest management and lowest total costs. By shifting some of its marketing push to its product design, Dell hopes to go after its rivals' reputations for developing higher-quality designs.

"It's not that we weren't creative before," says Joyce Metevier, lead engineer for a new blade server that Dell will announce today. "But this allowed us to expand ourselves a bit more."

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