The Datacentre Scaleable Solutions group, will work with companies in fields like online services, oil and gas exploration, research, cloud hosting and telecommunications.

Many deploy huge volumes of x86 server hardware, and the performance of their IT operation is core to their business, so Dell has thought "I will have some of that."

While these outfits are not hyperscale yet, they are big and growing. They have similar hardware needs to the Googles and Baidus of the world but typically don't have massive internal engineering organizations with the know-how to design their own servers, Dell said.

The DSS group will work with those customers to help them select semi-custom hardware which is different from general-purpose servers and better suited to the applications they're running.

Dell said that DSS is about the delivery as much as the products. These fast growing companies have spikes in demand and sometimes need extra capacity in a hurry, and Dell says it can deliver thousands of servers at short notice when needed.

It will develop new hardware for these second tier hyperscale customers, starting with servers that it plans to sell in the fourth quarter designed mostly for customers in China.

Dell has had some success in a similar sort of model. It had a Data Center Solutions division, or DCS, around eight years ago to target big hyperscale customers. Dell was the first big server OEM to have such a business, and it performed well at a time when the PC side of Dell's business was struggling.

Now rivals have gotten in on the act and some of Dell's original hyperscale team has moved on.