Akanksha Mehrotra, Dell Technologies | Dell Technologies World 2021
[Music] welcome back to dtw 2021 thecube's continuous coverage of dell technologies world the virtual version my name is dave vellante and for years we've been looking forward to the day that the on-premises experience was substantially similar to that offered in the public cloud and one of the biggest gaps has been subscription based experiences pricing and simplicity and transparency with agility and scalability not buying and installing a box but rather consuming an outcome-based service to support my it infrastructure needs and with me to talk about how dell is delivering on this vision is akonchka marocha vice president marketing for apex at dell technologies welcome makanchika great to see you thank you thanks for having me oh it's our pleasure so we're going to dig into apex we know that dell has been delivering cloud-based solutions for a long time now but it seems like there's a convergence happening in all these areas and it's generating a lot of talk in the industry what are your customers asking you to deliver and how is dell responding yeah dave there's uh there's a few trends that we're seeing uh and they've been in place for a while but um you know they have accelerated um certainly over the past year the first one is organizations all over the world uh want to become more digital in order to modernize their operation and foster innovation on behalf of their customers and they've been driving for years digital transformation to do so that in and of itself isn't necessarily new but the relative complexity of driving digital transformation for example when they're bringing on a predominantly or all of a remote uh workforce as well as the relative pace of change uh for example if they see a remarkable spike in the consumption of digital content have both validated over the past year and because of that the need for agility has gone up the other trend that we see is that there's a clear preference for a hybrid cloud approach uh customers tell us that they need on-prem cloud resources to help mitigate risk for applications that need dedicated fast performance as well as you know in order to contain costs but then they also tell us that public cloud is here to stay for the increased agility that it provides the simplified operations as well as the faster access to innovation and so what's really clear is that you know both private cloud and public cloud have their strengths and picking one you're in in you know inevitably trading off the benefits of the other and so and organizations want the flexibility to be able to choose the right path to best meet their business objectives and i.t as a service delivered at the location of your choice is one way to do that um as you know we talk a lot to analysts like yourself and and they tend to agree with us um idc predicts that by 2024 over half of the data center infrastructure is going to be consumed as a service at dell technologies we're beginning to see this shift happen already um as you said we've been providing flexible consumption and as a service solutions for well over a decade um however what's different now is that we're radically simplifying that entire technology experience to deliver this at scale to our entire installments and that's what avex is all about great thank you so i know dell is very proud of its high i think i got this ratio right hi a due to say ratio right numerator is bigger than the denominator um and and you've got a good track record in this regard you're gonna you can announce project apex in october and you've provided a preview of what was coming then and today you're fully unveiling apex no more project just apex what's apex all about and and what customer benefits specifically does apex deliver yeah yeah so you're right we announced this as a vision back in october and and now we're kind of taking away the project and it's generally available so you can kind of refer to it as apex going forward apex represents our portfolio of as a service offerings um these help simplify digital transformation for our customers by increasing their it's agility and their control we believe it's a solution that helps bridge this divide between public um and private cloud by delivering as a service wherever it's needed to help organizations meet the needs of their digital transformation agenda um talking to our customers in terms of uh customer benefits we've centered around um three areas and they are simplicity agility and control as the key benefits that apex is going to provide to our customers so let me let me unpack these one by one and kind of demonstrate how we're going to deliver on these promises let's start with simplicity apex represents a fundamental shift in the way that we deliver our technology portfolio and obviously we do this to simplify you know i.t for our customers our goal is to remove complexity from every stage of the customer journey so for example apex with apex and apex offers that i'll just get into in a bit um we take away the complexity the pain and frankly the undifferentiated work of managing infrastructure so that organizations can focus on what they do best right adding value to their organizations another way in which we simplify is streamline the procurement process so we allow customers to just simplify a simple set of outcomes that they're looking for and subscribe to a service um using an easy web-based console and then we'll take it from there we will pick the technology and the services that best uh meets the need uh you know best delivers on those set of outcomes and then we'll deliver it for them so as a result organizations can kind of take advantage of the technology that best meets their needs but without all the complexity of life cycle management whether it's at the beginning or at the end you know the decommissioning part of the life cycle next let's talk about agility um this is an area that's been top of mind for customers as i said certainly over the past year and frankly it's been one of the main driving factors over the as a service revolution again with apex we aim to deliver agility at every stage of the customer journey so for example with apex we our goal is to get customers started on projects faster than they ever have before within their data center we target a 14 day time to value from order to activation or from subscription to activation you know within the location of their choice another driver for agility is having access to technology when you need it without you know costly over provisioning so with apex you can dynamically scale your resources up and down based on changing business requirements and then a third barrier of agility and this is a you know serious one it's just forecasting costs and containing them um and with apex um you know our promise is that you're paying for technology only as it's used using a clear consistent and a transparent rate so you're never guessing what you're going to pay there's no overage charges and you're not you know paying to access your own data and then finally from a control standpoint often business and it leaders are forced to make you know difficult trade-offs uh between the simplicity and the flexibility they want and the control the performance and the data locality that perhaps they need apex will help bridge this uh divide and so we're not going to make them make this kind of false trade-off between them um it'll enable organizations to take control of their operations from where resources are located to how they are run to who can access them so for example by dictating where they want to run their resources in a cola or at the edge or within their data center you know it teams can take charge of their compliance obligations and simplify them by using role-based permissions to limit access it organizations can choose who can access certain functionality for these uh for you know configuring apex services and thereby kind of reduce risk and supply simplify those security obligations so those are some examples of you know how we deliver [Music] simplicity agility and control to our customers with apex you know i'll give you a little aside here if if i may you know you said the trade-offs and i've been working on this scenario of you know how we're going to come back from the pandemic and you you're seeing this hybrid approach where organizations are having to fund their digital transformation they're having to support a hybrid workforce and their headquarters investments their traditional data center investments have been neglected and and the other thing is there's very clearly a skills gap a shortage of talent so to the extent that you have something like apex that where i'd rather be provisioning lawns and spending all this time both waiting and provisioning and tuning that allows me to free up talent and really you know deliver on some of those those those problematic areas that are forcing me today to do a trade-off so i think that really resonates with with me akashka so you're exactly right no more kind of refactoring applications learning new skill set hiring new people you can if the the part that resonates with you is that you know agility and simplicity you know why not have it where it makes sense so so apex is a new way of thinking i mean certainly for dell and and in terms of how you deliver for a way customers consume um can you be specific on some of the offerings that we can expect uh from dtw this year yes we've got a variety of announcements let me let me talk about those let's start with the apex console this is a unified experience for the entire apex journey it provides self-service access to our catalog of apex services as i mentioned customers simply select the outcomes that they're looking for and subscribe to the technology service that best meets their needs and then we'll take it from there from a day to operation standpoint the console will also give customers insight and oversight into other aspects of the apex experience for example they can limit access to the functionality by role they can modify view their subscriptions then modify it they can engage in kind of provisioning type tasks they can see cost transparently view billing and payment information each month and use it for things like show back or charge back to you know various business units um you know within uh within their organization over time we will also be integrating um the console with common procurement and provisioning systems so that they can further streamline approval workflows as well as publish apis for further integration from developers at the customer site um so you know net net console will be the single place for us to procure operate and monitor apex services and we think it's going to become an important way for us to interact with our customers as well as our partners to interact with dell technologies going forward yes uh the next please sorry no carry on the next announcement is apex data storage services um this one is a first in a series of outcome-based term key services in the apex portfolio um and you know at the end this essentially delivers um storage resources at the customers you know at the location that they would they would prefer when subscribing to this there's just four parameters that the customers need to think about what type of data services they're looking for file block and soon it'll be object uh what performance tier the application um that the customer is going to run on these resources needs they can between three levels what base capacity they want where they can start at 50 terabytes and then the term length that they're looking for subscription length um we also announced a partnership with equinix so if a customer wants they can deploy these resources at equinix's data centers all around the world and still get a unified build from us and then and that's it you know from that once they make those four selections they subscribe to the service we take it from there there's no selecting what product do you want what configuration of that product etc etc uh you know we take care of all of that include the right services and then kind of deliver it to that to them so it's really an outcome-based way of procuring technology as easily as you would provision resources in a public cloud awesome so get console data storage cloud services which which uh are key cloud services yeah and and then the partner piece with equinix for for latency and proximity uh speed of light type stuff okay cool so exactly cloud services very quickly are integrated solutions to help simplify that adoption um and they support both cloud cloud native as well as traditional workloads customers can subscribe either to a private cloud offer or a hybrid cloud offer depending on the level of control that they're looking for and the operational consistency that they need and again similar to storage services they pick from kind of four simple steps and uh we'll deliver it to them within 14 days and then finally we've got something called custom solutions these are for customers who are looking for a more flexible as a service environment they're available right now in over 30 countries also available to our partner network uh comes in two flavors apex flex on demand which um takes anything within our broad infrastructure portfolio server storage data protection you name it um and uh can turn we can turn that into a pay-per-use um environment you can also select what services you'd like to include so if a customer wants it managed we can manage it for them if they don't want it managed they can you know include it without those services and essentially they can configure their own as a service experience and then data center utility takes it to the next level and offers even more customization in terms of custom telemetry options etc etc so that that's that's kind of a quick summary of the announcements uh in the apex okay i think i got it this was five buckets the console which gives you that full life cycle that self-service the storage piece the cloud services the the equinix partnership and the partners that's a whole another conversation and then the custom piece if you really want to customize it for yourself and your services yes yeah yeah yeah right good okay you guys have been busy um so you announced project apex last fall and so i presume you've been out talking to customers about this prototyping it testing it out maybe you could share some examples of customers who've tried it out and what the feedback has been and the the use cases yeah let me let me give you a couple of examples um we'll start with apex data storage services um as i said this one's going generally available now um at dell we believe in drinking our own champagne so our own i.t team has been engaged in
a private data um of this service for the past several months and their feedback has helped shape the offer um the feedback that they've given us is that they really like that like simple life cycle management um you know they tell us that it frees up their their folks to do a lot of other things and you know uh that are kind of higher level order tasks if you will versus managing the infrastructure um they're seeing greater efficiencies in capacity and performance management and they like not having to worry about building a capacity pipeline uh and they like being able to kind of build on a chargeback process that will allow them to build internal views based on what's being used and so they think it's going to be a game changer for them um and you know that's the feedback that they and of course they've given us lots of feedback that we've also uh uh you know put into building the product itself but they in short they really like the flexibility of it um let me give you a uh maybe a customer example and then a partner example as well um apex cloud services um this is one where uh more and more customers are realizing that for compliance regulatory or performance reasons maybe public cloud doesn't really work for them so they've been looking for ways to get that experience within their data center apex hybrid cloud enables this using this as a foundation customers are quickly able to extend workloads like bdi into these different environments um a global technology consulting firm wanted to focus on their business of providing consulting service versus you know managing our infrastructure and so what they also really liked was the pay-per-use model and the ability to scale up without having to engage in kind of renegotiating terms um they also uh appreciate it and like the cost transparency that we provided and their feedback to us that it was sort of unmatched uh with other solutions that they'd seen and and and they like the sort of cost containment benefits uh because they give them much more control over their uh budget and then um from a partner standpoint um apex custom solutions as i said is available in over 30 countries today it's available through our vast partner network we've got a you know series of lucrative partner options for them a recent win that we saw in this space was with a healthcare provider this particular healthcare provider was constantly challenging their it team to improve service delivery they wanted to onboard customers faster drive services uh deployment while ensuring the compliance of their healthcare data as you as you i'm sure know there are you know some strict requirements in the space um with flex on demand they were able to dramatically cut that onboarding time from months to days they were able to be just as agile while simplifying their compliance with industry regulations for data privacy and sovereignty sovereignty um and and and so their feedback without since they were able to be just as agile and just as cost effective as a cloud solution but without the concerns over data residency so those are a few use cases and then real customer examples of um customers that have tried out these services awesome thanks for that i mean real transformation for the partners as well i think actually if partners leaned in they can make a lot of money doing this i know it's it's yeah it's different and profitability yeah well that's what the hey that's what the channel cares about right i mean it's different from the the past of selling boxes that was sort of okay i know you got my margin there but this i think actually hit huge opportunities to get deeper into the customer add value in so many other different ways the channels are undergoing tremendous transformation um i have to ask you so i think the first time i saw so you have flexible consumption you've had that for a number of years i think the first time i saw it was like late 90s or early 2000s when i saw these types of models emerge so can you explain how apex differs from your past as a service offerings and i got another sort of second part of the question uh after that yeah um you're right we we've offered these solutions for a while um and very successfully so i you know i should add right certainly over the past year our business has seen tremendous momentum and if you listen to our earnings you've probably heard that what's different here is that we're taking think of this as apex as a 2.0 of that so we've been doing that we're going to continue doing that but you know what you what i talked about in apex custom solutions is what we've been delivering for a while and of course we continue to improve it as we get customer feedback on it what we're doing here on the on the turnkey side is that we're taking not a product based not a service based but really an outcome based approach and what's different there and what i mean by that is we're we're truly looking to bypass complexity throughout the entire technology life cycle we're truly kind of looking to figure out where can we remove a significant amount of time and effort from it teams by delivering them an offer that's simple from the get go each of these offers have been designed from the ground up to provide not just the innovative technology that our customers have known us forever but but to do so with greater simplicity to deliver greater agility while still retaining the control that we know our customers want that is what is different and by doing that by making this consistently available in a very kind of simple way we believe we can scale that experience that along with you know backed up with our services our scale our supply chain leadership that we've had for a while built on our industry leading portfolio um the broadest in the industry then delivering that with unmatched time to value at you know whatever location the customer is looking for by doing these three things we believe we're combining not just the agility that our customers want and as well as the you know control that they need and putting it all together in the simplest way possible and delivering it with our partners so i think that's what's different um with what we're doing now and and frankly that that's also our commitment going forward so you can imagine today i talked to you about our our cloud solutions our infrastructure solutions but you know imagine going forward all of our solutions server storage data protection workload end end-user devices telecom solutions edge solutions gaming devices all of them kind of delivered in this way um and you know only the way that dell technologies in our partner community can when i hear you say outcome based a lot of people may think well what's that i'll tell you what i think it is if i'm if i the outcome i want is i want to i want my my it to be fast i i want it to be reliable i want it to be at a fair price i don't want to run out of storage for example and if i need more i want it fast um and i want it simple i mean that's that's the outcome that i want is that what you mean by outcome based absolutely those are exactly the types of you know it's a combinations like you said of business as well as you know technology outcomes that we're targeting right but those are exactly it availability uptime performance um you know time to value those are exactly the types of outcomes that we're targeting with these offers and and that's what our services are designed um you know from the ground up to do okay last question second part of my other question is is i mean essentially you've got the cloud model you're bringing that to on-prem you've got other on-prem competitors what's different uh with dell from the competition yeah so i i would say uh from a competitive standpoint as you said you know we we certainly have a series of competitors in the on-prem space and then we've got another set of competitors in the cloud space and what we are truly trying to do is you know bring bring the best of that experience to wherever our customers want to um you know deploy these resources from an on-prem standpoint i think our differentiation always has and will continue to be the breadth of our portfolio um you know the uh the technology that we provide and bringing this apex experience in a very um you know simple and consistent way across that entire you know breadth of products the other differentiation that that i i believe we have um is frankly our pricing model right you mentioned it a few times i talked a little bit about it earlier as well um with um if i use storage as an example we are not going to have um you know we're not going to charge you a penalty if you need to scale up and down we understand and realize that businesses you know need to have that flexibility um to be able to go up and down and having a simple clear consistent rate that they understand very clearly up front that they have visibility to um that you know charges them in kind of a fair way is another kind of point of differentiation so not having that kind of you know surge pricing if you will um and then finally the third differences are our services our scale our supply chain leadership and then just you know stay do ratio right when we say something we're gonna do it and we're gonna deliver it um from a from a cloud clear standpoint it's really interesting you know i talked about this this trade-off that our customers often have to make you have to give up control to get this simplicity and agility and we're not going to make you do that right as a as an itdn you manage um you know you've got full control of that infrastructure while still getting the benefits of the agility and the simplicity that today you often have to go to public cloud for um again from a pricing standpoint um you know the the other differentiation that we have so you're not going to be paying to access your own data right you pay a clear rate um and it stays consistent but you're not accident there's no egress ingress charges there's no retraining of your sales force there's no refactoring of the application um to move it there there's all these kind of unspoken um costs that go into moving an application into public cloud that you're not going to see uh with us and then finally from a performance standpoint we do believe that the performance that we that we um have with apex solution is significantly better um you know just the fact that you've got dedicated infrastructure you're not running into issues with noisy neighbors for example um as well as just the underlying quality of the technology that we deliver i mean the experience that we've had um and not just in the space but then delivering it to you know hundreds of thousands of customers at hundreds and thousands of locations cloud players are very good at optimizing for uh for a few locations for you know hundreds of thousands of customers but we've been for years delivering this experience um you know across the world across hundreds and thousands of data centers and the expertise that our services of our supply chain and frankly our product teams will build up um i think will serve as well great a lot of depth eric konshko thanks so much uh and congratulations for giving birth to formally to apex and and best of luck really appreciate you coming on thecube and sharing thank you thank you for having me it was really our pleasure and thank you for watching everybody this is thecube's coverage ongoing coverage of dell tech world 2021 we'll be right back [Music] you
2021-05-09 04:46
