(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)

(bright upbeat melody) >> Welcome back to Dell Technology World 2021. Dell Tech World, the virtual edition. My name is Dave Vellante. We're going to talk about the Edge. I'm very excited to invite Pierluca Chiodelli, who's the Vice President of Product Management for the Edge portfolio at Dell. And Gil Shneorson, who's the Senior Vice President, Edge portfolio also at Dell Technologies. Gentlemen, great to see you welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you, Dave. >> Thank you, great to see you. >> Yeah, great to see you guys too. Wish we were face to face but maybe in '22. Gil, let's start with you. The Edge is very exciting, it's not really defined. It's very fragmented, but it's there. It's kind of, you know it, when you see it. What do you get excited about when you think about the Edge? >> I think of there's two elements. The first one, is that we all live at the Edge. In other words, the areas we deal with are around us everyday. When we shop, when we consume, when we drive. So it's a very physical type of activity, we know it's there. What's really exciting mostly to me is that, and you started with talking about fragmentation right off the bat. It is a great opportunity for Dell Technologies to add value. Because it's so fragmented, because it's so new, because it has developed and evolved the way it is. We see an amazing opportunity for us to add much more value than we do today and solve problems that have yet to be solved in the industry. >> And Pierluca, it's an exciting, it's almost like an infinite playground for a technologist. I mean. >> Yeah, Dave, I think that's exactly what we find out. The Edge is very exciting, there is a lot of motion especially due to the pandemic and other things. Big factor that is accelerating the innovation at the Edge but this is an inorganic acceleration and what it cause for most of our customers is also confusion, right? They need to apply multiple solutions but not very organized. So you try to solve the outcome like having the right production on your line because demand is surging. But you don't have an organic things to do that and solve the problem. So you see a lot of silos coming in for each one of the solution, and that's what Gil was referring. That's a great opportunity for us as Dell with the breadth of the portfolio we have and what our team that is a new team is focusing doing is to bring that idea to be able to consolidate multiple things at the Edge and process things at the Edge. >> We did an event. CUBE had an event called the CUBE on Cloud and Q1, we had John Rose on and the title of the segment was something like gaining the technology Edge. And we were kind of geeking out on the tech at the Edge. And my takeaway there was... We were trying to like what is Edge? It's like, well, it's the place where it makes most sense to process the data. And so that brings up a lot of challenges. There are technical challenges and there are business challenges. I wonder if we could sort of dig into those a little bit. How do you guys look at that? Maybe Gil, you want to start maybe. Maybe on the business side and then we can dig into that. >> Sure. The way things evolved. If you think about it, at the Edge is very verticalized. And because of that, they're very use case driven. And so in every industry possible, you start with some business person making a decision whether they have a need or they want to grow their business. And so for example, they will buy an applying to do fraud protection in retail or detection retail. Or they will apply an application to merit robotics and the factory need would come with its own gateway, implant, compute, and a cloud portal. And then you do it again and again, and again, every time you have a business opportunity. All of the sudden you have this proliferation of IT type equipment. At the end where it's the worst place to have it really because you don't have the right IT resources and you are in the need to protect it in a much more... In a different way that you can do in a data center. And so all of that, bring us to a point that we see an opportunity to simplify. And so not only simplification. And this is, you know, simplification or simplicity is the most important driver for any IP purchase. Things that are simple or the easiest and the most economical to operate. The next demand that we see from a customer is security. Because things are at the edge, they have a much more extended attack surface. They need to be connected to networks. They need to be connected without IT staff. So if you can simplify insecure, you can really unlock amazing value by processing data close to where it's created. Without it, we're seeing this opportunity as businesses but we can't really get to it because there are those two hurdles in front of us. >> So Pierluca. We need to you thank you for that, Gill. When you hear a lot about AI inferencing at the Edge. And if you think about AI today, much of the work is modeling. It's done in the cloud. But you're not going to be doing AI inferencing in real time in the cloud. Take the autonomous vehicle example. So that brings some technical challenges. There's obviously data challenges. I'm curious as to how you think about that. I mean, we always talk about how much data is going to be persisted. I think Tesla persists like five minutes of data, right? But some of it is going to go back. That's true. But a lot of it is going to be processed real time. And that's just really different than the way we typically think about IT. >> Yeah, absolutely. So at the Edge, especially in manufacturing, we see right now, or in other use case, it's very important to get the outcome very quickly. Now, you don't use that a deep learning model for that. You need to just understand. For example, in the computer vision use case where you take image of your production line. To your point, Dave, you not keep those image, you keep the image where you have the defect. But you need to process that AIML needs to be intelligent enough to understand that you have a defect, and send that image then to the club. So the search of the data at the Edge is a very important factor. And why you need to process data at the Edge, because as your point, you can't wait to send to the cloud and then wait, right? Tesla is a clear example of that. All the autonomous car where you need to react instantaneously to a change. But in manufacturing, for example, that is our focus for now, is for example, the robots. That if you need to optimize the robot, you need to have a immediate understanding of where the pieces are and when they need to put. And the tolerance need to be act immediately. Otherwise, you come out with the thousand of pieces that they are not in the right tolerance. So, and at the end of the day, what we see is not only the search of the need of processing AIML to the Edge, but also the need to have a new type of compute at the Edge. So in the past, was just gateway and you'd get the gateway and you send the data to the cloud. Now, it's a form of a new compute that has also GPU capability and other things to process this data. So very important. And I think that Dell, especially, we are very focused on that because is really where the customer need to extract the value. >> Thank you. And Gil, I want to get Gil to the unique value proposition to Dell and what makes you distinct. If I infer from your comments, your strategy, you said it's to simplify. And so I see two vectors there. One is to simplify at the Edge. The other is where needed connect that Edge, whether it's on prem, a public cloud, cross-cloud, that kind of simplification layer that abstracts the complex the underlying complexity. Maybe you could talk about your strategy and what makes you guys different? >> Sure. We've been talking to our... Well, we always talk to our customers. And we've been doing business at the Edge for many, many years. Let's call it coincidence that we're a very large company. We have reached, we serve our customers. So when they decide to buy something for their Edge, you know, environments, they come to us as well as other vendors. When the percentage of the time based on our market share. But when we decided to take another look at how can we be even more relevant, we started talking to a lot of them great depth. And what we discovered was the problem I talked about before. The problem of complexity, the problem of security and the problem of choice. And so our focus is to do what we do best. At the end of the day, we're an IT company and our customers for the most part are IT people. And we see them dragged more and more into Edge projects because customers need to connect Edge to the network. And they need to security, and that's how it starts. And so those worlds of IT and OT are coming together and they're coming together, applying IT best practices, which is exactly what we know how to do. And so, because of that, we think that they need to think about architecture versus unique silence solutions. Architecture that can support multiple use cases that can grow with time, consolidate more and more use cases as they grow, simplify what they do by applying tried and true or tried and true IT best practices in a secure manner. So the dealer approach would be doing that, taking a more architectural approach to the adverse as a use case. And then just like you predicted, meet the customers where they are from an application standpoint. And so we know that a lot of applications are growing and be developing on a hyper scale or public clouds. We would like to connect to those. We would like to allow them to keep working as they have, except, when they run it at the Edge. Think about environments, if can consolidate multiple workloads and not solve it for each one at the same time. And so that will be our overall approach. That's what we're working on. >> Yeah. So, okay. So in that horizontal layer, if you will, to serve many, many use cases, not just... You're not going to go a mile deep into one and be the expert at some narrow use case. You want to be that horizontal platform. Here, look, I wonder, does that call for more programmability over time of the products to really allow people to kind of design in that flexibility, if you will, build my own. Is that something that we can expect? >> Yeah, absolutely. So we spoke a little bit about this before the interview. And the things that is very important is composability, starting from a very small form factor to the cluster, and then expand to the cloud is the fundamental things. And the trend that we see. The fact that you can compose the infrastructure, starting from a small gateway that is changing in this market right up to the cloud, and be able to use the same layer that allow you to run the same application is a fundamental things. And we are working on that. We are working on this vision and our strategy is really to be able to be transparent but provide the right building block to do all the use cases that they are required. Where the data. So we, again, not only meeting the customer but meeting where the data are, what the customer wants out of those data. So that's a fundamental things. And we have project Apex. So obviously we are plugging in the project Apex. From a Edge point of view, will allow the customer to have these unique experience to go in Apex and also deploy the Edge infrastructure that is needed. We're starting right now with that. So we will touch later, but that's the first building block of that journey. >> Excellent. Let's touch now. You've got some news around Apex and what are you announcing? >> So we are very excited because as I said our team it's pretty new and it's a very important investment that Dell makes. Not only in us as a team, but as a motion. So we are announcing a reference architecture with PTC. PTC is one of the biggest company for... Actually based here in Boston for manufacturing. And reference architecture will be run on base on Apex private cloud. So the customer can go to the portal, order Apex private cloud and deploy PTC on top of that. So very important things is the first step in this journey. But it's very important steps so we want to thank you also PTC to allow us to work with them. We have other stuff as well that we are announcing. I don't know if you are familiar but we have a very unique streaming data platform. Streaming data platform that can stream multiple data collected from gateway, from every place. And that it's a need. Obviously, when you need to process data in real time, whatever is streaming. What are we doing with the new streaming data platform approach is the ability to deploy single node. So it can be very appealing for the Edge and up to three nodes. >>Awesome. That's great. So a couple of comments on that. So it was funny. We did the LiveWorx show in theCUBE a couple of years ago. PTC is a big event and it was the Edge. And I remember looking around and saying "Where's all the IT vendors?". And so that's great to see you guys leaning in like that. Pierluca, the streaming platform. Tell me more about that. What's the tech behind it? >> So the streaming data platform is a project, that we start couple of year ago, is actually start from open source Pravega. It's a very interesting technology where you can stream multiple data. It's not a traditional storage. Use a technology that can really collect thousands of different streams. And that's very important when you need to mind the data. Bring the data, the structured data in efficient that you can process them at the real time. It's very important. So there are very cool use case of that. But now, that we look at the Edge, this is make more and more tangible sense because we have a lot of partners that they're working with us, especially to extend. When you have all these sensor, you bring the data to the gateways and from the gateways, then you can use data streaming platform to collect all these streams. And then you can easily process them. So it's a very fundamental technology. We are very proud of that. As I said, our enterprise version, it's getting more and more. And now we can land these on different architecture. So it can be backed up by an unison. It can be also on different storage type now. And as I said, we looking now to bring from a what was it data center kind of structure, down to the Edge because now we can put it in a single node up to three nodes. >> It makes a lot of sense. Is this like a Kafka based thing or open source or is it something you guys built or a combination? >> It's a combination. The project is an open source project but we did that. We start this many years ago. And it works with Kafka but it's not Kafka. So it has plugging that can work with Kafka and all the other things. And it's very easy to deploy. So it's a very, very important. And the other things is the scalability of this platform. >> Yeah, so I mean, that sounds like the kind of thing you had in the labs. And you said, "Okay, this is going to be important". And then boom, all of a sudden, the market comes to you. As if you pop it right in. And then of course, the Accenture relationship. Deep, deep industry expertise. So that makes a of sense. 5G's happening. A different world the next 10 years than the last 10 years. Isn't it? >> Yep. >> What is it about manufacturing? Why did you start there? >> I can take this. We looked at where the opportunity was from two perspective. One is whether what are the opportunities to sell, Dave. And the other one obviously comes with it because there's an opportunity to have. And manufacturing today at the Edge is about 30% of the opportunity in sales. According to IDC. But more so, it's been around for the longer time. And so it's maturing, it's the most demanding. And you know, it's got very long horizons of investment. And what we did was, we figured that if we can solve problems for industry, we can then extend that and solve it for everybody else. Because this would be the toughest one to solve. And we like challenge. And then, so we decided to focus and go deep. And you said it before, well, our approach is definitely horizontal approach. We cannot take an horizontal approach without verticalizing and understanding specific needs. So nobody can avoid doing both at the same time. You need to understand. But you also want to solve it in a way that doesn't proliferate the silos. So that's our role. We will understand, but we will make it more generic. So other people can never (indistinct). >> Yeah. And David, if I can add, I think the manufacturing is also very exciting for us as a technologist, right? And Dell technology, as in the name, the technology. So it's very exciting because if I look at manufacturing, we are really in the middle of a industrial transformation. I mean, it's a new era. If you think about, nobody care in the past to connect their machinery with... That they have PLC to the network. All of these is changing because the life where we live right now, with the pandemic, with the remote working, with the fact that you need to have a much more control and be able to have predictive matter. So you're not stopping your manufacturing. Is pushing the entire manufacturing institute industry to connect these machines. And with the connectivity of these machinery, you get a lot of data. You get also a lot of challenge. For example, security. So now, that's the place where connectivity brings the IT aspect in. And the OT guys, now they starting to speak (indistinct) because now it's a more complex things, right? It's not any more computerized only to one machinery. Specifically, is the entire floor. So it's a very interesting dynamics. >> Is the connection between that programmable logic controller and the Dell solution, you mentioned to secure, better security. And I presume it's also to connect back to whatever the core or the cloud, et cetera. Is it also to do something locally? Does it improve? Is there value add that you can provide locally? And what is that value add? >> Yeah, absolutely. So the value add, as I said, if you think right in the past, right? You have a machine that probably stay in the manufacturing for 20, 25 years then you have an hardware attached to that machine that they used the POC about 11 year. The guy that he knows better about that machine, is actually not the software component of it. But he's the guy that he's been working on that machine for 15 years. Now, how you translate that knowledge to a learning algorithm that actually can do that for thousand of machine. And that's really the key, right? You need to centralize information, process those information, but not in the cloud, not in a central data center, but on the manufacturing floor. And you need to have a way to represent these things in a very simple way. So the plant manager can take action, or the guy that is responsible for the entire line, can take action immediately. And that's where the change is. It's not anymore to... Is trying to extend that knowledge to multiple machine, multiple floor, and try to get these change immediately. So that's very important. >> So the PLC doesn't become a general purpose computer, or even necessarily an Uber computer. It connects to that capability because that enables data sharing across clouds. >> That's enable the entire things. You can't do a model just with one source. You need to have multiple sources. And also think about the manufacturing is changing not only for the machinery, but people that they build new manufacturing, right? They need to be smart building. They need to have a technology for being more green, solar energy consumption. So the manufacturing itself is mean five or six different things that you need to solve. It's not just the machine. So this idea of this silos environment is starting to collapse in one. And that's why it's important for us to start from a vertical, but also in the manufacturer, you already see this will expand to multiple things. Also, smart building another thing because they need it. >> Yeah. The red guilt to your point of view. Manufacturing is like the Big Apple. If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. And you've got adjacencies that you can take the learnings, and manufacturing, and apply them to those adjacent industries. Gil, give us the last word. >> No, usually when we talk at Dell technologies world, we talk to an ideal audience. And we're thinking this year that the way to talk about Edge, at least with the people who traditionally buy from us is expose them to the fact that they are more and more going to be responsible for every projects. And so our advice would be, our hope that they would partner with us to think ahead. Just like they do with data center with our cloud strategy. Thinking ahead as they think about their Edge and try to set up some architectural guidelines. So when they do get the request, they're ready for it. And think about what they know, think about the IP best practices that they applied. All of that is coming to them. They need to be prepared as well. And so we would like to partner with all of our customers to make them ready. And obviously help them simplify, secure, consolidated as they grow. >> Well, guys, thank you. I learned a lot today. We've made a lot of progress. You know, this is the hallmark of Dell, right? It's a very high, let me make sure I get this right. Very high do to say ratio, right? As you guys talked about doing this, a couple of couple of years ago. And you've made a lot of progress and I really appreciate you coming on theCUBE to explain this strategy. It makes a lot of sense. And so congratulations and good luck in the future. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, Dave. >> All right. And thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE's ongoing coverage of Dell Tech World 2021, the virtual edition. Keep it right there, I'll be right back. (closing 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)

(upbeat music) >> Welcome back to Dell Technologies World 2021, the virtual version. My name is Dave Vellante and this is theCUBE I'm pleased to welcome Bill Wavro, the president and GM, Dell Financial Services at Dell Technologies. Bill. Great to see you. Thanks for coming on. >> Yeah, thanks Dave. It's really great to be here with you. >> So we heard in Alison Doos keynote, Dell Technologies all in on as a service APEX. She's the executive lead. So really passionate about that. Talk about DFS in that context, you've always had a way to help people shift CapEx to OPEX but what's your specific role regarding APEX? >> Yeah, well, thanks Dave. Look, we're really excited about APEX in DFS we think APEX solutions gives customers access to the broadest range of infrastructured solutions in the industry if you combine that with the Dell Technologies portfolio of ISG technology and solutions, that's a great combination for customers but you asked about DFS and in DFS we've been delivering consumption solutions for over 15 years. So taking a look at the APEX portfolio you can broadly divided into two categories, turnkey, APEX turnkey solutions, like data storage services and then APEX custom solutions like data center utility and Flex on Demand and those custom solutions are with DFS plays. And as I said we've been offering those for over 15 years. We have a lot of experience with customers, what customers are looking for? We have tens of thousands of assets out there today with hundreds of customers that are being metered on a regular basis that we're billing monthly. So we're getting a lot of feedback from customers. And I think the APEX solutions announcements that you heard here at Dell Technologies World are a further expansion of that. They're built on the backbone of what DFS has been delivering for a long time. So we've taken I think the best of those solutions and we've listened to customers, what are they looking for? What do they want? And we've got even new and improved offerings in the current announcement that we made. So, I think when you talk to customers they want a couple of things. They want simplicity. They want to be able to understand how they're going to acquire it and how those payment solutions work and they want choice. And I think the APEX solutions gives customers both of those things. And the good news is they're available on all sorts of ISD hardware be it servers storage, hyper-converged, converged infrastructures. Customers can choose what technology they're looking for and they can create their own demand environment. And the last thing I'll do is a little plug for DFS. We've been in the payment solution business for over 25 years. So we not only offer consumption solutions but we offer traditional leases and financing. And so when you add all that together and you go talk to a customer about technology and how they want to pay for it we think we've got the broadest range in the industry. And we're really proud of that. >> Okay, cool. So you have the two areas that you simplified it. That which is great. You've got that standard off the shelf and then you've got the custom solutions. The standard stuff is like console data storage and then cloud services that breaks down even further. And then the custom, I got my notes, APEX Flex on Demand and APEX data center utility, how do APEX custom solutions differ from those turnkey offerings. >> Yeah. Well, the beautiful thing about APEX is it gives customers choice. So as you mentioned, you have turnkey. So if you think data storage services that's one of our new turnkey type offerings and those turnkey offerings are outcome-based. So think about it as an outcome. What is a customer looking for? Do they want file versus block storage? What sort of capacity do they need? What performance level are they looking for? But it's thinking of those outcomes. And Dell Technology is going to take care of the rest, right? A customer can go to the APEX console and they can review those choices. They can make their selections and then they can turn it over to Dell and we'll deploy that technology, we'll manage it, we'll upgrade it and we'll service it over the life of the term. So the customer can focus on outcomes versus on acquiring and managing technology. So that's the turnkey solution and that's probably the biggest and newest part of our announcement of APEX solutions. And then we have the custom, the custom, as you mentioned data center utility Flex on-demand. That's what DFS has been delivering for many years now. And that's for our customer who wants to select the product. So think of it as a product-based solution where a customer wants to select the technology. They may want to manage it themselves. They may want to have a partner manage it. They may want to include different services. So they're able to put that together in a custom way and satisfy whatever problem they're trying to solve. So we found that many customers are going to want to select that custom solution because they're in a part of their data transformation journey where they still want to control some of that technology and others will want to go the turnkey route. So again, it kind of goes back to the customer choice in allowing them to acquire it the way that they want to acquire it. >> Okay. So like an example might be, I'm just making this up. I'm a financial institution, I'm a big VMAX customer. I got some kind of special process that I use, that I wrote that gives me competitive differentiation because I can get a millisecond faster than my competitor speed or whatever. And I want that I'm not going to take it. That's not part of your turnkey solution but that's part of my value add, I want that but I want your help in sort of customizing that and making it as a service. Is that like reasonable example? >> That's a great example. And so let me talk about that a little bit. So let me give you a couple of examples of use cases and what the products provide. So think about, let's talk about data center utility first because when you think of the data center utility think data center, right? These are the large deployments. They're big customers. They they're most likely a global customer and they want to get out of the data center business, right? They want to get out of the day-to-day management of that and be able to focus on, hey, how do we as I as a CIO deliver value to my business? I want to make a difference in that business strategy. CIO is more and more being asked to help the business and enable that business strategy. And so many of them want to get out of the data center management business and this is where a data center utility product can come in. It allows us to go in as Dell and help that customer manage that data center. So it has the most flexibility in terms of, custom building, custom reporting, very low if any minimum commitments. And one of the best features is we have a delivery manager who's assigned to every account who can help that customer procure assets, manage assets, deal with capacity management. So we really can take over the management of that data center and allow the customers IT group to focus on delivering value to the business. So we think that's a really important aspect of it. And it allows us to manage even existing assets that are sitting out at the customer as well as new purchases. And then back to the kind of example that you gave, where a customer really wants that high performance they have specific hardware in mind. They can also use a Flex On Demand type product so that the customer is able to pick the hardware whether it be servers, storage, converged infrastructure, hyper-converged and they can select the technology that they want to use. They can sign up for a very flexible period of time. So they can go from one year to five years. They may only need this hardware for a limited period of time. Maybe they're working on a project where they're going to need additional storage capacity for the next couple of years, so they can sign up for a two year contract if they want, they can sign up for the commitment level that they want to use. So, one of the great things that customers are looking for is they want that cloudlike operating model. They want to pay for that technology as they utilize it. And they don't want to be locked in to having to purchase a large amount of data if potentially they're not going to use it. So Flex On Demand gives them that flexibility. They could sign up for 50% of a storage arrays capacity and only pay for usage above and beyond that 50%. So it offers customers a lot of choice and a lot of ability to get the technology they want and be a very flexible utilization method as they go forward. >> So, I don't think a lot of people realize that you said very low or no minimum commitments. And so maybe you could explain that a little bit and who owns the asset? >> When we talk about Flex on Demand it is still owned by Dell. So Dell owns that asset and the customer can commit. And we think we have the broadest range of commitment levels in the industry. So if you think about a Flex on Demand type offering and let's say you want to purchase a storage array you can sign up for a 50% minimum commitment. So again, you've got flexibility on the term. So you can go one to five years you can sign up for 50% commitment. So you're going to get a bill for 50% of that storage usage every month but you're not going to get a bill for anything more unless you utilize it. Now, let's say one month you go to 60%, right? So you're going to pay that extra 10% only when you use it. If you go back down to 50% the following month, you don't pay. And let me point something out on this because I think this is where we differ from a lot of our competition. The rate you pay is the same. So it's the same for the minimum commitment level of 50% as it is for the incremental 10% or 20% that you use above that. Some of our competitors have surge pricing. So basically once you go above your commitment you're paying a premium. We don't do that. We've heard from customers. They don't like that. They want it simple. They want to pay one rate per gigabyte throughout the life of that contract. And so we do that. Another unique feature which we kind of just implemented recently is that the max that you can pay is 85% on that storage usage. So if you sign up for a 50% minimum commitment and let's say you use 90% of it so you've got a pretty significant increase off your minimum. We will only charge you up to 85%. And that's a new feature that we added to all our Flex on Demand products recently for future customers as well as previous customer. So you've actually gone back to all our current customers and said, this applies to you even though that wasn't part of the original offering we're going to cap you at that 85% level. And the reason we did that is because a lot of customers love, pay for things as they use them. They're a little uncomfortable on uncertainty of maybe paying too much, right? So we put this in to help protect customers that they wouldn't have to worry about paying more than they expected to. So we think that's a pretty cool feature of what we offer. >> Yeah. So to summarize the features, I got the portfolio, I got the whole portfolio I have access to, I get the flexibility that you just described in great detail and then pricing transparency or certainty. And then the other piece of that is the value the 85% cap. So that's pretty cool. >> Yeah. >> Okay. So you've been doing this for a while. You have data and experience with real customers, with different types of customs solutions. Maybe you could share some of the business impacts and benefits that customers have seen. >> Yeah. Well, let me give you example. So data center utility like we had a large multinational manufacturer who again as I mentioned earlier they wanted to get out of the data center environment. They don't want to manage that anymore. They had a complex data center. It was managed with about 50% of their own internal IT department and 50% with a third-party service provider. They had multiple hardware vendors, multiple third parties providing services. It was very very complex. So they came to Dell Technologies. We took that data center put it into a data center and utility contract. And we took over management of the data center. So it freed up that 50% of their own IT staff to work on other things. It provided value to the business. And then we were able to take that consolidate vendors make it a lot simpler and improve the efficiency of the data center. And that's an important thing. So it's not just about how you pay for it, that you pay for it in a variable manner. It's how efficient can you make that data center? And no one knows Dell Technologies assets and hardware better than us, right? So we were able to create tremendous value by utilizing those assets more efficiently. So they were getting more productivity out of the underlying IT assets. We simplified it for them. And we were able to take their team out of that day-to-day management which is what they were looking for. So there's a great example of a win-win on both sides. And what we've found with these customers is once they go to this kind of model, they stay with it. They like it. And we actually ended up expanding our relationship with these customers. So it's good for us in a lot of ways. And one of the things we didn't talk about earlier is another benefit that maybe isn't so obvious, particularly when you look at a Flex on Demand type product. So let's think about Flex on Demand. One of the things customers are struggling with is how to predict how much data storage they're going to need in the future. There's this huge data explosion going on in the world. We've talked about that many times. And CIO's often have trouble trying to predict how much capacity they're going to need in the future, right? They don't know exactly where it's going to go. And so one of the struggles that they have is when they have a need for that data it takes time to get it available. So if you think about a CIO that all of a sudden has additional capacity they need to add to their infrastructure, it could take 90 days to get that out on the floor. They've got to go through their internal requisition process. They've got to select a vendor, they've got to acquire the hardware to get it all set up. This all takes time. 90 days later is too late. One of the things that Flex on Demand offers is that you're able to get that capacity on the floor and at the push of the button you can have it up and running. So you're not paying for it until you use it but once you do need it you can have it available really quickly. And that's one of the benefits that maybe people don't expect when they use this Flex on Demand product but provides tremendous value for customers. So we've seen that kind of time and time again with Flex on Demand we had a large pharmaceutical customer who went to one of these, had a mandate that they wanted to go to a cloud operating model for all their IT purchases. So they wanted to free up cash flow that was kind of a directive from the top, free up cashflow, let's get out of the CapEx business and Flex on Demand was a perfect answer to that because it freed up the cashflow. They paid for the technology over time and they were able to have this capacity available whenever they needed it. So we've seen that as a tremendous benefit of the custom Flex on Demand model. >> I've done a lot of TCO studies Bill and I'll tell you that the upfront planning, the capacity planning, the asset management, the procurement, these are a big chunk of the labor cost associated with total costs. Okay. So we've got the turnkey with the three components. We've got the custom with the two components. There was a fifth bucket in my notes here which is the partners in the channel. And I'm really interested in how the channel is transforming, no longer can you just be a box seller in the channel. Those days are gone. Made a lot of money doing that, good deal. But, now you got to add value. The cloud has really changed everything there. And of course it's all about the margin and profitability. So talk about the channel. You've always had relationships and how APEX fits with channel partners. >> Yeah, well look Dave, we've had great experience working with our partners. I mean, partners are hearing the same thing from customers that were here, they want a cloud-based type operating model. They want to pay for their technology as they use it. So partners are looking to provide the same value to customers. And we found that working with partners expands our reach tremendously and they have a lot of expertise. So the APEX custom solutions are designed to work with partners. Partners can either sell those for themselves so they can sort of resell our solution to them or they can just refer the business to us. And they're going to get a 20% uplift on the committed contract value for those contracts. So this is really financially attractive to our channel partners. And it allows us to work with those partners to get to more customers, right? And as I mentioned earlier these custom solutions can include services from the partners so we can provide the hardware piece to them. They can add on their services on top of that and they can be the primary relationship with a customer or again they can refer it over to us. So we found that to be a really good value proposition for partners. And we think they're pretty happy about it. I mean, we have an example, RelateCare as a company that supports healthcare organizations around the world. So helping with patient communication appointment scheduling tele-health which is a really big area right now as you know with the pandemic still going across the world this is an area for medics growth. So RelateCare was working with one of our partners, Arc Fire and they needed more flexibility in the data center. And so these APEX Flex on Demand was a perfect solution for that. It allowed them to deliver a secure flexible data center and work with their partner to really improve the service level that was occurring in that relationship. And if you think about it, one of the things we didn't mention is particularly for a lot of healthcare companies and companies and customers who have a high sensitivity around data security and where that data resides. One of the advantages of on-prem solutions like APEX Flex on Demand or data center utility is know where your data is. The public cloud can move the data around often without you knowing about it. And so that security of that assurance that you know exactly where your data is, is really important to a lot of our customers. So its kind of another feature that has been official for customers. And again, we're seeing partners adopt this more and more. And I think over time that is going to continue to grow. >> Yeah. So 20 points on the uplift plus additional services that I can bring in because they have a tighter relationship, in this model, right? The renewal starts when you sign the contract. So it's a much, much deeper relationship. Can the partners, can they white label the service? Is it co-branded? Is it all Dell branded? >> Yeah. Well, they have the choice. I mean, the partner can financially take on the billing and relationship primarily if that's what they would like to do. And again, so that's one of the offerings or they can refer it to us. Many partners they don't have the back end or the infrastructure to do all that billing and collecting themselves. So they prefer just to refer it to us. Another part is at large they do have those capabilities and they want to take on the primary relationships. So we can work with them both ways and we have worked with them both ways. >> Nice. We're out of time, Bill, but give us the bottom line. You've touched on some of this but why APEX over the competition? >> Yeah. Well, look, I think it goes back. The first thing is Dell Technologies, right? Dell Technologies has the broadest selection of products and services means. So you combine that with APEX solutions you've got a win-win, it's unbeatable in my opinion. We also I think have the best range of flexibility in those payments solutions. So you can go from a minimum commitment of 40% all the way up to 85%, you can go one to five years, no surcharges, right? The rate is the rate. The rate goes from the minimum all the way to the maximum. We have the storage cap that I talked about, HCI cap at 85%. So you're going to be capped. So you don't have unexpected costs that you didn't forecast and you can flex up and down, right? So you flex up, you could flex down, some of our competition once flex up you can't flex back down. And that's a real negative in my opinion. And we've got 15 years of experience of doing this. So that's really important. We work with a lot of customers. We've learned a lot during those journeys and we think we're the best equipped to provide you with consumption solutions and as a service solutions that really work with customers. >> Financial flexibility, asset management, the really key part of IT that we don't spend enough time talking about. Bill, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE and sharing your insights. >> Thanks, Dave. Really glad to be here. Thank you. >> All right. And thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE's continuous coverage of Dell Tech World 2021 the virtual edition. We'll be right back right after this short break. (upbeat music)