>> Narrator: theCUBE's live coverage is made possible by funding from Dell Technologies. Creating technologies that drive human progress. (upbeat music) >> Hey everyone and welcome back to Barcelona, Spain, it's theCUBE. We are live at MWC 23. This is day two of our coverage, we're giving you four days of coverage, but you already know that because you were here yesterday. Lisa Martin with Dave Nicholson. Dave this show is massive. I was walking in this morning and almost getting claustrophobic with the 80,000 people that are joining us. There is, seems to be at MWC 23 more interest in enterprise-class technology than we've ever seen before. What are some of the things that you've observed with that regard? >> Well I've observed a lot of people racing to the highest level messaging about how wonderful it is to have the kiss of a breeze on your cheek, and to feel the flowing wheat. (laughing) I want to hear about the actual things that make this stuff possible. >> Right. >> So I think we have a couple of guests here who can help us start to go down that path of actually understanding the real cool stuff that's behind the scenes. >> And absolutely we got some cool stuff. We've got two guests from Dell. Dave Lincoln is here, the VP of Networking and Emerging the Server Solutions, and Deania Davidson, Director Edge Server Product Planning and Management at Dell. So great to have you. >> Thank you. >> Two Daves, and a Davidson. >> (indistinct) >> Just me who stands alone here. (laughing) So guys talk about, Dave, we'll start with you the newest generation of PowerEdge servers. What's new? Why is it so exciting? What challenges for telecom operators is it solving? >> Yeah, well so this is actually Dell's largest server launch ever. It's the most expansive, which is notable because of, we have a pretty significant portfolio. We're very proud of our core mainstream portfolio. But really since the Supercompute in Dallas in November, that we started a rolling thunder of launches. MWC being part of that leading up to DTW here in May, where we're actually going to be announcing big investments in those parts of the market that are the growth segments of server. Specifically AIML, where we in, to address that. We're investing heavy in our XE series which we, as I said, we announced at Supercompute in November. And then we have to address the CSP segment, a big investment around the HS series which we just announced, and then lastly, the edge telecom segment which we're, we had the biggest investment, biggest announce in portfolio launch with XR series. >> Deania, lets dig into that. >> Yeah. >> Where we see the growth coming from you mentioned telecom CSPs with the edge. What are some of the growth opportunities there that organizations need Dell's help with to manage, so that they can deliver what they're demanding and user is wanting? >> The biggest areas being obviously, in addition the telecom has been the biggest one, but the other areas too we're seeing is in retail and manufacturing as well. And, so internally, I mean we're going to be focused on hardware, but we also have a solutions team who are working with us to build the solutions focused on retail, and edge and telecom as well on top of the servers that we'll talk about shortly. >> What are some of the biggest challenges that retailers and manufacturers are facing? And during the pandemic retailers, those that were successful pivoted very quickly to curbside delivery. >> Deania: Yeah. >> Those that didn't survive weren't able to do that digitally. >> Deania: Yeah. >> But we're seeing such demand. >> Yeah. >> At the retail edge. On the consumer side we want to get whatever we want right now. >> Yes. >> It has to be delivered, it has to be personalized. Talk a little bit more about some of the challenges there, within those two verticals and how Dell is helping to address those with the new server technologies. >> For retail, I think there's couple of things, the one is like in the fast food area. So obviously through COVID a lot of people got familiar and comfortable with driving through. >> Lisa: Yeah. >> And so there's probably a certain fast food restaurant everyone's pretty familiar with, they're pretty efficient in that, and so there are other customers who are trying to replicate that, and so how do we help them do that all, from a technology perspective. From a retail, it's one of the pickup and the online experience, but when you go into a store, I don't know about you but I go to Target, and I'm looking for something and I have kids who are kind of distracting you. Its like where is this one thing, and so I pull up the Target App for example, and it tells me where its at, right. And then obviously, stores want to make more money, so like hey, since you picked this thing, there are these things around you. So things like that is what we're having conversations with customers about. >> It's so interesting because the demand is there. >> Yeah, it is. >> And its not going to go anywhere. >> No. >> And it's certainly not going to be dialed down. We're not going to want less stuff, less often. >> Yeah (giggles) >> And as typical consumers, we don't necessarily make the association between what we're seeing in the palm of our hand on a mobile device. >> Deania: Right. >> And the infrastructure that's actually supporting all of it. >> Deania: Right. >> People hear the term Cloud and they think cloud-phone mystery. >> Yeah, magic just happens. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> But in fact, in order to support the things that we want to be able to do. >> Yeah. >> On the move, you have to optimize the server hardware. >> Deania: Yes. >> In certain ways. What does that mean exactly? When you say that its optimized, what are the sorts of decisions that you make when you're building? I think of this in the terms of Lego bricks. >> Yes, yeah >> Put together. What are some of the decisions that you make? >> So there were few key things that we really had to think about in terms of what was different from the Data center, which obviously supports the cloud environment, but it was all about how do we get closer to the customer right? How do we get things really fast and how do we compute that information really quickly. So for us, it's things like size. All right, so our server is going to weigh one of them is the size of a shoe box and (giggles), we have a picture with Dave. >> Dave: It's true. >> Took off his shoe. >> Its actually, its actually as big as a shoe. (crowd chuckles) >> It is. >> It is. >> To be fair, its a pretty big shoe. >> True, true. >> It is, but its small in relative to the old big servers that you see. >> I see what you're doing, you find a guy with a size 12, (crowd giggles) >> Yeah. >> Its the size of your shoe. >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> Its literally the size of a shoe, and that's our smallest server and its the smallest one in the portfolio, its the XR 4000, and so we've actually crammed a lot of technology in there going with the Intel ZRT processors for example to get into that compute power. The XR 8000 which you'll be hearing a lot more about shortly with our next guest is one I think from a telco perspective is our flagship product, and its size was a big thing there too. Ruggedization so its like (indistinct) certification, so it can actually operate continuously in negative 5 to 55 C, which for customers, or they need that range of temperature operation, flexibility was a big thing too. In meaning that, there are some customers who wanted to have one system in different areas of deployment. So can I take this one system and configure it one way, take that same system, configure another way and have it here. So flexibility was really key for us as well, and so we'll actually be seeing that in the next segment coming. >> I think one of, some of the common things you're hearing from this is our focus on innovation, purpose build servers, so yes our times, you know economic situation like in itself is tough yeah. But far from receding we've doubled down on investment and you've seen that with the products that we are launching here, and we will be launching in the years to come. >> I imagine there's a pretty sizeable day impact to the total adjustable market for PowerEdge based on the launch what you're doing, its going to be a tam, a good size tam expansion. >> Yeah, absolutely. Depending on how you look at it, its roughly we add about $30 Billion of adjustable tam between the three purposeful series that we've launched, XE, HS and XR. >> Can you comment on, I know Dell and customers are like this. Talk about, I'd love to get both of your perspective, I'm sure you have a favorite customer stories. But talk about the involvement of the customer in the generation, and the evolution of PowerEdge. Where are they in that process? What kind of feedback do they deliver? >> Well, I mean, just to start, one thing that is essential Cortana of Dell period, is it all is about the customer. All of it, everything that we do is about the customer, and so there is a big focus at our level, from on high to get out there and talk with customers, and actually we have a pretty good story around XR8000 which is call it our flagship of the XR line that we've just announced, and because of this deep customer intimacy, there was a last minute kind of architectural design change. >> Hm-mm. >> Which actually would have been, come to find out it would have been sort of a fatal flaw for deployment. So we corrected that because of this tight intimacy with our customers. This was in two Thanksgiving ago about and, so anyways it's super cool and the fact that we were able to make a change so late in development cycle, that's a testament to a lot of the speed and, speed of innovation that we're driving, so anyway that was that's one, just case of one example. >> Hm-mm. >> Let talk about AI, we can't go to any trade show without talking about AI, the big thing right now is ChatGPT. >> Yeah. >> I was using it the other day, it's so interesting. But, the growing demand for AI, talk about how its driving the evolution of the server so that more AI use cases can become more (indistinct). >> In the edge space primarily, we actually have another product, so I guess what you'll notice in the XR line itself because there are so many different use cases and technologies that support the different use cases. We actually have a range form factor, so we have really small, I guess I would say 350 ml the size of a shoe box, you know, Dave's shoe box. (crowd chuckles) And then we also have, at the other end a 472, so still small, but a little bit bigger, but we did recognize obviously AI was coming up, and so that is our XR 7620 platform and that does support 2 GPUs right, so, like for Edge infrencing, making sure that we have the capability to support customers in that too, but also in the small one, we do also have a GPU capability there, that also helps in those other use cases as well. So we've built the platforms even though they're small to be able to handle the GPU power for customers. >> So nice tight package, a lot of power there. >> Yes. >> Beside as we've all clearly demonstrated the size of Dave's shoe. (crowd chuckles) Dave, talk about Dell's long standing commitment to really helping to rapidly evolve the server market. >> Dave: Yeah. >> Its a pivotal payer there. >> Well, like I was saying, we see innovation, I mean, this is, to us its a race to the top. You talked about racing and messaging that sort of thing, when you opened up the show here, but we see this as a race to the top, having worked at other server companies where maybe its a little bit different, maybe more of a race to the bottom source of approach. That's what I love about being at Dell. This is very much, we understand that it's innovation is that is what's going to deliver the most value for our customers. So whether its some of the first to market, first of its kind sort of innovation that you find in the XR4000, or XR8000, or any of our XE line, we know that at the end of day, that is what going to propel Dell, do the best for our customers and thereby do the best for us. To be honest, its a little bit surprising walking by some of our competitors booths, there's been like a dearth of zero, like no, like it's almost like you wouldn't even know that there was a big launch here right? >> Yeah. >> Or is it just me? >> No. >> It was a while, we've been walking around and yet we've had, and its sort of maybe I should take this as a flattery, but a lot of our competitors have been coming by to our booth everyday actually. >> Deania: Yeah, everyday. >> They came by multiple times yesterday, they came by multiple times today, they're taking pictures of our stuff I kind of want to just send 'em a sample. >> Lisa: Or your shoe. >> Right? Or just maybe my shoe right? But anyway, so I suppose I should take it as an honor. >> Deania: Yeah. >> And conversely when we've walked over there we actually get in back (indistinct), maybe I need a high Dell (indistinct). (crowd chuckles) >> We just had that experience, yeah. >> Its kind of funny but. >> Its a good position to be in. >> Yeah. >> Yes. >> You talked about the involvement of the customers, talk a bit more about Dell's ecosystem is also massive, its part of what makes Dell, Dell. >> Wait did you say ego-system? (laughing) After David just. >> You caught that? Darn it! The talk about the influence or the part of the ecosystem and also some of the feedback from the partners as you've been rapidly evolving the server market and clearly your competitors are taking notice. >> Yeah, sorry. >> Deania: That's okay. >> Dave: you want to take that? >> I mean I would say generally, one of the things that Dell prides itself on is being able to deliver the worlds best innovation into the hands of our customers, faster and better that any other, the optimal solution. So whether its you know, working with our great partners like Intel, AMD Broadcom, these sorts of folks. That is, at the end of the day that is our core mantra, again its retractor on service, doing the best, you know, what's best for the customers. And we want to bring the world's best innovation from our technology partners, get it into the hands of our partners you know, faster and better than any other option out there. >> Its a satisfying business for all of us to be in, because to your point, I made a joke about the high level messaging. But really, that's what it comes down to. >> Lisa: Yeah. >> We do these things, we feel like sometimes we're toiling in obscurity, working with the hardware. But what it delivers. >> Deania: Hm-mm. >> The experiences. >> Dave: Absolutely. >> Deania: Yes. >> Are truly meaningful. So its a fun. >> Absolutely. >> Its a really fun thing to be a part of. >> It is. >> Absolutely. >> Yeah. Is there a favorite customer story that you have that really articulates the value of what Dell is doing, full PowerEdge, at the Edge? >> Its probably one I can't particularly name obviously but, it was, they have different environments, so, in one case there's like on flights or on sea vessels, and just being able to use the same box in those different environments is really cool. And they really appreciate having the small compact, where they can just take the server with them and go somewhere. That was really cool to me in terms of how they were using the products that we built for them. >> I have one that's kind of funny. It around XR8000. Again a customer I won't name but they're so proud of it, they almost kinds feel like they co defined it with us, they want to be on the patent with us so, anyways that's. >> Deania: (indistinct). >> That's what they went in for, yeah. >> So it shows the strength of the partnership that. >> Yeah, exactly. >> Of course, the ecosystem of partners, customers, CSVs, telecom Edge. Guys thank you so much for joining us today. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Sharing what's new with the PowerEdge. We can't wait to, we're just, we're cracking open the box, we saw the shoe. (laughing) And we're going to be dealing a little bit more later. So thank you. >> We're going to be able to touch something soon? >> Yes, yes. >> Yeah. >> In couple of minutes? >> Next segment I think. >> All right! >> Thanks for setting the table for that guys. We really appreciate your time. >> Thank you for having us. >> Thank you. >> Alright, our pleasure. >> For our guests and for Dave Nicholson, I'm Lisa Martin . You're watching theCUBE. The leader in live tech coverage, LIVE in Barcelona, Spain, MWC 23. Don't go anywhere, we will be right back with our next guests. (gentle music)

(upbeat music) >> Hi everyone, and welcome back to DTW 2021, theCUBE's continuous coverage of Dell Technologies World, the virtual edition. My name is Dave Vellante and I've been watching the ebb and flow and transformation of cloud strategies, from on-prem suppliers for a number of years. And it started with an aspiration to compete with their own public clouds. And over time, it became clear that customers wanted them to focus rather on their enduring foundational platforms, and evolve those, to bring cloud-like experiences, along with simplicity and agility and flexibility to the data center. And there's no more prominent example than VMware Cloud. We've shared the data with you all, as part of our Breaking Analysis, customers are leaning in, they're placing bets and the spending on these platforms is rising. And with me to talk about this, are two CUBE alums, Fidelma Russo, Senior Vice President and GM of Cloud Services unit at VMware, and Travis Vigil, who's the Senior Vice President Product Management, at Dell Technologies. Folks, welcome back to theCUBE. Great to see you again. >> Good to see you, Dave. >> Nice being here, Dave. >> So Fidelma, let's start with you. We've been seeing the rise of VMware Cloud and we see it in our ETR survey data, that VMware's Cloud offerings, as well as Dell's, Travis, have some of the highest momentum, within your respective company portfolios, when it comes to relative customer spend. So customers are voting with their wallets. Fidelma, what's the update? What do we need to know about VMware Cloud? >> So, as you saw Dave, we just did a big announcement at the end of March, on Yammer cloud being our multi-cloud platform. We truly believe that, this is what customers want. They want a consistent experience, not just on the public cloud, but also on-prem. And we're delivering that experience across a multitude of platforms. With that, our relationship with Dell Technologies goes very deep. We've seen a big uptake in the data center, where customers want a cloud operating model, that is just like being in the public cloud, but because of things like latency compliance, data sovereignty, you know, they're really those applications that need to remain on-prem, and that's where VMC on Dell EMC comes into play. >> Great, thank you Fidelma. Now Travis, we've had this scenario out there, where, we had to pivot of course, to remote work. And now, we're sort of forecasting, that, we're clearly, we're seeing spending coming back, but there's this sort of dual strategy, where people have to invest in hybrid, hybrid work meeting, and they also have to invest in the data center, because it's kind of been neglected over the last year. So, but the problem is that there's a staff shortage. There's a skills gap. And so people are sort of leaning more into managed services. They're definitely looking at OPEX models because it gives them more flexibility. So that's more important to organizations. What is VMware Cloud on Dell EMC and how does it address those needs? >> Yeah, Dave, I think you're spot on. And VMware Cloud on Dell EMC is a joint solution from VMware and Dell, to provide infrastructure as a service, delivered and deployed on-premises. And that on-premises could be a data center. It could be a colocation facility, it could be an edge location. And the great thing about it, as you pointed out, is that customers don't have to worry about managing the infrastructure, because it's managed for them. And, if you look at the offering overall, it has VMware Software-Defined Data Center stack, with compute, storage and networking coming from Dell, comes with flexible billing options. And, Fidelma talks a little bit about some of the workloads that are staying on-prem, whether that be for data sovereignty or compliance or performance or latency or any of the other issue, the other deciding factors that Fidelma mentioned, but the other great thing about this solution, and to your point, is that it helps customers, that are in this hybrid world, both develop and run both traditional and cloud-native applications on a single unified infrastructure. So we're seeing a, a ton of momentum, a ton of interest in this solution and solutions like it. >> I mean Fidelma, it's actually kind of scary. I mean, it's like the entire tech businesses now, just everything's growing. I mean, whether it's on-prem, laptops, new security solutions, you know, to crypto. I mean, it's just crazy right now, but the data center is on fire. You see the chip shortage, you see all kinds of investments going on, and organizations as you've pointed out, they want a hybrid solution. What are the workloads or use cases that are the best fit for on-premises and can benefit the most from this cloud service that you guys offer? Where are your customers finding success? >> So, where we found success, you know, and not surprisingly, regulated industries and industries where privacy and security are paramount. So let's talk a little bit about healthcare, and what we've seen on VMC on Dell EMC. There we've seen it deployed, on-prem, to provide online access to clinical records via VDI, and also access to analytics, from ALGA to clinicians, ALGA remote centers, where the clinicians work. So, that's one aspect. Another aspect is in energy, where we've seen deployments happen, and happen not just in the data center, but also out at the, what I would call the fat edge. And so, you know, so not unlike what you would think, as we move forward here. And, what I would say is, there is a thread that's common amongst customers, in areas where they have maybe a very mobile workforce, COVID I think has played into actually, not just accelerating to the public cloud, but also accelerating the need to have this remote operation of data center infrastructure on-prem. So, so as you said, both on fire, and we're seeing the uptake, especially within a regulated and compliant industry verticals. >> Great, thank you. So Travis, course we all saw the news couple of weeks ago and it was no surprise. Dell's spinning out VMware, and as part of that, there's a special commercial agreement associated with that spinout. But wonder if you could tell us, what is this joint offer, and how does it inform us about the future of VMware and Dell Technologies Fidelma mentioned? It's obviously a great channel, Dell that is, sells a lot of VMware technology. So, what should we, how should we think about this relationship going forward? And what's the next phase of this partnership going to look like? >> Yeah, I mean, I don't know an easier way to say it, than VMware is a key strategic partner for Dell, and this relationship enables us to deliver unmatched value to current and future customers on a continuous basis. And, if you look over the the last couple of years, the collaboration across Dell and VMware has never been stronger. We have shown our ability to partner very, very effectively on things like VxRail. And so, if you look at, what we're doing with VMware Cloud on Dell EMC, it's really about radically simplifying customer's IT experiences, so that they can focus on business outcomes. And we have teams here at Dell Technologies. We have teams at VMware, they're hard at work, at taking this offer and scaling it in the market. And we're also working at a, on a longer term integration of VMware Cloud on Dell EMC within Apex, which is really going to further simplify the experience for our joint customers. So, I mean, I think the easiest way to say it, is that we're both committed to delivering the best enterprise class infrastructure services to our joint customers, including hardware and software integrated together, and, I think this is just the start of many good things to come. >> Well, it makes sense. I mean, you guys have obviously developed muscle memory over the years, you know, it's like for years EMC prior, and obviously Dell, you kind of wanted to hang on and it was kind of tethered to VMware, but the time is right for that, for a lot of reasons. But I wonder Travis, how do you see, sort of VMware Cloud on Dell EMC, particularly you mentioned Apex. Is Apex, you have Apex hybrid cloud, that you've announced, the Dell Tech World and Apex private cloud. How does, how do you see that fitting in? >> Yeah, it's all part of a portfolio of solutions that we have for our customers. Dell Technologies, you've worked with, for us, for a long time Dave, and we always strive to provide the best solutions for our customers to match their needs. And so, if a customer determines that they will require a vendor managed cloud service, they want that single invoice billing, that completely managed solution for them, the best offering is obviously VMware Cloud on Dell EMC. If a customer determines that they have the IT resources to manage the infrastructure, they want the flexibility to and managed services later, Apex hybrid cloud or private cloud is the best solution. But the great news is that, all of these solutions showcase the partnership between Dell and VMware, as all of them have a major VMware component. Showcases our joint solutioning, and all of them are available today via Dell. And so, the only thing I can say is, there's more to come in the future. So stay tuned for exciting announcements in the not too distant future. >> Well, well Fidelma, the great thing about VMware and Dell, is you were in it, you got VMware. A lot of people, look back and say, wow, we could've had that for 635 million or whatever it was. (Fidelma laughing) And now it's just amazing to see how that the transformation has occurred. And I'll tell you how, how I see it. I mean, you've got this huge opportunity. You call it core to cloud to edge. I just see this abstraction layer that can be built out. And if I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times, that the next 10 years of cloud aren't going to look like the last 10 years of cloud. So I'm wondering, but you have relationships with the public cloud players. You got a special relationship with AWS obviously, IBM, Microsoft, et cetera, et cetera. How do you see VMware Cloud on Dell EMC relative to the offerings that you have with other hyperscalers with the public cloud? >> So, we think it's a very important compliment. And so, you know I think, we've been around this industry long enough to know that, there's never one size fits all, and that, I think we're just coming into the next innings in cloud, as you said the next 10 years, won't be like the last 10 years. VMC on Dell EMC is the perfect compliment to other VMC offerings on top of the public cloud. And so, most customers end up with, they will have public cloud, for some applications native, they will have public cloud with VMware on it, and then they would have the need to have something either in their data center or at a colo. And for there, VMC on Dell EMC is the only heterogeneous one, that can operate with all of the VMware options on the public cloud. So, we think this is a really important play for us and our customers, and dovetails nicely into our portfolio. >> Yeah, we got a little bit of time left, I wonder if I'd get your opinion on this. I mean, I think that, obviously the public cloud is growing faster than the on-prem piece of it, but the on-prem piece is so much larger. So just a few percentage point growth in the on-prem, can mean so much more (Dave laughs) revenue and value. And I think people forget about that sometimes. I think the other thing is, I think for years, people misunderstood that, oh, it's like, it's not a zero-sum game, I guess is what I'm saying. And my point there is, if I'm you guys, I'm like, well thank you public cloud guys for spending tens of billions of dollars a year. It's like building the internet, thank you for that. Now we can build on top of it. And that's where I see the next 10 years, the real innovation that you guys can bring. The public cloud guys, yeah maybe they're going to try to dabble in that, but I, I'm not sure, I trust them to run my whole estate. If I'm a big Dell customer, I want to know, okay, what are you guys going to do for me in VMware? What are you going to do for me in terms of expanding? And that seems to be the direction that you're going, like Fidelma just said, it's early innings, that whole idea of abstracting all that underlying complexity away. It just seems to me, a huge opportunity for you and your customers. >> Yeah, we agree. I mean, even if you think about, you know, you made a very important point, it's not a zero-sum game, applications and workloads are growing. They're being driven by the development of modern applications on top of container technology. And so, with our transient technology from VMware, deployed across multiple cloud endpoints, we give you a lot of choice on where you want to develop those applications. You'll see us embedding it in many of our offerings including VMC on Dell EMC. And we're seeing a huge uptake on interest within the data centered customers and within, to start to develop modern applications on-prem. And so, as you said, it's not a zero-sum game and a few percentage points in uptake in data center will be good for everybody. Travis, you want to add? >> Yeah, I think that's right Fidelma. And I think the other thing is, Dell and VMware have been doing on-premises deployments for a long time. And, if you look at some of the core strengths that Dell has in terms of something, as critical as supply chain or services reach or the, what I call the ability to service tens of thousands of customers at moderate to large scale, that's something that, some of the alternative providers don't have. And so, the more, and Fidelma and I have talked about this a lot, the more that Dell and VMware can collaborate on these solutions, I think the stronger hand that we're going to have, going forward. >> Yeah, on-prem and complexity, frankly, that's your home court. And so, it'd be really interesting to watch. Guys, great to see you again, thanks so much for coming back in theCUBE, and an awesome conversation. Really appreciate it, and best of luck to you both. >> Thank you Dave. >> Thanks Dave. >> All right, thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE, we are continuing coverage of Dell Technologies World 2021, the virtual edition, we'll be right back. (upbeat music)

(upbeat 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 Akanksha Mehrotra, Vice-President Marketing for APEX at Dell Technologies. Welcome Akanksha, great to see you. >> Thank you, thanks for having me. >> 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, there's a few trends that we're seeing and they've been in place for a while, but they have accelerated certainly over the past year. The first one is organizations all over the world want to become more digital in order to modernize their operation and foster innovation on behalf of their customers. And they've been thriving for years, digital transformation can 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 the remote workforce as well as the relative piece of change, for example, if they see remarkable spike in the consumption of digital content 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. 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 a simplified operations as well as the faster access to innovation. And so what's really clear is that both private cloud and public cloud has their strengths and picking one you're inevitably trading off the benefits of the other. And so an organizations want the flexibility to be able to choose the right path that best meet their business objectives. And IT is a service delivered at the location of your choice is one way to do that. As you know, we talk a lot to analysts like yourself and they tend to agree with us. IDC predicts that by 2024 or perhaps a better data center infrastructure is going to be consumed as a service. At Dell Technologies, we're beginning to see the shift happen already. As you said, we've been providing flexible consumption and as a service solutions for well over a decade. However, what's different now is that we're radically simplifying that entire technology experience to deliver this at scale to our entire install base and that's what APEX is all about. >> Great, thank you. So I know Dell is very proud of the tie. I think I got this ratio right, do to say ratio, right? The numerator's bigger than the denominator. And you've got a good track record in this regard. You're going to 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 what customer benefits specifically does APEX deliver? >> Yeah, so you're right. We announced that this a vision back in October 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. These helps 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 and private cloud by delivering as a service wherever it's needed to help organizations meet the needs of their digital transformation agenda. Talking to our customers in terms of customer benefits, we've centered around 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 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 IT for our customers. Our goal is to remove complexity from every stage of the customer journey. So for example, with APEX and APEX offers that I'll just get into in a bit, we take away that 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 using an easy web based console and then we'll take it from there. We will pick the technology and its services that best meets the needs, 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. This is an area that's been top of mind for our customers as I said, certainly over the past year and frankly, it's been one of the main driving factors over the other service revolution. Again, with APEX we aim to deliver agility to every stage of the customer journey. So for example, with APEX, 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 within the location of their choice. Another driver for agility is having access to technology when you need it without costly over provisioning. So with APEX, you can dynamically scale your resources up and down based on changing business requirements. And then the third barrier of agility and this is a serious one, it's just forecasting costs and containing them. And with APEX, 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 paying to access your own data. And then finally from a control standpoint, often business and IT leaders are forced to make difficult trade offs 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 divide and so we're not going to make them make this kind of false trade off between them. 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 cool 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 stick to limit access, IT organizations can choose who can access certain functionality for configuring APEX services and thereby kind of reduce risk and simplify those security obligations. So, those are some examples of, you know, how we deliver simplicity, agility and control to our customers with APEX. >> You know, I'll give you a little aside here if I may, you know, you said the trade-offs and I've been working on this scenario of how we're going to come back from the pandemic. And you're seeing this hybrid approach where we're, 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 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 don't have to be provisioning lungs and spending all time, both waiting and provisioning and tuning, that allows me to free up talent and really deliver on some of those problematic areas that are forcing me today to do a trade-off. So I think that really resonates with me Akanksha, so. >> You're exactly right and we're what kind of refactoring applications, learning new skillset, hiring new people. If the part that resonates with you is that agility and simplicity, you know, why not have it where it makes sense in a skill set? >> So APEX is new way of thinking. I mean, certainly for Dell in terms of how you deliver for way customers consume, can you be specific on some of the offerings that we can expect from DTW this year? >> Yes, we've got a variety of announcements, 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 it's ascribed to the technology services that best meets their needs and then we'll take it from there. From a day two 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 and then modify it. They can engage and kind of provisioning type tasks. They can see costs transparent, review billing and payment information each month and use it for things like show back or charge back to, you know, various business units within their organization. Over time, we will also be integrating the console with common procurement and provisioning systems so that they can further streamline approval workflows as well as published API for further integration from developers at the customer site. So, 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, please, no carry on, thanks. >> The next announcement is APEX data storage services. This one is a first in a series of outcome-based turnkey services in the APEX portfolio. At the end this essentially delivers storage resources at the customers at the location that they would prefer. When subscribing to this which is 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. What performance tier, the application that the customer is going to run on these resources needs, they can be in three levels, what base capacity they want where they can start at 50 terabytes and then the time length that they're looking for, the subscription length. 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 bill from us and that's it. 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 on that product, etc, etc. You know, we take care of all of that, include the right services and then kind of deliver it 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 again console, data storage, cloud services, which are key... >> Now, they check the cloud services. >> And then the partner piece with Equinix for latency and proximity, speed of light type stuff, okay, cool. >> Exactly. Cloud services very quickly are integrated solutions to help simplify that adoption and they support both 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 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. Comes in two flavors, APEX Flex On Demand, which takes anything within our broad infrastructure portfolio, servers, storage, data protection, you name it and we can turn that into a paper use 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 to managed again, you know, include it without those services. And essentially they can configure their own as a service experience. And the data center utility takes it to the next level and offers even more customization in terms of customer elementary options, etc, etc. So that's kind of a quick summary of the announcements in the APEX portfolio. >> Okay, I think I got it. Five buckets, the console, which gives you that full life cycle, that self-service, the storage piece, the cloud services, the Equinix partnership and the partners, that's a whole nother conversation and then the custom piece if you really want to customize it for your... >> And storage services. >> All right, good, okay, you guys have been busy. 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 use cases. >> Yeah, let me give you a couple of examples. We'll start with APEX data storage services. As I said, this one's going generally available now. At Dell we believe in drinking our own champagne. So our own IT team has been engaged in a private data of this service for the past several months and their feedback has helped shape the offer. The feedback that they've given us is that they really liked that, like simple life cycle management. You know, they tell us that it speeds up their folks to do a lot of other things. And that are kind of higher level order tasks if you will versus managing the infrastructure. They're seeing greater efficiencies in the past in performance management, they like not having to worry about building a capacity pipeline. And they like being able to kind of build on a charge back 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. And, you know, that's the feedback that they and of course they've given us lots of feedback that we've also put into building the product itself, in short they really liked the flexibility of it. Let me give you a, maybe a customer example and then a partner example as well. APEX cloud services. This is one where more and more customers are realizing that for compliance, regulatory or performance reasons, maybe public cloud doesn't really work for them. And 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 VDI into these different environments. 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 people use model and the ability to scale up without having to engage and kind of renegotiating terms. They also appreciated and like the cost transparency that we provided and their feedback to us that it was sort of unmatched with other solutions that they'd seen and they like sort of cost-containment benefits because it give them much more control over their budget. And then from a partner standpoint, 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 series of lucrative partner options for them. A recent win that we saw in the 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 deployment while ensuring the compliance of their healthcare data as you I'm sure know their, you know, some strict requirements in this space. 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. And so their feedback with that since they were able to be just as agilent 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 customers that have tried out these services. >> Awesome, thanks for that. And the real transformation for the partners as well. I think actually if partners leaned in they can make a lot of money doing this. >> It means so much in profitability. >> Yeah, well, hey, that's what the channel cares about. I mean, it's different from the past of selling boxes, That was to do, okay, I know you got my margin there, but this I think actually huge opportunities to get deeper into the customer, add value in so many other different ways, the channel is undergoing tremendous transformation. I have to ask you, so I think the first time I saw it, so you have flexible consumption, you've had that for a number of years. I think the first time I saw it 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 after that. >> Yeah, you're right. We've offered these solutions for a while and very successfully so I should add, 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 caking, think of this as APEX is a two durdle of that. So we've been doing that. We're going to continue doing that, but what I talked about in APEX customer 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 turnkey side is that we're taking out 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 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 to 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 backed up with our services, our scale, our supply chain leadership that we've had for awhile built on our industry leading portfolio, the broadest in the industry then delivering that with unmatched time to value at 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 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 with what we're doing now and frankly that's also our commitment going forward. So you can imagine today, I talked to you about our cloud solutions, our infrastructure solutions, but imagine going forward all of our solutions, server, storage, data protection, workload, end user devices telecom solutions, Edge Solutions, gaming devices all of them kind of delivered in this way. And you know, only the way that Dell Technologies and our partner community camp. >> When I hear you say outcome based a lot of people may say, well, what's that? I'll tell you what I think it is. The outcome I want is I want is I want my IT to be fast, 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 and I want it simple. I mean, 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've said of business as well as technology outcomes that we're targeting. But those are exactly it availability, uptime, performance, you know, time to value. Those are exactly the types of outcomes that we're targeting with these offers and that's what our services are designed from the ground up to do. >> Okay, last question, second part of my other question is, I mean, it's essentially, you've got the cloud model. You're bringing that to on-prem, you've got other on-prem competitors, what's different with Dell from the competition? >> Yeah, so I would say from a competitive standpoint as you've said, 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 the best of that experience to wherever our customers want to deploy these resources. From an on-prem standpoint I think our differentiation always has and will continue to be the breadth of our portfolio. You know, the technology that we provide and bringing this APEX experience in a very simple and consistent way across that entire breadth of products. The other differentiation that I believe we have is frankly our pricing model, right? You mentioned it a few times, I talked a little bit about it earlier as well. If I use storage as an example we are not going to have, 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 to be able to go up and down and having a simple clear consistent rate that they understand very clearly upfront, that they have visibility to that, you know, charges them in kind of a fair way is another kind of point of differentiation. So not having that kind of surge pricing, if you will. And then finally, the third differences are our services, our scale, our supply chain leadership and then just say-do ratio, right? When we say something we're going to do it and we're going to deliver it. From a cloud clearer standpoint it's really interesting. You know, I talk about 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 an IT DN you manage, 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. Again, from a pricing standpoint, the other differentiation that we have is you're not going to be paying to access your old data. You pay a clear rate and it stays consistent, there's no egress ingress charges. There's no retraining of your sales force. There's no refactoring of the application to move it there. There's all these kind of unspoken costs that go into moving an application into public cloud that you're not going to see with us. And then finally, from a performance standpoint we do believe that the performance that we have at APEX Solution is significantly better. You know, just the fact that you've got dedicated infrastructure, like you're not running into issues with noisy neighbors, for example, as well as just the underlying quality of the technology that we deliver. I mean, the experience that we've had and not just in the space, but then delivering it to, you know, hundreds of thousands of customers and hundreds and thousands of locations there's a very good at optimizing for a few locations for hundreds of thousands of customers, but we've been for years delivering this experience, across the world, across hundreds and thousands of data centers and the expertise that our services, our supply chain, and in fact their product teams have built out I think will serve as well. >> Great, a lot of depth there Akanshka, thanks so much. And congratulations for giving birth formerly to APEX and best of luck, really appreciate you coming on theCUBE and sharing. >> Thanks Dave, thank you for having me. >> And 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. (upbeat music)

>>From around the globe. It's the queue with digital coverage of Docker con live 2020 brought to you by Docker and its ecosystem partners. >>Okay, everyone. Welcome back. We're in between segments, we just had Sydney from engine on Jenny, Peter. We're getting down to the last stretch. So our last little segment, before we go to the full wrap up where Jenny, you're going to give away the awards, Peter going to give it away. The awards for the captains, the community. How are you guys feeling? >>Right? Um, I'm feeling great. Peter, how about you? >>Awesome. It's been, it's been fun. Well, Peter, your internet celebrity. Now I hear, I don't know. Is there a special tweet we want to show? I think so. Okay. You see that tweet? It says you're internet famous. Your mom and dad are watching your presentation. Jenny, can you read that? Yeah. >>Yeah. And to be fair, right? They didn't tweet it. They, uh, they watched either session and, and joined and typed in the comments, even though, uh, they had to ask if he was speaking English. Cause they didn't understand anything. He was saying. >>I saw in the chat, I saw my dad's name go by and just, >>I feed her, but wait a minute. And then my wife >>Came in later, said, yeah, your mom and dad are watching your talk. Do we, do we ever stop parenting? >>I don't. Well, I had the opposite effect. I was in one of the sessions and I see a great comment. I'm like, who wrote this? It's my son, Alec farrier, like son, get out of the chat. He said, it's a dope. He said, it's a dope session. It could have been worse. Went in totally random. So it was good. Just look at it, which everywhere the cube and dr. Khan, what a great, uh, no boundaries, age geography has been. I'm really blown away guys. I really gotta say I'm super impressed with the community content program you put together. It's been so much fun. I learned so much. And so appreciate it. Thank you. >>Oh, thank you. I have to agree. Uh, Amanda silver said earlier that coding is the, and you know, Docker con is a team sport too. Uh, I have to take some time to think all the people, uh, that have participated in helped make this event so great. And we'll definitely do it again as we give out the community awards at the end. Okay. I guess 40 minutes from now, but thank you to the doctor theme. Um, many of them have been awakened for hours and hours, hours helping engage and have a great time. Thank you. Okay. Okay. An awesome platform. Rocks scheduling is next level. Um, and the captains, right? I don't know if anyone's had the chance that's watching to go check out the captain stream, especially Brett Fisher. Who's been on all day and he's been so involved in helping us plan to make sure that this is a conversation and not a large webinar. Right. Um, and then our sponsors, we could not have done this without our sponsors. They've been delivering great talks. They're all on demand, uh, except for the one coming up. So make sure to catch those. They'll have giveaways as well, um, that you can, that you can join into two more speakers. You've done awesome, uh, content and production. And then of course the thoughtfulness of the community, right. Thank you for bringing it here today, around the world. >>That's awesome. And I always just say the content presentations were really, really good. The graphics there's templates, but the work that was put into the video and the demos really just next level, as you said. So really just great. I mean, that makes the conference is the presentation. So those talks were engaging. Um, the comments were awesome. Again, I learned a ton and I love love when it's dynamic like that. Uh, Peter, you gotta be psyched developer relations, any, any new insights on the, uh, from the devs? >>Oh, it was great. Great talks. A lot of great. And I was really, really surprised with the chat that the interaction was tremendous. Uh, and I can't believe I used tremendous, but we'll just skip that anyways. Um, but also check out, uh, hashtag Docker con jobs. If you're looking for a job or if you have openings, please, please, uh, hashtag that in your, in your tweets, um, want to help the community out as much as possible. There's a ton of work out there. Just gotta help connect everybody and love to be part of that for sure. >>Yeah. Just so you know, in case you missed the Justin Warren who was live said on live cube, Docker TV, that if he gets 500 upvotes on Linux for Docker, desktop, I think it was. Or was it hub? Might've been desktop. I think he'll triage it out. So there it is. >>All right. I hope the internet heard that cause that's a popular one for sure. Yeah. >>He was on the record and he leaned in on that too. He said it like that. So he meant cool. Any other, uh, shout outs? I mean, I thought Brad was great. Um, the, his, uh, posse, uh, captains were amazing. Um, good feedback there. So gruesome some great chit chatter on that. Um, I didn't have a chance to peek into the session because we're hosting these mainstreams, but yeah. What are you hearing on the captains? >>Uh, tons of knowledge being dropped on that channel for sure. And really great in depth conversations there, uh, answering questions, interacting with the audience. Uh, and you know, a lot of these captains are teachers, uh, as their, as their day job. And a lot of them have, uh, fabulous Docker and Kubernetes content and are running sales right now. So if you do want learn more, if you like, what you heard today, definitely check out right? The horses are on sale this week or under $10, a huge investment in your future. And then Manning books is also running a promotion, a DTW Docker 20 for 40% off their content and a dr. Popkin Elton Stoneman, Jeff Nicola they'll have content there as well. And then Nigel, uh, is, is, has a number of training, uh, courses and, and books as well to check out. Um, and then the captains are running a charity stream. Awesome. People have been donating all day. It's been awesome. Uh, Docker's going to make sure that we reach our $10,000 goal. They wanted to announce that as well. >>I noticed cockroach labs had a similar thing for women for coding. They had another kind of virtual bag swipe. So check them out. They're donating cash as well to women who code. Okay. >>Right. >>Which is very cool. Um, anything else that we missed? Swag giveaways? >>I have one little, um, little comment, a little secret. So I don't know if anybody's caught it yet, Jenny, but if you go back and watch the, the, uh, you know, with Scott, there might be a surprise in there and anybody that finds it first and tweets me might have something for you. >>So Easter egg in there. Is there something going on there? >>I went on, I don't know. I'm just, just saying, >>Okay. All right. Check out the keynote. That was a pro tip right there for everyone's watching. So if you're watching this stream right now, as we get into our awesome next segment, which is going to be really one of my favorites, the children's cancer Institute, this was not only a moving segment from an impact standpoint, but talking about the people that interns and young developers really solving a big problem with Docker, this is a really high impact statement. So that segment, so, so watch it guys. Thanks so much. We'll see. On the wrap up after this next segment, of course, does the catalog of content in the schedule when it's not streaming, it becomes a catalog. So if you're watching it, check out all the sessions, we'll see you in the wrap up.