Dell tossed its hat into the cloud computing ring last night, or more precisely declared its having done so about 2 years ago with a group providing optimized storage, server, and data center solutions for its top 50 customers. At a press briefing high above San Francisco on the 52nd floor, Dell officials suggested they are moving to the cloud and places in the technology stack where customers are pulling them.

For a company that acknowledges it is not about software and one not as visibly aggressive about R & D as competitors Sun, IBM, and HP, Dell has nonetheless attracted some high profile customers or “partners” as the announcement about the event indicated. Facebook VP of Technical Operations Jonathan Heiliger was careful not to position Facebook as aligned only with Dell, but by the end of this video he made it clear Dell is offering hardware that fits into Facebook’s plans for rapidly prototyping and delivering new features to an audience of 100 million users.