On Wednesday, the company launched new server, storage and system management products that it says will ease configuration and management of data centers. The new products will form the basis of virtualized environments and could help customers reduce energy, hardware acquisition and system maintenance costs.

The products come at a time when vendors are focusing on integrating storage and server infrastructures as customers tighten IT budgets. Cisco last week launched its Unified Computing System, which includes virtualization technology, services and blade servers to help enterprises develop and manage server installations in data centers. HP and IBM are the established competitors in this arena.

Dell is looking to expand its portfolio and become an end-to-end provider of hardware, services and management software, said Brad Anderson, senior vice president of large enterprise at Dell. The company wants to provide consulting services that help customers put together computing resources to realize cost savings.

Unlike IBM and HP, Dell isn't known as a software powerhouse, so the company's announcement of a systems management platform is a significant departure, said John Spooner, senior analyst at market research firm Technology Business Research.

The software platform announced on Wednesday, called Dell Management Console (DMC), brings all device and task management controls under a single application and console. The software, developed with Symantec, makes it easier for enterprises to manage hardware and software resources across virtualized environments.