Cloud gamers OnLive on working with Dell DCS

October 24, 2010

In my last entry I talked about how Steve Perlman, CEO and founder of OnLive joined the recent press round table we had in New York.  OnLive is a cloud-based gaming company that launched earlier this year and whose servers were custom built by Dell’s Data Center Solution (DCS) group.

To give you a bit more insight into how the two companies worked together, here is a short video with Bruce Grove, OnLive’s director of strategic relations talking about the relationship between Dell and OnLive.

Some of the ground Bruce covers:

  • The value, as a start up, of working with someone who knows how to do supply chain, logistics and build tons of servers.
  • Working together as a team to design the servers (engineering teams on both sides as well as manufacturing teams).

Extra-credit reading:

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

El Reg love: “Dell’s DCS is a big shiny server star”

October 19, 2010

Timothy Prickett Morgan of everyone’s favorite vulture-branded media site The Register attended a round table discussion we held a few weeks ago in New York.  His piece from that event, which was focused around the cloud, was posted yesterday.

You should check out the whole article but here are some snippets to whet your appetite:

What DCS is all about

For the past several years – and some of them not particularly good ones – Dell’s Data Center Services (DCS) bespoke iron-making forge down in Round Rock, Texas, has been a particularly bright spot in the company’s enterprise business.

The unit has several hundred employees, who craft and build custom server kit for these picky Webby shops, where power and cooling issues actually matter more than raw performance. The high availability features necessary to keep applications running are in the software, so you can rip enterprise-class server features out of the boxes – they are like legs on a snake.

How we’re working with web-based gaming company OnLive

“These guys took a bet on Facebook early, and they benefited from that,” says Perlman [OnLive Founder and CEO]. “And now they are making a bet on us.”

OnLive allows gamers to play popular video games on their PCs remotely through a Web browser and soon on their TVs with a special (and cheap) HDMI and network adapter. The games are actually running back in OnLive’s data centers, and the secret sauce that Perlman has been working on to make console games work over the Internet and inside of a Web browser is what he called “error concealment”.

DCS had to create a custom server to integrate their video compression board into the machine, as well as pack in some high-end graphics cards to drive the games. Power and cooling are big issues. And no, you can’t see the servers. It’s a secret.

Extra-credit reading:

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

Onlive’s gaming cloud powered by custom Dell servers

June 15, 2010

Today at E3, OnLive Inc is kicking off the roll out of its cloud gaming service.  OnLive, whose motto is “Just Play,” leverages broadband and the cloud to deliver on-demand gaming titles directly to users’ PCs, Macs or even TVs.

Square Enix's Batman: Arkham Asylum -- one of the first batch of games available from OnLive

This new service could prove to be a real “game changer.”  As Dell Data Center Solutions director Andy Rhodes, helping with the launch at E3 explains, “I see it as the start as of a move of processing power from consoles into data centers…from the center of the living room into the data center.”

Building the OnLive Cloud

So what’s behind this gaming cloud, Dell of course 🙂 (well, at least a good part of it).  The Dell Data Center Solutions (DCS) group began working with OnLive a few years back to design and build custom-tailored systems for the OnLive platform.

The problem statement for the solution was to create an infrastructure that supported the streaming of HD-quality video game over the internet, drove down the total cost of ownership and allowed OnLive to scale quickly as the company grows.  The DCS team worked directly with the folks from OnLive to architect an ultra-dense and uber-power efficient infrastructure solution designed around OnLive’s super secret hardware components and software.  Thousand of these customized systems are now deployed at OnLive data centers around the country.

Plug and Play Racks

By leveraging the DCS supply chain and fulfillment chops, Dell is able to deliver pre-integrated fully racked solutions that can be hooked up and powered on within hours of arriving at an OnLive data center.  Going forward Dell will continue to work with OnLive to create new infrastructure architectures for future generations of the service.

Game on! (and on, and on and on)

Electronic Arts' Mass Attack 2: available via OnLive

Who’s on First?

The initial batch of 23 titles available to OnLive subscribers include:

  • Assassin’s Creed II (Ubisoft)
  • Batman: Arkham Asylum (Square-Enix)
  • Borderlands (Take Two Interactive Entertainment)
  • Dragon Age: Origins (Electronic Arts)
  • Just Cause 2 (Square-Enix)
  • Mass Effect 2 (Electronic Arts)
  • NBA 2K10 (Take Two Interactive Entertainment)
  • Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands (Ubisoft)
  • Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Conviction (Ubisoft)

Extra Credit reading

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

An overview of the worldwide gaming market

June 11, 2010

Dell’s Data Center Solutions (DCS) group has both custom offerings and, as we announced a couple of months ago, a new line of systems and solutions targeted at a wider audience.

One the the key markets we are looking at for our new line is gaming.  To get up to speed on the market I took a look at the report that the PC gaming alliance put together for its members.  It was a very cool read.  Here a few things I learned:

Some fun facts to know and tell:

  • Last year the global PC game software market was just over $13B while the global console software market was nearly $20B.
  • The revenue from PC games  is expected to pass the revenue from console software in 2012.
  • Last year China was the leading country for PC game revenue, 99+% which came from non-retail sources e.g. subscriptions and digital distribution.
  • Worldwide piracy is decreasing as PC games move from package software to a service based business where users pay per usage.
  • On a revenue basis the majority or leading PC game companies come from China or South Korea.
  • Biggest growth last year came from the free-to-play (F2P) games where delivery of these games on social networks like Zynga’s Farmville on Facebook took off.

Stay tuned…

Dell has publicly been a big player in the PC gaming market through our line of Alienware systems (in fact we had an announcement yesterday).  Where we have been a lot quieter however is talking about how our Data Center Solutions (DCS) group fits in.   Next week at E3 we will be making an announcement to explain just what we’ve been up to.  So stay tuned next week and see how DCS “plays” in gaming 🙂

Pau for now….

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Posted by Barton George