Alyson Langon, Dell Technologies & Stu Miniman, Red Hat | Build Now & the Future With Dell & Red Hat

hello and welcome to this Cube conversation I'm Rob stretch managing director with the cube research and we're digging into build now and for the future with Dell and redh hat right now I think it's safe to say that two topics that are top of Mind of most it organizations and really the topic of discussion are AI infrastructure and virtualization today we're going to dig into these two topics with the latest announcement from Dell and red hat joining me today are friends of the cube and friends of mine truthfully uh Allison langden who's the director of product marketing for multicloud and HCI at Dell Technologies and Stu miniman senior director of Market insights hybrid platforms at Red Hat welcome both thanks Rob great to be with you again yeah always great to have you guys on because I think you you know how to bring a lot of the information around this uh so before we get into the latest announcements let's kind of talk about why Dell and red hat are working together yet again uh Allison let's uh start with you sure um so thanks for having me really excited to talk about our latest um announcements in partnership with red hat um you know what we're hearing from our customers first and foremost is that they're looking for Simplicity I mean especially with the complexity out there right now between the virtualization landscape um the case of AI you know there's really more pressure than ever to keep pace and invest in solutions that keep the their path forward in the future in mind right um a good example of this is container adoption so you know with 60 um 67% of organizations having container-based you know production applications today and another 18% you know looking to have deploying container-based applications um within the next 12 months it's really an imperative to have a container management strategy in place right um and I think this has been true for a while but I think the pace of that is just accelerating um and then I would also say being able to balance these traditional workloads along with these future um modern applications um is just one reason that is driving complexity for our customers another thing we're hearing is being able to have a seamless and consistent experience between their on Prem and public Cloud environments continues to be a challenge right and our you know their it teams just don't have the resources or um you know the staff to learn all managing the tools and um ecosystems of all of these different um all of these different environments and so being able to have consistency a seamless experience where you can leverage common tools um common skill sets across your it estate is becoming increasingly important all of that being said um Simplicity is really at the core of what we're doing with red hat being able to drive Simplicity for our customers um red Hat's been a strategic partner of ours for over 24 years and you know together we've had we've delivered um jointly engineered and fully Integrated Solutions tool sets um and reference architectures to help our customers yeah no I I think when we were back here a little under a year ago talking about the first instantiation this it was you know Matt Hicks wanting to see something Turn You know open shift being able to be turned on within five you know less than five minutes and from racking and turn on so Stu what do you have to add to that yeah so Rob when we launched this this update to the partnership with Dell we started with that containerization because while we've been on this journey uh with open shift for over a decade we've got thousands of customers doing it's always how do I make that simpler and Dell's got such a great track record at building those Solutions working on those joint Integrations uh everything from that day one through the entire life cycle it's difficult from a software standpoint we try to take that cloud native ecosystem and curate it integrate it and maintain it for you but with partnering with Dell we get all the way down to the hardware level that that entire piece we can think of it more uh like we used to think of our virtual infrastructure we make it as you know here's the unit when I need to update something I know that it's been tested it's been integrated it's gone through all of those pieces so that we can shorten that cycle of the upgrade because I don't want to have to stick it in a sandbox and then wait till all of my pieces work and what about my other pieces of the ecosystem we want to make sure it all works you know storage networking uh you know compute all need to have those underlying components the big change here is you know how do we bring virtual machines into this environment because for too long it's been the discussion of like oh well am I going Cloud native and I'm going containerization and leaving Long VMS and we know unfortunately nothing ever dies in it so um how do we bring now we can bring virtual machines into that modern architecture um with open shift virtualization and now that's part of the Del Apex for open shift solution no I I think that makes total sense and I I think when you look at how things have changed things have also stayed the same but as people see you know and we have seen through our data with our one of our partners ETR one of the things that really has uh played a role in this is Simplicity and I I think that uh recently back in December they were out they talked to 252 uh organizations across from all different sizes within the global 2000 and even small and medium size organizations about how they really purchase and how they really look at vendors they're going to purchase from uh so let's take a look at that right now and they asked the question what are the most important factors in choosing an IT vendor the top three reasons for choosing a solution from an IT vendor included ease of use not surprisingly was cited 57% of the time I thought what was interesting is that it was actually up 9% in the last six months which really is a big factor in the types of solutions you're bringing to Market along with that 48% were citing automation which is another factor that I'm sure we'll dig into little bit here as well uh and lastly the third largest was 44% sign citing reliability and reputation of that vendor so as we kind of look into this you know you know that's of note and it really starts with Allison you know can you give us kind of a refresher on apex Cloud platform for red hat and open shift and how it's really delivering and bringing that Simplicity to customers yeah absolutely that's a great segue um because so the Apex Cloud platform for Red Hat open shift was built with with Simplicity and ease of use in mind right so being able to run open shift on Prem and getting cloud-like agility and efficiency on bare metal with built-in software automation full stack life cycle management um it really provides you the flexibility and choice um to set you up for running you know your your applications today and also into the future so it's really like build now and for the future on a single unified platform that can um consolidate yeah I I I think that totally makes a lot of sense bringing it together because we you know were together last year talking about the introduction of it and I I think really the Simplicity and being able to understand that I I think really brings us to the question of you know what are you announcing today yeah of course so we're excited we have some really exciting updates um you know we've taken customer feedback um and taken that into account as we enhance the platform so there when you think about the Apex Cloud platform for Red Hat open ship there really three main components there's the storage there's the compute and there's the software the software being a combination of our Apex Cloud platform Foundation software as well as redot open shift right so we are announcing enhancements to all three of those components so specifically the first one is expanded storage options um so we can support additional customer use cases addressing smaller Footprints this is something we're hearing our customers wanted additionally um our enhanced uh compute capabilities so that's going to be including the latest Intel processors a broader um optionality of Nvidia gpus and then finally um modernized Red Hat open shift capabilities so we've been talking about red hat open shift virtualization that's going to be included by default as part of the the Apex Cloud platform going forward and then we're also going to support our latest the latest open shift releases um so 4.14 and 4.16 I think that's really exciting because I think a lot of what you're talking about is really bringing value to the customer and listening to what their feedback is one thing that I'm going to key off of was the inclusion of open shift vert or open shift virtualization in the stack because we recently uh talked to and published one of our you know breaking analysis around this subject and one of the things that we found is that with broadcom and VMware really concentrating on vcloud Foundation or VMware Cloud foundation and really focused on that private Cloud there people are starting to look for other offerings and for certain use cases that can be broader than that we also see organizations are looking to have kind of a minimal amount of different Stacks that they have in there so they're weighing the options between containers and virtualization and what is that cloud operating model going to really look like and I think that you know for the first time in probably over a decade the virtualization space is wide open and we're seeing that virtualization Market really be a uh a catalyst for people who are trying to re-architect things now Stu obviously you know you're actively promoting red hat is actively promoting open shift virtualization can you kind of speak speak to the capabilities and benefits and how that really focuses in on the Apex Cloud Pat platform as well yeah Rob thank thanks so much so first of all virtualization is not something that's new for Red Hat we've got a long history there uh we made an acquisition I believe was over a decade ago now of the company that created KVM uh hypervisor for open source is a solved problem KVM is used not only by a lot of red hat customers but is underlying you know virtualization for a lot of the clouds uh that are out there we put that into our open stack offering the leading open stack offering we had a long partnership with Dell on open stack and through the open source cubert project we helped bring KVM into the kubernetes containerization world and not just for open shift it's was you know started by Google it's used by sus Rancher uh used by many other companies uh Nvidia is actually a large uh contributor and user of uh the open source cubert project so cubert helps bring the open source virtualization into the open source and container in kubernetes world but there's still VMS so really if you think about it all I'm doing is I'm bringing a VM and I'm making it just another pod so on the one hand if I'm a admin that's all been working on VMS I'm taking a VM I'm moving it into another VM many of the things are similar yes some of the terminology is a little bit different and I need a little bit of training we usually find in like four hours we can actually give you like the translation guide and get you some Hands-On training to be able to say okay this is the way I did things is it a onetoone or do I do things a little bit different and secondly most companies are looking to have that cloud operating model well unfortunately VMS have had a great run but they're really not the architecture that I want to be able to manage my environment today so not only do I put it into containers and kubernetes but I can actually take advantage of the rest of what's an open shift so most companies start with things like pipelines I want to do cicd do I tie it into some other pieces of my architecture oh we've touched a little bit on AI containerization is going to play a large role uh into AI but there might be still some places where I'm going to need VMS in there and here they live side by side in the modern architecture so um just a quick data stat I know rob you all love it um so you know open shift over a year ago passed over a billion dollars of ARR for the first half of this year IBM reported that open shift is growing over 40% open shift virtualization in the same 12 months grew over 135% from a customer standpoint from a VM standpoint it's up like 175% so huge growth huge adoption uh customers are very interested we've been doing Road shows and it's Partnerships like Dell that are going to help bring this to the masses because they want that Simplicity Dell's been you know one of the premier companies in the virtualization space from day one and the open solution helps give customers an easy transition to get to a more modern environment yeah I I think with the you know Apex Cloud platform it is about choice and I I think again having that choice of containers and VMS sitting next to each other inside the same Cloud operating model is very attractive to customers yeah Rob just a point when we I meet with customers and they say what are the impediments you know one of the big ones I mentioned already is oh my gosh this this is the way I know how to do things well one of those pieces is like well I've got my storage stack am I limited to I can only go to HCI or I have my you know three- tier storage well with the Del Apex you actually can do both and you know that that's one of the the great things about this partnership is we've got some flexibility the expanded storage options are giving you a lot of the options so you don't want to move from one platform to another and say I believe you started out it's a platform for today and for the future and that's what this Dell Apex cloud with open shift in open shift virtualization gives you yeah and just to build on that um quickly like and we're talking a lot about the Simplicity and the flexibility but one thing you know I also want to drive home is like the peace of mind that we that we are able to deliver with our Solutions so with the Apex Cloud platform for Red Hat open shift everything remains in a continuously validated State um so there's also built-in in compliance and security and on the Dell side we do we do over 13,000 hours of testing before each release to you know ensure that our customers are getting the outcomes they expect so combining that with the level and of investment that rad does um and their community-driven Innovation um you know we've really done a lot of the the endtoend work to make sure our customers are getting that Assurance um and confidence with their solution um as well yeah and I I think I want to pick up on kind of that storage op optionality because I think again it's it's a pretty big thing when you talk about organization and being able to help you know future proof them how do you see that playing out as well with the the how you're bringing storage optionality to this yeah exactly so we're hearing the same thing from our customers I mean that's part of what drove this this expansion the expanded support so you know one thing to level set on is that um our Apex Cloud Foundation software does need a minimum amount of block storage um to be able to deliver that's really what delivers all of that automation within the platform but what we've expanded are those OP those optionality so originally it was specifically based on power flx which is an awesome solution and still available and we are expanding to also include now the options of having that underlying block storage be based on our power store so getting you know the the great you know performance Enterprise grade you know data services that you get with a power store which is great and designed for a mid-range type of customer and there are we've also added um our red hat open shift data Foundation um which is really designed for smaller clusters when you have like a minimal footprint of of block file or object storage that you want to deploy so this gives you a lot more optionality Plus in addition to addressing smaller Footprints with things like power store for mid-range and then odf um you know we always also keep in mind that with our Dell container storage modules you're able to also add on additional external storage for things like power Flex for file object scale for object um those two platforms are really important when it comes to things like Ai and being able to drive those modern AI applications so going through all of these options ultimately it just speaks to the flexibility we're offering um the breadth of choice so we can meet a broad set of specific needs based on the customer use cases um footprint Etc that they're looking to yeah no I I think again you know amazing we got through 15 minutes without uh talking about AI until that point but I think you start to look at it that really AI needs a whole bunch of these things it need it's going to have VMS it's going to have containers it's going to have models and different pieces together I I I think again you know we were all together just uh this past spring and we kind of really talked about what Dell and red hat were up to with some of the you know validated uh designs around AI as well uh Stu you know what are you seeing in the developments with red hat open shift Ai and where does this platform really fit in with that yeah uh thanks Rob so first of all open shift AI has been something we you as you said uh even before the VM discussion uh came into the Del Apex open shift AI is something we've looked at there because all of those underlying pieces that we talked about uh you talk about the storage requirements and scalability automation uh and the the flexibility that you're going to want for this architecture are the underpinnings for what I need for AI um so open shift AI has been an option on top of the Dell Apex for for open shift from an earlier days now VMS just expand that option because if you look at okay I'm looking at my alternatives for virtualization many of the solutions out there are like well I'm doing v2v and I'm actually not doing anything that's all that different do I want to be ready for kind of the traditional way of doing things or do I want to be ready to take advantage of AI and have the storage capabilities that I need the automation that I need and build in more of these Cloud native architectures so that's what we have here and it's a really good offering open shift AI has been having you know significant growth this year uh both from what we're doing as well as our partnership with IBM where o Open shift AI is part of Watson x. so um good growth uh and it's a solution that we've had that predates the generative AI discussion so predictive AI gen AI we can handle both of those type of environments and what's interesting is a majority of the customers that I talk to are actually starting those in their data center because they want to get a few gpus they're really concerned about the security of their environment so they want to do those early tests in the safety of their environment so what's a nice simple and costeffective way to do that in my environment well fits that very nicely yeah and I and we're hearing that as well because especially we see it in the data that actually for the first time this last quarter we saw the data tick up on budget and one of the reasons was people were putting trying these huge massive things in the cloud and decided hey maybe we should start with smaller uh proof of Concepts around this and being on Prem and being close to the data uh happens to be that and actually with the storage options as well I could see how that plays off one one comment on that uh there's a certain virtualization player that said like well the the Cloud's just too expensive and too complex and doesn't do compliance um our view point actually is this is going to be hybrid as Allison said we want a consistent way of doing things so everything that we have from open shift open shift virtualization open shift AI we can actually do all of that in AWS also and open shift and open shift AI across you know all of the cloud uh type of solutions out there so um we know customers are actually going to be taking advantage of some of the innovation in the cloud there's lots of AI in the cloud and we actually integrate with many of those uh features too so it is a hybrid world it's multicloud um and we want customers to have choice not trying to just limit themselves to you know one vendor or one solution yeah I I think that is the way I I'm a big you know we're big Believers in hybrid and supercloud and all of that and I think it is the cloud operating model in general across that and I think it inference will be done in a whole bunch of different places is uh I think a lot of it centers around where your data is at and how it all ties together so it's it's great to hear that but Allison uh for those who didn't hear the announcement around uh what Dell red hat and Nvidia are up to why don't you kind of give them a high level view of what was said yeah sure I mean one thing that's been really exciting about what about the this partnership is being able to see some of the outcomes our customers have actually been delivering so whether it's things like creating a digital assistant um speech pattern recognition um you know really combining the power of Dell rad hat and Nvidia is giving customers these simple validated blueprints that they can Implement quickly and that quickly piece is important because you know velocity is something that we're continuing to you know we're really focusing on at Dell because just the speed at which things are moving today with AI um it's really critical that we're able to help our our customers um keep Pace with some of these modern challenges yeah I mean time to R AI if you wanted to put it put it that way is definitely a key and we're we're seeing that as well uh you know any last thoughts you want to kind of uh drop in here yeah um I would just say I'm really excited for our customers to be able to experience what we've been doing with the Apex Cloud platform for Red Hat open shift um you know it's it's a great TurnKey um fully integrated stack that is focused on Simplicity it's focused on velocity and helping you manage your traditional workloads alongside these modern challenges containers AI being able to keep Pace with this um all in a unified platform um and so there are a lot of ways and with these new enhancements I think we can even address a broader set of customers a broader set of use cases so it becomes more relevant to a broader customer base and I think um you know there's a lot of ways customers can take advantage of this and see for themselves so I encourage you know looking at our demos um our joint briefings we're doing we have a test drive program so um really excited for our customers to get out there and get their get their hands on it and see what we've been up to yeah the thing a lot Rob is uh dell has a phenomenal channel uh that really understands the virtualization environment and there's been a lot of concern over the last 6 to 12 months as to oh my gosh I had a business I knew what I was doing and now there's a lot of uncertainty the migrations we need help you know this requires bodies to be able to do this and if we can't solve this issue that customers have today for virtualization they're not going to have the budget or the infrastructure or the architecture to be able to take advantage of AI and they will be left behind so together Dell red hat and our partners both on the channel side as well as the technology side we've got a lot of opportunity there to help our customers uh really almost a judo move as I look at it we need to be able to take the momentum of this virtualization change and that gets us ready to be able to embrace the AI opportunity that's in front of us so lots of opportunity there and uh great opportunity for us to all work together yeah I mean it definitely marries up a lot with where Dell has been going for over a year now with really the focus on the partners and the ecosystem and I know red hat is the same way so I want to thank you both for coming on board it's uh always fun to have you both here you know again it's you know sometimes you get to you know do these with uh uh you know and it just feels really forced but this thing with you guys make it makes it such an easy thing to do so I really appreciate it and uh you know thank you for coming on board thanks so much for having us and thank you for watching this episode of build now and for the future with Dell and red hat on the cube stay tuned for more analysis and news [Music]

2024-09-17 22:19

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