Multicloud Strategy and APEX Portfolio announcements - DTW 2023
Last year at Dell Technologies World (DTW 2022), Dell announced their Multicloud by Design strategy, detailing their vision of simplifying the deployment and management of customers' multicloud environments with a consistent operational experience, so that customers can innovate without barriers.
In 2022, the primary focus of the Multicloud by Design strategy was on Project Alpine - in 2023, Dell Technologies have doubled down on their Multicloud by Design strategy with a glutton of multicloud announcements and expanded the strategy further to consist of three primary elements:
1. Ground to Cloud
2. Cloud to Ground
3. SaaS Portal
1. Ground to Cloud - Multicloud Storage (+ Data Protection)
This layer of the Multicloud by Design strategy takes Dell's industry leading storage and data protection software, where we have traditionally seen it deployed to on-prem infrastructure, into the public cloud and deploying it onto the infrastructure of the major hyperscalers. We have had a compelling Data Protection story for a number of years now with up to 17 Exabytes of data already being protected by Dell in the public cloud, with solutions spanning AWS, Azure and GCP.
Last year with Project Alpine, we saw this Ground to Cloud strategy pivot from data protection over to storage, ultimately allowing customers to consume Dell storage on public cloud infrastructure with seamless data mobility between on-prem and public cloud environments.
I won't go into too much detail on Project Alpine in this post as I have previously written about it here - but we do see this Cloud Storage element of the Multicloud by Design strategy being built out further with some new announcements, all now under the APEX portfolio.
***New for APEX Cloud Storage for Public Cloud***
APEX Block Storage in AWS
APEX Block Storage in Microsoft Azure
APEX File Storage in AWS
APEX Protection Storage for Public Cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP and Alibaba cloud)
Dell have had PowerFlex Cloud Storage available in AWS since the end of last summer, however we now will see a new offering replacing this, with APEX Block Storage for AWS - main difference here is there is now a requirement to leverage the new APEX Cloud Navigator for Multicloud storage when purchasing the offer (I'll cover this below).
2. Cloud to Ground - Multicloud Infrastructure
The next element of the Multicloud by Design strategy here is our Cloud to Ground layer. This part of the strategy is about bringing popular cloud stacks and Kubernetes orchestration software from the cloud, and then integrating them into on-premises, customer-owned Dell infrastructure.
At this year's DTW, we are announcing three new APEX Cloud Platforms (ACPs) fostered from our partnerships with Microsoft, RedHat and VMware.
**New for Multicloud Infrastructure**
APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure
APEX Cloud Platform for RedHat OpenShift
APEX Cloud Platform for VMware
These will be dedicated hybrid cloud appliances where customers will be able to seamlessly access their preferred cloud services, while leveraging the increased performance and security you see with an on-premises solution.
And once again, the common theme for this Multicloud by Design strategy, is that consistent operational experience. The three ACPs here are built on a common set of building blocks which gives customers the same consistent deployment, lifecycle management and operational experience across the board.
Common building blocks:
- Common Hardware Platform (Latest generation of Dell PowerEdge servers)
- Common Storage Layer (Dell Block, File and Object SDS)
- Tight integration with the public cloud and Kubernetes orchestration software stacks
- Unique, automated management and orchestration software with new Dell APEX Cloud Platform Foundation Software
These new ACPs will provide customers with:
- Choice of operating environment
- Consistency of common management & orchestration software across the ACPs
- Control of where customer workloads live
- Automated deployment
- Full stack lifecycle management
3. SaaS Portal - Seamless and Cloud-like management experience in the APEX Console
This final layer sees the APEX console evolving from primarily being a commerce platform, to now also being an active management platform. We have two new Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications being announced this year offering a seamless and cloud-like management experience across the new APEX Multicloud infrastructure I detailed above.
**New for APEX SaaS Portal**
APEX Navigator for Multicloud Storage
APEX Navigator for Kubernetes
The APEX Navigator for Multicloud Storage is a SaaS-based control plane accessed from within the APEX console. With this portal you will see a simple and secure storage software management across each of the different Dell cloud storage offerings deployed to the public cloud. Right now, this will be offered in conjunction with APEX Block Storage in AWS, and will be rolled out in the future across the remaining and upcoming Dell cloud storage offerings.
With this portal, customers can:
- Centralise provisioning and management of Dell storage across multiple public cloud, including automated deployment
- Drive data mobility between on-prem and public cloud environments
- Integrate with your favourite automation tools, e.g. Ansible, Terraform etc
- Monitor key metrics and take decisive action based on intelligent insights
- Accelerate Zero Trust adoption with role-based access control (RBAC), Single-sign on (SSO) and federated identity
Another new SaaS portal we are seeing announced this year is the APEX Navigator for Kubernetes, which will also be available through the Apex Console.
With this new SaaS portal, a unified and simplified experience is provided for the management of multicloud, multisite Kubernetes environments where customers can:
- Discover their clusters and key Kubernetes resource types
- Streamline deployment and management of Dell Container Storage Modules at scale
- Improve productivity with advanced data services (data replication, application mobility and observability)
- Reduce administrative toil through automated discovery and deployment
- Align stakeholder visibility and governance across multicloud environments
Other APEX portfolio announcements
The below graphic gives an overview of all the new APEX portfolio announcements at this year's DTW shown in yellow boxes, including some which I have not covered today.
Figure 3. Dell APEX Portfolio - new offerings (yellow boxes)
Last word..
Dell Technologies continue to go all-in on their Multicloud by Design strategy, with these announcements only whetting the appetite for when we see these come into play over the coming months. Stay tuned for more DTW announcements !
#Iwork4Dell
Opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own and may not be representative of the views of Dell Technologies.
Comments
Post a Comment