Dell hopes to step up its services and consulting business with a “do as we do” message based on lessons the company learned from its own data centers.

Dell competes in services with more established IBM and Hewlett-Packard
The computer maker will launch its Data Center Optimization Services on Tuesday claiming that virtualization and other practices could help clients cut data-center energy cost by up to two-thirds.
Dell boasts that is has saved more than $29 million over three years in energy, maintenance and other costs at its data centers – even while computing capacity has risen 270 percent in the past two years.
“We believe we have something here,” says Albert Esser, vice president of power and infrastructure solutions. “Virtualization is really an enabler.”
Even with data center workloads increasing 50 percent a year, clients should be able to keep energy costs from going up, says Esser.
With a more aggressive use of virtualization and a regular plan to refresh equipment every three to four years, their energy bill can go down, he said.
Dell says the expanding use of dual- and quad-core chips in servers has lowered equipment-utilization rates in data centers to 5 percent. Lower utilization typically means less efficiency and higher energy bills.
Dell competes in services and consulting with more established businesses at rivals IBM and Hewlett-Packard.