>>Mhm Yes. >>Hello and welcome back to the cubes coverage of Del Tech World Virtual. I'm john for a host of the cube. We've got a great two guests here talking about a new apex brand and products Allison Langdon, Senior Manager, product marketing at Dell and David Reed senior Director of Product Management. Dell all around the apex to CUBA alumni's 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 I wish >>we were in person. >>We missed the Deltek Worlds amazing event. Um we're virtual this year but all great goodness is here but great big announcement still go on. The Apex Brandon portfolio is coming together the cloud and as a service, everything is happening. You got the new apex data storage service take us through what what is the new service? Why? >>Sure. So I can start um you know, we've been seeing this this shift towards an as a service model, you know I. T. Has always struggled with complexities associated with under and over provisioning capital budget constraints, lengthy and complex to refresh cycles. So you know the events over this past year and our new normal is really accelerated these you know challenges and it 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 there needs you know the new levels of unpredictability that's been accelerating this you know adoption of as of service. So this is why we're introducing apex data storage services essentially were 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 crown portfolio of scalable and elastic storage resources that are designed for affects treatment. It's all going to be anchored in our apex console. So it's gonna 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 Devon, I was kind of okay, this is kind of what we heard when we were last in person in 2019. The end to end l 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 services? How does that vector into that? Because you know data control planes are being talked about a lot. The use of data in A I. And A II. Operations impacts I. T. And cloud scale. So hybrids now the operating model for the enterprise. >>Yeah. Yeah definitely. And it's this is really only where we're starting and we're going to be starting on a set of apex data storage services. Um 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 customers procure their equipment today. So a customer typically today says I need some storage I need some mid range storage. I need for example a power store 5000 and then they work with the sales representative and says I need 24 1.92 terabyte drives. They 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 purchased that year, purchased that upfront and then uh, the only asset and then they managed 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 learned a certain capacity and I want a commitment level. And what we do is we basically create a rate for them And we've optimized 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 order is dropped until the customer can actually start operating on that here. From the, the time is dropped to the time that they can produce in their first volume Is 14 days. And really all they have to do is operate the year and we manage everything everything for them that you know, from capacity management to change management to software, life cycles, patching and you 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 in our first release will be offering this on customer premises. And we're also introducing announcing a relationship we have with the data center provider of Equinox, which is the largest co location provider in the world. And what will be able to do is provide the subscription service of this as a service, 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 pain of unified experience. >>That's awesome. The hybrid cloud, It's gotta have that table stakes now. So, good, good plug there. Thanks Call out Allison, I gotta ask you on the customer side, what's the drivers for the apex data storage service? What was the key things that there you're hearing, why this is important to them? Uh, and what is the value proposition? >>Right, Great question. So I touched on a little bit of that upfront, 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 affects 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 provisions waste or under provisions risk. We essentially, you know, streamlined all of those processes. So the customer just has to worry about 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 scale of resources up and down. So it's essentially really simplified and more predictable. >>Page has always been one of those things where hey, I'll pay when I need it. I gotta ask you on the differentiation side. This is comes up all the time. How do 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 the, what's the focus? >>Yeah. So I'll take the, I'll take a couple of points and then I'll pass it over to you Alison if you don't >>mind. Um, >>so first and foremost, I'm asked this a lot. So what does Dell bring to the table in this whole little apex? And as a service? First and foremost, Del is the leading infrastructure provider for all of I. T. On premise. We have the enterprise infrastructure re leading across just about every major category of infrastructure. So first and foremost we have that. We also have the scale of the reach, not only in our enterprise relationships through our partner community. So that is one that is one huge advantage 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 second to none with this solution. So we provide um we provide all of the the difficult management tasks from end 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 I know there's a couple more points, so I'd like to I'll pass it on to Alison and she can she can address a couple more points there. >>Yeah, sure. I mean obviously Devin makes a great point as being an industry leader and just the breadth of our portfolio in general, beyond just storage that we can essentially deliver as a service, but no, 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 based 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 were 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 over ridge 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 average penalties. So that's definitely something that that differentiates us. And the customers also have the ability to raise that based commitment at any point. Co terminus lee in their contract. So if they're seeing like a strong growth trajectory or anticipating a more, you know, a big burst in usage for some data intensive type workloads. You know, we can add that can raise that floor commitment resulting in a lower rate but still a single rate for both based 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 addresses. Give us an update on the apex brand and portfolio overall. How does this fit in? How is it shaping out? Can just take a minute to explain kind of where it is right now and what's available, how it was the strategy and what's coming? >>Sure. So I can talk a little bit about what's available when we're talking about today and then maybe devon if you can touch a little bit on the on the strategy and going forward. Um But what we've announced today is you at Del Tech World is the apex brand, the apex portfolio, which as I mentioned, it's our strategy for as a service and 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, David, I don't know if you want to take it. >>So what I would, what I would like to add is a little bit more color on the customized services. So 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 is 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 Dell technologies on demand with flex on demand and data center utility and those will be represented to be apex flex on demand, 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 a lot of the strategy that we're talking about here with the hybrid cloud service, the product cloud service, apex data storage services. So we're building out a set of world class infrastructure services that will then be able to wrap our leading infrastructure utilities around data protection, security, migration, compliance etcetera. And then build a set of horizontal and vertical solutions on top of this infrastructure to provide uh paramount uh value to our >>awesome Alice. I gotta ask you because this is always the case right. There's always one or two features that jump out the product, 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 the data storage service because um, everyone kinda is going here, right? So what if you get people that are watching it are learning 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 the console itself, which we've talked about it, 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 its 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 customer's 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 complexity off of the table for them. Um So it's the simplicity of the console, it's the being able to transition to more op ex model um from a financial aspect is huge and then you know aligning your expenses, you know with your actual versus and you know anticipated usage, so being able to manage that unpredictability, so that's necessary talking about a specific feature but really how we're driving towards really focusing on the customer needs. >>Now the business values right there, it's all about the outcome and you know, we're about getting charged on this variable, you know, over age on some service David. 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. We're really, we're really selling the service. We're selling an offer. The product is the service, the service is the product and it's really about selling those outcomes. But then at the end of the day since we're talking talking shop here um we are introducing block services and that's powered by our new award winning power store mid range product and our file services are going to be powered by our um our award winning power scale and Ice alone systems as well. So we'll be interested you know introducing block and file services and we'll be extending that to object object services and data storage services. Uh >>huh, awesome. You know Alison and Devon I was talking to a friend we're running weren't on camera with the camera was turned on but we're just riffing about all the coolness around devops to have sex cops, how I. T. S go into large scale cloud apps and we're talking about all that and we were both kind of coming to the same conclusion that the next generation on top of all this automation is the excess of 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. That concept of automation powers X as a service. >>Yeah, I'll take that one, john. So, um while I talked only about playing storage technologies that power this there is a phenomenal amount of investment in um uh work and thought going into building out the underlying infrastructure and operations behind this because we need to provide um the operations and management of this infrastructure services, not only for storage but for compute and solutions and develops environment at scale. And it's crucial that we, we build out that infrastructure, that automation, that machine learning AI offers to really support this. So yeah, you're absolutely right. That is fundamental to getting this model. Uh nailed >>Alison. You're feeling pretty good about the product and the service. Now everything is a service that's your wheelhouse. It's happening. >>Yeah, here we are. We've got, we've got apex portfolio has arrived. So yeah, feeling good. Um, definitely excited. >>He was bright. Congratulations Allison David, thanks for coming on the Cuban, sharing the updates on the apex new data storage services, the new portfolio, the directionally correct action of everything as a service and all the automation that goes on the, that's really kind of a game changer. Thanks so much for sharing on the CUBA. Really appreciate it. Thanks for coming on. >>Thanks a lot, john, >>thank you. Okay. >>Del Tech world cube coverage continues. I'm john Kerry, the host. Thanks for watching. Yeah. Mhm.