>>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.

>>mhm Yes. Mhm. Mhm. >>Hey, welcome to the cubes coverage of Dell technologies world, the digital event experience. I'm your host lisa martin. I have alumni back with me and a new guest joining us. David Reed is back the Senior director of product management at Dell Technologies Devon welcome back to the cube. >>Hi there. Hi there, lisa. Having thanks for having me back. It's great to be here. >>Yeah, Virtual or not. It's great and some GT metal joins us the senior director of cloud product marketing at Dell Technologies. Some give me it's great to have you on the program. >>Thank you. Happy to be here lisa. >>So we're gonna be talking about Apex. This was a big announcement at Dell Technologies really 2020 also a digital experience just about six months or so ago talking about the future of dull and transitioning its platform to the as a service model that we want to dig into that, see what's going on there. So I'm doing the start us off embracing service rather the as a service model. That was a huge transition, huge step bold for Dell for its future from your lens, What does it mean? What's going on and with regards to the cloud, talk to me about some of the impacts? >>Yeah, no, it has it has been a multi year journey for us and uh it's really exciting to be part of this journey. We have done a lot of work to establish modern commerce and apex models. Um, you know, it really plays to our strength. We have led the infrastructure space for a number of years. So I really think with as a service, what we are doing is doing what we do really well but delivering more value to our customers at a much faster clip. So it puts us in a great position to continue to be that technology partner that our customers come to rely on and and frankly count us uh you know, as their true essential partners for their success. >>Devon talk to me about what it takes to engineer solutions like this. We mentioned this is a big big transformative strategic direction, directional shift. But how does this as a service model with apex differ from traditional models of infrastructure solutions that are in the data center? >>Yeah sure lisa. So I think at a very high level it differs a lot. And if I think about three major differences from how we build our traditional Capex business and our technology versus what we're doing it as a service. The first thing that comes to my mind is that we're trying to build outcomes for customers and what that really means. If you look back to how we sell infrastructure gear for the longest time, a customer would basically have to pick the technology, uh, price the technology, They would get a quote with a lot of different line items on it, with different pricing and then they would purchase the product outright and then they would have to manage that product themselves. And what we're really trying to do here is go to an outcome based model where the customer doesn't need to focus on the technology. They just need to focus on the business outcome that they're really getting in. The case that we're talking about here today is really around our apex cloud services. So they just have to choose whether they're getting a hybrid cloud service or a private cloud service and then pick their instances and then we, we ship them, uh, infrastructure right to their door. And that's another thing that we've had to do is we've had to change our processes because we need to make sure that these services are up and ready to be used in a very short amount of time. So we're targeting two weeks from the time that the order is dropped until the time that they can actually start operating on the gear um to shrink that time to value and really improve that uh that value statement for them. And then the third is that we really have to really partner with our customers on security and trust because we're managing this infrastructure for them as opposed to just uh sending the infrastructure on prem and having the customer deal with it all. So we we need to be a trusted partner uh in all of these infrastructure services. So there's a lot of a lot of differences in the way we engineer here, >>outcomes time to value and security. I want to pivot on that security front for second. We've been talking about it for a long time since you've talked to me as the senior director of product marketing. Where are your customers with respect to security comfort, confidence in apex and as a service? >>Yeah. No, I'm glad you asked that question lisa In fact, that is by far what we are seeing from a customer eagerness to learn perspective. We are seeing a lot of customers that are very cautious and we and our measured about their compliance needs. They are really thinking about, hey, how do I meet? How do I continue to deliver on my, on my business outcomes but also be compliant with the regulations that I'm responsible for. And, and we are seeing, um, you know, uh, like customers like as public cloud became a mainstream thing. A lot of customers moved to public cloud but quickly realized that it wasn't end all be all. And they had to think about their workloads differently. They have to think about the risk around some of their critical workloads differently. And this is where apex Hybrid cloud and apex private cloud are really helping them meet those compliance and regulatory needs for their business. And so with, with these offers in market, that's been a big part of most of our customer conversations that we are seeing today. >>Did you see any acceleration? You know, as we've all experienced a very disrupted market in the last 13 plus months, we saw a huge acceleration in digital transformation, out of necessity businesses that we're pivoting multiple times to try to survive and now thrive as this hopefully becomes a post pandemic world. So dana just question for you talk to me about some of the things that you saw in the market with respect to customers, maybe certain industries that really leaned heavily on this? >>Yeah, like within, within a day or two, most businesses had to pivot and and most of their workforce was trying to access their company information And company data from, from, you know, which was not part of what they have planned for. They probably thought about it, but they didn't have plans in place and so over the last 12 plus months I think what, what the customers have found themselves is the digital transformation became real for them and these solutions are no longer just an idea but are really getting to a place where they are starting to assess which workloads do I really use the private cloud and hybrid cloud environments for so that I continue to meet my needs. I continue to have the right performance that I'm looking for And and frankly enable my workforce to continue to be productive while they are in this um in this mode of working remotely um quite a bit. So if anything, the last 12 months we've seen heightened interest in these solutions because it's become real as opposed to an idea >>right, that reality set in overnight for so many organizations devon I want to get to you, you know, one of the things that we saw this, we talked about the rapid adoption of cloud um SAs applications like zoom being critical to personal life. Professional life, talk to me about the explosion of what we're seeing at the edge and what's going on in the data center and where Dell Technologies sees prime opportunity. >>Yeah, I mean, the the edge is definitely what we see as the next battleground for the infrastructure. So if you think about what's really happening, there are millions and millions of sensors and applications that are distributed throughout uh you know, throughout the world and throughout non data center applications especially at the edge and the far edge in the near edge. And there's large, large volumes of data being created that need to be processed, analyzed and then basically brought back into premises to make actionable insights onto it and what we've done. Um uh we're exciting too excited to announce that we have a manufacturing edge solution partnering with parametric technologies and leveraging our apex private cloud to offer a private cloud solution for manufacturing edge solution. So it's extremely important to us. >>That's huge as we have all seen and felt during the last year. The man, the challenges that the manufacturing industry has faced has been problematic globally. Talk to me more about that, devon and also the impetus for starting there with the pandemic, an impetus to go focus on manufacturing. I actually wanted >>to rewind the tape here a little bit and talk about the impact of the global pandemic on this as a service. Prior to the prior to the pandemic was definitely something in high demand, but as we started to progress through this global pandemic, uh it just started to explode and really you had a spectrum of customers on that cloud that transformation journey from a cloud perspective and it really started to accelerate and every time we started we kept looking at you know what what are people predicting for adoption of as a service? And every few months it was getting more bullish and more bullish. And it was really um not only from a cost savings perspective, but definitely the global pandemic has been driving a lot of this demand and we see it, we see it in some of our use cases from our customers, not any particular customer in particular but we do have a lot of customers that are doing that digital transformation to the work from home and they're finding they need that flexibility not only on prem for their desktops but off prem for their desktops as well. So they need a truly hybrid cloud solution and uh our apex hybrid cloud services are perfect for those types of use cases. So we're definitely seeing acceleration in this space. >>Yeah a lot of things. Very good. The one thing that I would at least you know um Devin talked about the manufacturing solution. Think of it as it's a it's a start of a journey because that same scenario of you know like we talked about manufacturing and their scenarios where they need that support on the edge and being able to connect to the private cloud, that same scenario or that similar scenario exists for other industries as well, whether you think about retail or healthcare, um you know, so that same model of building these edge solutions that connect into a cloud environment is something that Dell will continue to invest in manufacturing is the place where we are starting with >>Got it. You bring up a great point about all the other industries that have been so dramatically affected and continue to be, even though there's been multiple pivots surviving, surviving. Again, pivoting again, I want to talk to us about the customer conversations, you talked about the time to value, devon being really quick, we're talking about from order to in production in a couple of weeks, but I want to talk about how you in that time, in conversations with customers, help them identify which workloads are best suited for Apec solutions. Talk to me a little bit about devon starting with you. >>Yeah, so first and foremost, um 14 days is just where we're starting And um 14 days as a starting point and we will continue to shrink that over time we have aspirations to get too much lower that lower than that for on premises. We also announced a partnership with equinox today where we will be um providing these services not only on prem in the edge, but also in in near cloud facilities, in co location facilities and at that point we can get to near zero instant time to value from that perspective. So we will be increasing the, you know, the lowering the time to value for our customers for those types of solutions. Um so that's just yeah, the 14 days, just a starting point and the follow up to the second part of the question lisa, can you remind me please? >>Oh just how are you helping customers with their decisions on workloads? Which workloads are best suited for this or that hesitancy has been has not changed. Talk to me about this customer conversations. >>Yeah I think you know we're talking to a bunch of analysts today and it really kind of varies. People are asking like are there any particular customer types of industry verticals that are really and it's really broad based in terms of really helping customers, you know what workloads really are well suited. We have a bunch of tools and our apex console from a sizing perspective workload perspective that not only help our sales, our sales teams but also customers really decide which of the best places to uh to put these particular workloads and help them size their infrastructure for these solutions. >>Yeah. The one thing that I would add lisa to that is it really comes down to the every customer is unique and different and their tolerance for risk and and their objectives is different. And so I really believe, you know, there is a continuum and you will see customers lie across it where customers that are willing because a lot of customers jumped right into public cloud when public cloud was the big phenomenon. But they realized they were being risk. They were okay with taking on the risks that they did, but now that they have a little more um, you know, ground beneath them and and have some experiences, they are able to sort of write size, how they think about public cloud relative to the the hybrid cloud environment and and be able to think about which workloads are they willing to take the risks on and which which workloads? They're not willing to take the risks on. I come back to that compliance and regulatory risk is a big risk that customers are weighing it against. And and so I think those are those are the variables that the customers will think through as they think about um, investing in in a hybrid cloud environment is really thinking about how much I am I willing to take the risk on a particular workload and how much am I willing to give up the control by putting it in a public cloud environment? Those are the decisions that customers will make as they think about their rock loans, >>right, big decisions And to your point, every customer obviously there is a unique experience where we're almost out of time but devon I wanted to go to you and talk about from a good market perspective. So you you talked about the new culo agreement with Equinox. Congratulations on that giving customers choice here, give me just give the customers one idea where can they go to start this discussion with you guys? >>The first and best place to go to start having this discussion and start learning about Apex is our apex console. So our apex console will be the end and unified user experience that a customer will interact with these services. And from the time where a customer just wants to start kicking around the idea of an apex service, what are the services, what's the catalog to actually sizing it, quoting it, getting their bills there, there there, see what their metered subscriptions are and to actually operating their gear, it's all about the apex console and of course um you know, no better than the relationships that you have with your customers and partners. I I encourage you to reach out to uh you know, our sales folks and and our and our partners to get more information on Apex >>awesome guys, thank you so much for joining me this virtual experience to talk about what's going on with Apex very short time that it was announced, a lot of progress, looking forward to the next Dell technologies world. That's hopefully in person and we can sit down with some customers and really talk through this but Devin and send, jimmy, thank you so much for your time. >>Thank you so much. Thank >>you >>for Devin Read and some G B metal. I'm lisa martin, you're watching the cubes coverage of Dell technologies world, the digital event experience.