Dell today announced its next wave of converged infrastructure offerings, Active Systems, that provide a flexible a foundation for application, virtual desktop infrastructure and private cloud deployments.

Active Infrastructure has been designed for businesses that are standardizing on x86 server architectures and need a more dynamic infrastructure operated in a simplified and automated fashion. Dell offers two ways to deploy Active infrastructure:

- Pre-integrated systems - pre-engineered, pre-assembled, and pre-tested systems coupled with enterprise deployment services
- Active System Architectures - customizable blueprints for building virtualized infrastructure

Dell also offers optimized and validated Active Solutions for private clouds, virtual desktop infrastructure, and enterprise applications such as Microsoft Lync, Exchange and Sharepoint 2010.

Central to all Active Systems is the new Active System Manager, a tool for the most common infrastructure administrative tasks. It delivers operational benefits such as helping to eliminate up to 75% of steps needed for "power on to production." Active Systems are built with the following infrastructure elements:

- The PowerEdge M1000e chassis and 12th generation blade servers
- Dell Compellent or EqualLogic storage, including the new EqualLogic Blade Array
- A new plug-and-play blade I/O module - the PowerEdge M I/O Aggregator
- Optimization at the system level

Dell is also introducing the pre-integrated Active System 800, a blade-based model that includes EqualLogic storage and Force10 networking and is designed for virtualized environments with applications that demand performance and scalability.

The Active System 800, the associated Active System Architectures, and Active System Manager will be available in the US in late November 2012 and worldwide early next year. The Active System 800 will be available worldwide from Dell and its global PartnerDirect channel partners.