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Dell Compellent

Logo: Unknown author Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons3

Computer data storage

Compellent Technologies, Inc., was an American manufacturer of enterprise computer data storage systems that provided block-level storage resources to small and medium sized IT infrastructures. The company was founded in 2002 and headquartered in Eden Prairie, Minnesota.2 It is part of Dell.1 Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0

Last updated Oct 21, 2026.

Overview

2002Founded1
  • Industrycomputer storage media, recording medium1
  • HeadquartersEden Prairie1

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Dell Compellent building
Photo: Grika, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons5

Compellent Technologies, Inc., was an American manufacturer of enterprise computer data storage systems that provided block-level storage resources to small and medium sized IT infrastructures. The company was founded in 2002 and headquartered in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. Compellent's flagship product, Storage Center, is a storage area network (SAN) system that combines a standards-based hardware platform and a suite of virtualized storage management applications, including automated tiered storage through a proprietary process called "DataProgression", thin provisioning and replication. The company developed software and products aimed at mid-size enterprises and sold through a channel network of independent providers and resellers. Dell acquired the company in February 2011, after which it was briefly a subsidiary known as Dell Compellent.2

Corporate structure

Dell Compellent is part of a group headed by Dell Technologies. 207 entities, 72 countries on record. Switch between the flow chart and the network, and select any entity to see its details.

  • Dell Technologies Menlo Park, California, United States
    • Dell Wilmington, Delaware, United States
    • Dell EMC Hopkinton, Massachusetts, United States
      • EMC (Ireland) Subsidiary · Ireland
      • EMC TECHNOLOGY INDIA PRIVATE LIMITED Subsidiary · Bangalore, India
      • VMW Holdco LLC Subsidiary · Round Rock, Texas, United States
    • Alienware Subsidiary · Miami
      • AlienVibes Subsidiary
    • Dell Boomi Subsidiary · Chesterbrook
    • Pivotal Software Subsidiary · San Francisco
    • Secureworks Inc. Subsidiary · Atlanta
    • Branch of Dell Free Zone Company LLC Subsidiary · Saudi Arabia
    • Branch office of foreign company Dell Emerging Markets (EMEA) Limited United Kingdom – Branch Office Skopje Subsidiary · North Macedonia
    • Dataloop Information Technology Consultancy - Sole Proprietorship L.L.C. Subsidiary · United Arab Emirates
    • Dataloop Ltd. Subsidiary · Israel
    • Dell (Chengdu) Company Limited Subsidiary · China
    • Dell (China) Company Limited Subsidiary · China
    • Dell (China) Company Limited - Beijing Branch 戴尔（中国）有限公司北京分公司 Subsidiary · China
    • Dell (China) Company Limited - Beijing Information Technology Branch Subsidiary · China
    • Dell (China) Company Limited - Dalian Branch Subsidiary · China
    • Dell (China) Company Limited - Guangzhou Branch Subsidiary · China
    • Dell (China) Company Limited - Hangzhou Branch Subsidiary · China
    • Dell (China) Company Limited - Jinan Branch Subsidiary · China
    • Dell (China) Company Limited - Nanjing Branch Subsidiary · China
    • Dell (China) Company Limited - Shanghai Branch Subsidiary · China
    • Dell (China) Company Limited - Shenyang Branch Subsidiary · China
    • Dell (China) Company Limited - Shenzhen Branch Subsidiary · China
    • Dell (China) Company Limited - Wuhan Branch Subsidiary · China
    • Dell (China) Company Limited - Xian Branch Subsidiary · China
    • Dell (Xiamen) Company Limited Subsidiary · China
    • and 158 more

Built from parent and subsidiary links from GLEIF, the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (CC0); subsidiaries listed in Exhibit 21 of annual reports filed with the SEC; subsidiaries, stakes and holdings from Wikidata (CC0). Each entity in the chart links to its source.

The story

Compellent Technologies was founded in 2002 by Phil Soran, John Guider, and Larry Aszmann. The three had network storage and virtualization backgrounds.

The company had its initial public offering on October 15, 2007, became profitable for the first time in Q3 2008 and was profitable in consecutive quarters since. On February 11, 2010, it announced Q4 2009 revenues had increased 35 percent over Q4 2008, the company’s 17th consecutive quarter of revenue growth, with full year revenue of $125.3 million.

On December 13, 2010, Compellent announced it agreed to be acquired by Dell for approximately $960 million. The purchase was completed in February 2011 and the product line sold as Dell Compellent.

In the following years, Dell slowly phased out the Compellent brand name, naming the products simply Dell SCxxxx (for example, Dell SC9000).

From Wikipedia’s article on Compellent Technologies, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4

Products and brands

Products

Storage Center

Compellent’s storage area network (SAN) system, called "Storage Center", combines several virtualized storage-management applications with hardware. The product tracks metadata, information about each block of data stored on the Compellent system, including the date and time written, frequency of access, associated volume, type of disk drive used, type of data stored and RAID level. Large amounts of data are stored and managed on a granular level and assigned automatically to high-performance drives or large-capacity drives. Compellent said this method of data management can lower hardware, power and cooling costs."

The base configuration of Storage Center includes a dual, redundant disk array controller, disk enclosure, disk drives, connectivity hardware, and software modules.

For high availability purposes, I/O ports and power supplies are also redundant.

The operating system, called SCOS (Storage Center Operating System), is regularly updated. Software modules include:

Read the full text

Storage virtualization

Thin provisioning

Automated tiered storage

Continuous snapshots

Remote replication and live volumes

Boot from SAN

Compellent’s hardware supports different server/host interfaces (such as Fibre Channel and iSCSI) and drive technologies (such as solid state drives, Fibre Channel, Serial Attached SCSI and SATA disk drives). To expand the hardware, users add new drives or I/O cards to the existing system.

Support and services

Compellent provides technical support and professional managed services through its Copilot team, housed at its Minnesota headquarters. Copilot technical support and service representatives provide maintenance, managed services, consultative services and training. SupportAssist (formerly: Phone Home) is an automated problem-detection service that remotely monitors each customer’s SAN and provides proactive alerting on issues.

From Wikipedia’s article on Compellent Technologies, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4

Subsidiaries and ownership

Parent company

From Wikidata.1

Timeline

  1. 2002Founded Founded1

Sources

The numbers on this page point here. Each one links to the record it came from.

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