With price points aimed at attracting small and midsized businesses that buy through reseller channel partners, Dell has introduced a series of PowerEdge servers and PowerVault storage systems featuring a new series of Intel’s "Nehalem" processor also aimed at systems for SMBs.

The question is whether Dell’s new PowerEdge servers, which start at $599 and are available this month, have hit the price points that are palatable to SMBs during economic hard times when IT budgets have been pared down to bare necessities.

“This is a value-oriented market, and that means price often rules most everything else,” says Rob Enderle, principal analyst with the Enderle Group. “They don’t fix the problem that most businesses just can’t afford new hardware at the moment but for those that can, an aggressively priced product in this market will always be attractive.”

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Enderle adds that Intel’s Nehalem offers a higher performance at a given price and energy utilization level, which means it fits with the credo IT organizations are living by these days—do more with less.

“The pricing on these is absolutely competitive, and they will have a feature set appealing to SMBs,” says Sean Phelan, director of the advanced solution group for the channel at Dell. “These are aggressive entry points on these servers.”

Dell CEO Michael Dell and a handful of other industry executives have made statements recently predicting a coming refresh cycle for PCs as businesses take advantage of the release of Microsoft Windows 7 and new chips from Intel as a long-postponed opportunity to refresh their computer fleets.

Phelan points out that these four new 11th generation PowerEdge servers from Dell feature a lifecycle management controller embedded on the motherboard as an option. The chip, which is Dell intellectual property, enables automatic updates of drivers and applications.

In addition to the servers and the embedded controller, Dell also announced a PowerVault NX300 network-attached storage (NAS) device starting at $3,000; Dell Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS) and Dell ProConsult Services.

Dell’s new PowerEdge servers include the T110, T310, R210 and R510. The PowerVault storage system will be available starting in October, as will the UPS units with prices starting at $269.