[ADVERTORIAL] In recent years, most organizations have found their way to the cloud. Especially for small and medium-sized organizations, the cost of that cloud strategy can prove to be a setback after a while. So many companies prefer a multicloud approach, but even that comes with challenges – resulting in difficulties in scaling and innovating quickly. Dell APEX removes that complexity with a consistent, scalable IT infrastructure.
Agility, flexibility, sustainability … these are all terms that play a role in any company’s strategy. While a cloud model seems to meet each of these requirements, companies question the cost and security of running data and applications in a cloud environment. Therefore, they often explore options to bring their workloads back on-premises.
“At Dell, we view cloud not as a location, but as an operating model. With APEX, we give our customers the flexibility they know from being in the cloud, but on-prem,” said John Mariani, Consumption Sales Leader at Dell Technologies. “APEX provides a modern cloud and consumption experience that brings the benefits of a cloud work model to devices, applications and data. Consider not only cost efficiencies, but also simplified management and improved security. Since you use your own data in your own environment, you always have control over what’s happening in your systems.”
Infrastructure that is immediately available
Dell APEX Subscriptions let customers scale up immediately, as the infrastructure is already available on-prem. The customer commits to a certain share of the solution, after which additional usage on demand is charged at the same price as it is within the commitment. This allows customers to align their usage with expenses without being penalized for on-demand usage.
So there is no need to invest a lot of capital in hardware and software in advance. As a result, customers also do not suffer from supply chain problems or rising costs. A transparent rate card is established on day one. Even if costs rise in the market, customers continue to enjoy transparent billing. Dell offers businesses the option to purchase IT resources such as storage, compute and network services on a pay-per-use basis.
“The solution is transparent and eliminates the need to wait for certain hardware or capacity to be delivered,” said Mattias Denys, Inside Sales Manager Mid Market at Dell Technologies. “In the past, that waiting time could easily reach a month or more, but with APEX you enjoy immediate time-to-value.”
No risk of vendor lock-in
Dell APEX is a total solution that provides ultimate flexibility for a hybrid cloud environment. “If customers already use software in Azure Cloud or AWS, for example for protecting data, APEX allows them to apply that same software in their on-prem environment,” Denys explained. “It also works in reverse, so companies can count on their familiar functionality and performance in any environment. There is no need to switch systems or retrain employees to get up and running with new technology. Dell APEX simplifies the hybrid, multicloud world. Wherever your data resides, we take care of it.”
One of the biggest risks of a multicloud approach is vendor lockin. Dell APEX offers an answer to that, too. “As soon as you want to move a workload from one CSP to another or on-prem, there is a chance that you have to rewrite the application for that new environment,” Mariani says. “Moreover, you need the right skills to manage this process. With APEX, you avoid lock-in and decide which services to use from a hyperscaler environment. For example, you can enable AI services from Azure Cloud with on-prem workloads, courtesy of the hybrid cloud architecture that seamlessly combines the benefits of cloud and on-prem.”
The quality of Dell technology
Dell APEX is more than a consumption model. It lets businesses enjoy the quality of Dell technology in a flexible and affordable way. “With APEX, customers get the opportunity to consume our technology with a transparent payment mechanism – with features that help them better understand the technology, including cyber information, alerts, etc.,” said Mariani. “From hardware and software to cloud, in every domain and for every solution, Dell is one of the leaders in the market. We now have all that bundled into one model.”
Moreover, customers enjoy not only Dell quality, but also the widely acclaimed Intel technology. “Almost all of our technology runs on Intel,” says Mariani. “From my experience, Intel Xeon processors are well suited for modern consumption subscriptions because of their performance, which is critical for today’s dynamic data centers. They support a wide range of workloads, from AI and HPC to traditional enterprise applications and cloud-native solutions. In addition, they provide secure and accountable AI operations with hardware-assisted confidential data processing, protecting sensitive data and models during operation. This makes Intel Xeon ideal for high-performance AI tasks in APEX.”
Beyond technology, Dell also provides the people to support the APEX model. “Our local presence ensures that customers are helped quickly. But also our global experts are very open,” Denys explains. “And in addition, we also have partners who are APEX certified and add value for customers in implementing the right infrastructure.”
The results are clear. An IDC study shows that companies with Dell APEX are up to 60% faster at deploying new capacity and experience 64% less downtime. They also see their operating costs decrease by 39% over a three-year period.
What will the future bring?
Mariani and Denys see three trends that will only make Dell APEX more relevant in the future. “The footprint of IT is a key operating point for businesses,” Denys says. “That’s why we offer customers tools that give them more insights into the operation of their systems. So they can make predictions and, as with the cloud, decide to run a system at a lower speed on weekends, for example, to save energy. Workloads can be moved dynamically to make optimal use of servers and other resources. And at the end of the lifecycle, Dell can safely recycle the technology kit as an owner.”
Another trend, according to Mariani, is the risk of proliferation. “We’ve found with both virtualization and cloud computing that users often create and purchase components thoughtlessly. Chances are we’re going to see this again with the rise of AI applications. Therefore, it is important to have a validation step that verifies that certain AI services are useful, ethical and cost-effective. With AIOps, our APEX customers are getting one step closer to this today.”
Finally, the growing volume of data also poses challenges. “We generate a lot of data that we can’t so much deduplicate or compress. In AI, you only have to look at the data that computer vision generates, for example, in self-driving vehicles where multiple cameras record several terabytes of unique data every minute,” Mariani said. “All that data needs to be stored and processed somewhere. That’s why at Dell we offer solutions that live in the edge, core and cloud. So with APEX, you’re ready for the future.”
This is an article submitted by Dell. The editors are not responsible for the content. Want to learn more about Dell APEX? Find out all about this unique solution here and be sure to come to the Dell Technologies Forum on Nov. 21, where you can attend a session on Dell APEX.