Hardware maker Dell has been eyeing the storage market for quite some time now. The company confirmed a huge commitment to this market at this year’s Dell Storage Forum, and is now gradually becoming more aggressive with its efforts.

This week the manufacturer debuted a new big data retention offering that lists high-scalability as a main selling point.  That is coupled with an attempt to cater to several different audiences: the core product can be used as nothing more than just a repository, but can also be the foundation of a more comprehensive analytics solution: customers can choose to run the  Dell Cloudera management platform on top of it, and upgrade the underlying hardware.

The solution includes the DX Object Storage Platform and RainStor database software. This adds the base layer of automation and cost efficiency that compromises Dell’s pitch, and is joined by a very strong services component. The offering is meant to work with existing frontend BI solutions, and setting up the integration plus scaling it afterwards are both included covered under the services element of the deal.

Here are some of the specs that Dell promises:

“Dell’s Big Data retention solution can provide an average data compression ratio of up to 40:1, freeing up disk space approximately 97 percent. This greatly-reduced footprint can accelerate query access for analytics.

While available on other Dell storage platforms, when a Big Data retention solution is added to the DX Object Storage Platform customers can add capacity in amounts as small as 2TB, scaling up to petabytes and to billions of objects without the set-up and management complexity and costs of traditional file and block storage.”

Dell is investing not just in R&D but also potential outside assets. Last week the vendor unveiled a $60 million fund that will be dedicated to big data startups in this industry.