Dell: We're on track for PC growth

Dell Computer reaffirmed its financial goals for the current quarter, saying it expects to meet targets for sales, earnings and PC unit growth.

The announcement, made after the close of trading on Wednesday, comes ahead of a company meeting Thursday with financial analysts. Dell reiterated the outlook it presented on Feb. 13, which mapped out a 25 percent increase in unit sales from a year ago, with revenue to total $9.5 billion, up 18 percent from a year earlier. The company expects per-share earnings of 23 cents, up 35 percent from a year ago.

"We're seeing double-digit year-over-year revenue growth in all regional markets and customer segments," Dell President Kevin Rollins said in a statement.

Analysts had expected the company to stick by its earlier forecast, according to the consensus estimate of analysts polled by First Call.

The Round Rock, Texas-based company said the signs of strength come as business customers increasingly turn to standard servers running either Linux or Windows.

"Customers continually want higher value, and they're getting flexibility, performance and reliability from standard technology," Rollins said.

Earlier Wednesday, Dell announced plans to offer clusters that use its hardware, the Linux operating system and Oracle's 9i database software. Clustering ties together large numbers of standard computers, switches and storage systems into functional supercomputers. The approach has become a popular alternative to traditional supercomputers, given that a large amount of computing power can be created inexpensively by clustering off-the-shelf computers.

The computer maker also announced that the first of the Dell EMC CX200 storage system has come off its production lines.