They tried to muscle in on the business support services against HP and IBM. But I think they had to admit that the push had failed. They were hoping to expand into other parts of the business to create reoccurring revenue that IBM gets so fat on. But without big Unix servers that run production databases like IBM, Sun and HP they didn’t have a chance. More businesses on the Windows side are just buying the hardware than slapping VMWare ESX on top. So I would assume the number of Windows Server licenses purchased from Dell has shrunk thus negating the need for Dell Server Support other than hardware warranty. Essentially they are becoming just a hardware only company.
Perhaps they should think about buying out Canonical so that they have a Linux version to push support contracts on.
There’s also the Windows Vista factor, which didn’t help them much..
If Dell was smart, they *would* invest in a Linux of their own. Being at the mercy of Microsoft and their vagaries is proving to be a *bad* idea. See the PlaysForSure initiative and how fast Microsoft threw all the P4S partners under the bus when they brought out the Zune.