Alyson Langon & Devon Reed, Dell Technologies | Dell Technologies World 2021
[Music] hello and welcome back to the cube's coverage of dell tech world virtual i'm john furrier host of thecube we got a great uh two guests here talking about the new apex brand and products allison langan senior manager product marketing at dell and devin reed senior director of product management dell all around the apex two cube alumni great to see you remotely soon to be in person it's right around the corner but great to see you hey thanks for having me and us so so i wish we were in person we missed the dell tech worlds amazing event um we're virtual this year but all great goodness is here but great big announcements still go on the apex brandon portfolio is coming together the cloud and as a service everything's happening you got the new apex data storage service take us through what it what is the new service why sure um so i can start um you know we've been seeing this this shift towards an as a service model you know it's always struggled with complexities associated with under and over provisioning capital budgets constraints uh lengthy and complex refresh cycles so you know the events over this past year and our new normals really you know accelerated these you know challenges and made them even more manageable you know organizations need to become really agile and um they don't want to invest make big upfront investments in infrastructure when they're having such a hard time forecasting their needs you know there's new levels of unpredictability that's been accelerating this you know adoption of as a service so this is why we're introducing apex data storage services essentially we're radically simplifying how customers can acquire and manage their storage resources so data storage services is going to be the first as a service offering in our apex portfolio so it's going to provide an on-prem portfolio of scalable and elastic storage resources that are designed for opex treatment it's all going to be anchored in our apex console so it's going to be a seamless self-service experience where you just have a few key inputs your data service your performance tier you're looking for your commitment term your base capacity for example and then all the infrastructure is owned and maintained by us built on our industry-leading technology so really delivering a super simple self-service as a service experience you know when jeff clark was first talking about this as a service as it should be you know introducing the project apex dev and i was kind of okay this is a kind of what we heard when we were last in person in 2019 the end-to-end dell cloud hybrid cloud operating model this is kind of what we're talking about here what's something that covers what's what's what is this data service how does that vector into that because you know data control planes are being talked about a lot the use of data in ai and ai operations impacts i.t and cloud scale so hybrid's now the operating model for the enterprise yeah yeah definitely and this this is really only where we're starting and we're going to be starting on a set of apex data storage services so if i step back a little bit and talk a little bit about what apex data storage services are i'd like to draw a little bit of a contrast to how our customers procure their equipment today so a customer typically today says hey i need some storage i need some mid-range storage i need for example a powerstor 5000 and then they work with the sales representative and says i need uh 24 1.92 terabyte drives i need certain connectivity and then we present a quote to them with a whole bunch of line items with a lot of different prices and then the customer needs to purchase that year purchase that up front and then uh they own the asset and then they manage the asset so they're taking the risk they need to plan for that capacity and what we're doing is we're radically flipping that model uh and what we're what we're doing here is we're just driving to an outcome so customers they don't want to take that risk they just want to drive to their business outcomes and they want to manage their applications so what they have to do in this model is just pick hey i want storage services i want some block services i want a certain performance level and i learn a certain capacity and i want a commitment level and what we do is we basically create a rate for them and we optimize a lot of our processes on the back end to be able to once that order has booked we target a very rapid time of 14 days from the time the water's dropped until the customer can actually stop operating on that gear from the time is dropped to the time that they can provision their first volume is 14 days and really all they have to do is operate the gear and we manage everything everything for them that you know from capacity management to change management to software life cycles patching ndu and things like that and now john i want to address your question about the hybrid world it's absolutely designed for a hybrid world so and our first release will be uh offering this on customer apprentices and we're also introducing or announcing a relationship we have with a data center provider uh equinix which is the largest uh co-location provider in the world and what we'll be able to do is provide the subscription service of this as a service uh not only customer on customer premises but in near cloud environments in a co-location facility and we also have software assets that will extend into this environment all driven by a central pane of unified uh experience that's austin the hybrid cloud has got to have that table stakes now so good good nice call out allison i got to ask you on the customer side what's the drivers for the apex data storage service what was the key things that they're you're hearing why this is important to them and what is the value proposition right great question so i touched on a little bit of that up front but it's you know essentially what we what we do with this offering is take it out of the infrastructure business so that they can focus on more value-added activities focusing on customer satisfaction um you know because we're maintaining we're managing and maintaining all the infrastructure for them you know some of the key pain points are just you know the overhead associated with maintaining and managing that infrastructure but there's also the financial aspect as well these services are designed for offex treatment so you're not having to make that big initial capex expense um you're really able to align your expenses with actual usage versus anticipated usage so it eliminates that you know cycle of over and under provisioning which either results in you know over-provisioned waste or under-provisioned risk we essentially you know streamline all of those processes so the customer just has to worry about you know operating the operating their storage and it takes a lot of that worry off of them and they're able to just pay for what they use elastically scalar resources up and down um so it's just like essentially really simplified and more predictable yeah i mean pay-as-you-go has always been one of those things where hey i'll pay when i need it i got to ask you on the differentiation side this comes up all the time how are you guys different from alternatives how do you differentiate going forward how do you guys be successful what's the what's the strategy what's that what's the focus yeah so i'll take the i'll take a couple points and then i'll pass it over to you allison if you don't mind um so first and foremost um i've asked this a lot so what does dell bring to the table uh in this whole apex and as of service first and foremost dell is the leading infrastructure provider for all of it on premise we have the enterprise infrastructure we're leading across just about every major category of infrastructure so first and foremost we have that we also have the scale the reach not only in our enterprise relationships through our partner community so that is one that is one huge advantage um that we have one thing that we're and we talked about this model um the level of management that we provide for our customers is uh second to none with this solution so we provide um we provide all of the the difficult management tasks from end to end that a customer that we repeatedly hear from our customers that they don't want to be dealing with anymore and we're going to be able to do that at scale for our customers and uh i know there's a couple more points so i'd like to i'll pass it on to allison and she can uh she can address a couple more points there yeah sure i mean obviously you know devon makes a great point as being you know an industry leader and just the breadth of our portfolio in general beyond just storage that we can essentially deliver as a service but you know with our initial flagship storage as a service offering um so with apex data storage services you know i talked a little bit about you know the pay as you go pay as you know pay for what you use you know essentially the way this works is you know there's an initial you know base commitment of capacity that the customer commits to and then they're able to elastically scale up and down above that base and only pay for what they use one of the differentiators we're bringing to the table is that you know in addition to that base and that you know the on-demand space if you will that that goes above that we're charging a single rate so it's really a simplified and transparent billing process so you're not getting any overage penalties or fees for going into that on demand it's essentially a single rate based on your commitment and you know as much as you scale up and down you're gonna you're gonna stay within one single rate so no surprise overage penalties so that's definitely something that that differentiates us and the customers also have the ability to raise that base commitment at any point coterminously in their contract so if they're seeing like you know a strong growth trajectory or anticipating a more you know a big you know burst in usage or for some data intensive type workloads you know we can add they can raise that floor commitment resulting in a lower rate but still a single rate for both base and on demand well certainly data storage and moving data around having it in the edge to the core to whatever is critical and i think i think that's a great service the question i want to ask you guys next to address is give us an update on the apex brand and portfolio overall how does this fit in how is it shaping up can you take a minute to explain kind of where it is right now and what's available how what's the strategy and what's coming sure so i can talk a little bit about what's available what we're talking about today and then um maybe devin if you can touch a little bit on on the strategy and going forward um but what we've announced today is you know at dell tech world is the apex brand the apex portfolio which as i mentioned is our strategy for as a service in cloud so in addition to our data storage services offering that we've been focused on today um which is part of our infrastructure services we're also introducing our cloud services as well as some more customizable services so from a cloud services perspective we're also going to be talking about our apex private cloud and apex hybrid cloud offerings and then of course the apex console is really what brings all of these pieces together it's that single self-service experience to manage all of your as a service resources from a single place devon i don't know if you want to take it take it yeah so what i would what i would like to add is a little bit more color on the customized services so um if you look at apex at a high level um it's really how we're transforming the way we do business with our partners and customers and the way we deliver products and offers to our our partners and customers and within the apex umbrella there's really two segments of customers that we see one there's still a segment of customers that want some technology control they want to build their they want to build their clouds they want to build their infrastructure and that's where really the apex custom comes into it and we have a very large business in our custom business today with uh dell technologies on demand with flex on demand and data center utility and those will be uh rebranded to be apex flex on demand and apex data center utility um you know that's what we're announcing here and then the second portion is really this apex turnkey offer where customers don't care to manage it they want to just consume they want to operate their gear and that's where a lot of the innovation a lot of the um a lot of the strategy that we're talking about here with the hybrid cloud service the private cloud service apex data storage services so we're building out a set of uh world-class infrastructure services that will then be able to wrap our our leading infrastructure utilities around data protection security migration compliance etc and then build a set of uh horizontal and vertical solutions on top of this infrastructure to provide unparametered value to our customers awesome alison i got to ask you because this is always the case right there's always one or two features that jump out at a product uh everything as a service clearly aligns with the market macro conditions in the marketplace and the evolution of the architecture in all businesses that's clear there's no debate on that you guys got that nailed what's the what's the key thing if you had to kind of boil out the one thing that people are gravitating towards on on the data storage service because um everyone kind of is going here right so what's if you get if you for people that are watching to learning what's what's popping out as the key product feature here or a few things that jump out sure so i mean really at the core it's all about simplicity um it's in terms of like the console itself which we've talked about it's you know you have your infrastructure resources your storage your cloud services and it's all it's just so simple it's just it's a matter of a few simple clicks and inputs that are pretty intuitive to meet your needs it's the fact that it's outcome based you know we're not focused on delivering a product it's really truly delivering an outcome and a service to meet the customers needs so it's a whole new way of you know approaching the market and talking to our customers and making it intuitive and simple and seamless and really you know taking so much of the the complexity off of the table for them um so it's the simplicity of the console it's the the being able to you know transition to a more opex model um from a financial aspect is huge and then you know aligning your expenses you know with your actual versus in you know anticipated usage so being able to manage that unpredictability um so it's not necessarily talking about a specific feature but really you know how we're driving towards really focusing on on the customer needs now yeah the business values right there it's all about the outcome and you know we're about getting charged on this variable you know overage on some service dev how about under the hood if i look at the engine of this how it fits into the kind of product architecture you look at the product management you're building the product and the engineers are cranking away what's the what's the gear what gears look like what's the machinery look like under the hood what's the cool tech if any um you would share if you can share yeah it's interesting that you asked that john and it's it's really interesting that we got probably what 12 minutes into this interview and we didn't even talk about a product not one single product and that is really by design here um we're really we're really selling a service we're selling an offer the product is the service the services the product and it's really about selling those outcomes um but at the end at the end of the day since we're we're talking talking shop here um we are introducing block services and that's powered by our our new award-winning uh power store mid-range uh product and our file services are going to be powered by our um our award-winning power scale and isilon systems as well um so we'll be interested you know introducing block and file services and uh we'll be extending that to object object services and data storage services uh yeah awesome you know allison and devin i was talking to a friend we were on weren't on camera i wish the camera was turned on but we were just riffing about all the coolness around devops devsecops how it's going to large-scale cloud ops and we're talking about all that and we we're both kind of coming to the same conclusion that the next generation on top of all this automation is the x as a service everything is a service because if you go that next level that's where it is because the outcomes the outcome is the services and that's underpinned by automation ai ops all the other stuff that's kind of hardened underneath still enables it and you guys are already there so congratulations that's really cool reaction to that uh that concept of automation powers x as a service yeah i'll take that one john so um while i i talked only about the main storage technologies that power this there is a phenomenal amount of investment and work and thought going into building out the underlying infrastructure and operations behind this because we need to provide the operations and management of this infrastructure services uh not only for storage but for compute and solutions and devops environments at scale and it's crucial that we we build out that infrastructure that automation that machine learning ai ops to really support this so so yeah you're absolutely right that's that's fundamental to getting this model uh nailed allison you're feeling pretty good about the product and the service now everything as a service that's your wheelhouse it's happening yeah here we are we got we've got apex portfolio has arrived so yeah feeling good um definitely excited future's bright congratulations allison devin thanks for coming on the cube and sharing the updates on the apex's new data storage services the new portfolio um the directionally correct uh action of everything as a service and all the automation that goes underneath it's really kind of a game changer thanks so much for sharing on the cube really appreciate it thanks for coming on thanks a lot john thank you okay dell tech world cube coverage continues i'm john furrier the host thanks for watching
2021-05-10 22:24
