Okay, I'll bite, Chris
- Dell is nowhere in scale-out NAS
...FS line of products on market for less than a year...but growing fast. Integrated in all three primary lines (PowerVault, Equallogic and Compellent). 1+Petabyte filesystem large enough for you?
- Dell does not have a high-end array
...correct, but this market is small and not growing, The sweet spot is entry level and mid-range, which is growing. Dell's focused on addressing the largest part of the business and can scale where required into most areas where design considerations allow.
- Dell does not have an all-flash array
...Dell's on its second generation all-flash Equallogic array. There's all flash, hybrid and high density hybrid arrays, and that's just Equallogic. Dell's also got flash options in the PowerVault and Compellent line, as well as doing ACTUAL innovation such as flash in the servers connected on the PCI bus (how it should be properly engineered for applications). What are you talking about?
- Compellent is not setting the world on fire anymore
...last time I checked with a recent ex-EMC VNX customer, they had just purchased their 4th Compellent array in 6 months and couldn't be happier. Have you spoken to a Compellent customer recently?
- Dell does not have a scale-out SAN
...scale-out to what? or scale-out in what way?
Equallogic will allow you to scale out to 2+ petabytes should you choose to grow that much.
- Ocarina data reduction isn't cutting it
This is still largely a Data Domain market with everyone else getting a smaller piece of the pie, but the Dell line is strong, delivers what it's designed to and those customers that I've spoken with that have deployed it are content.
- Dell object storage is making little progress
...Object storage in general is making little progress. Is EMC's Centera space growing or declining? Dell's product's good, but niche for now due to multi-year application certification. Additionally, a lot of vendors want to move away from developing OO interfaces and just address to a file system, which is why Dell has sold its archive platform with a filesystem front-end.
- Dell does not have a good basic filer
...A good basic file would be - what? Windows Storage Server - check.
Something that scales on some good basic enterprise storage, like the FS3500 - check
Something that scales on a fully-functional SAN that allows the user to manage both the file and block through the same single pane of glass like the Equallogic-FS7600? Check
- Dell does not have a solid server flash cache product
...there was this guy called Chris Mellor who wrote an article in June of this year.
You should speak with him http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/18/dell_hermes/
Or you could do your research around Dell's Cachecade designs, where they've innovated a server flash cache product for certain form factors (R820, R920) which mounts at the front straight onto the PCI-bus and is hot-swappable.
Yes, I work for Dell, so AC.