Dell Making Most Of a Multi-Cloud World

Organizations turn to public and private cloud architectures for many reasons, but oftentimes it’s to help them increase agility and simplify operations. Because each architecture can feature its own benefits and downsides, Dell Technologies has imagined a new approach to bridge the divide and get the best of both worlds.

Dell Technologies APEX is an as-a-Service product offering that helps organizations “provision quickly, scale on demand, and pay as you go across your entire multi-cloud, multi-edge, and multi-data center environment.”

Speaking during this year’s Dell Technologies World Conference, Joe Pollock, Senior Consultant for Dell’s APEX Portfolio, talked about the product’s ability to get organization’s more multi-cloud consistency everywhere, and the step-by-step approach for the as-a-Service portfolio from procurement to deployment, to operation, and to transition.

“First and foremost, procurement simplicity is a priority when subscribing through the APEX console. And then in the other stages, it’s all about the integrated services that we provide,” said Pollock. “Once your subscription is activated, we assign a single point of contact known as a customer success manager. They act as your guide.”

According to Pollock, it takes as little as 30 minutes to receive a quote and place an order. Pollock described how the customer success manager then communicates with the organization throughout the lifecycle, as well as providing updates and status information.

In the deployment phase, Pollock says, Dell Technologies will handle delivery, installation, configuration, provisioning, and activation of the infrastructure. That can make for up to a 64 percent reduction in time required to deploy the new capability.

In the operation phase, Dell Technologies will look after the ongoing monitoring management, maintenance and support activities, with 24/7 uptime support. That can lead to a 39 percent lower overall cost of operations over three years.

Lastly, in the transition phase, Dell Technologies provides organizations with flexibility to upgrade without disruption, if needed; migrate data as needed and discuss services available for that process; and decommission assets at the end of the term, if desired, while “being mindful of your sustainability objectives and your data security requirements.” This results in up to 53 percent less staff time for decommissioning hardware.

“it’s really just an altogether easier way to put compute resources into the into production, with many of the conveniences of public cloud with the consistent operations of hybrid cloud, and with the control you want in private cloud,” said Pollock.

“Customers reported they were able to lower their infrastructure management costs by up to 19 percent. They saw an incremental ROI of up to 171 percent with a payback period in only six months. And because they chose the hybrid cloud option they were able to avoid application re-architecture, which means they were able to reduce cost per virtual machine by up to 90 percent,” he added.

APEX provides a bevy of other services to help organizations with their IT infrastructures, including:

• APEX Data Storage, which allows customers to select from a portfolio of scalable and elastic storage resources with a pay-per-use subscription model;
• APEX Data Protection as a way to simplify data protection with an all-in-one cloud service for backup, disaster recovery, and long-term retention;
• APEX Cyber Recovery Services which copies protected data to a secure vault and isolates critical data to defend against security threats and quickly resume normal operations after a cyberattack allowing security teams to focus on broader concerns; and
• APEX Custom Solutions for building an on-demand environment through two offerings: APEX Flex On-Demand and APEX Data Center Utility.

“Now, I think it’s worth noting that Dell has deployed over 1,900 cyber recovery vaults to over 1,000 customers worldwide,” said Pollock. “So, you can rest assured in our expertise and in our proven best practices for safeguarding your data against threats.”