Dell Technologies Cloud Takes Integration Complexity ‘Off The Table’

‘We have a lot of momentum going on in terms of customer adoption of our Dell Technologies Cloud platform,’ says Brian Payne, vice president of Dell Technologies Cloud product management.

Customer adoption of the new Dell Technologies Cloud is on the rise as Dell’s public cloud ecosystem was recently enhanced with VMware’s new partnership with Google Cloud.

“We have a lot of momentum going on in terms of customer adoption of our Dell Technologies Cloud platform,” said Brian Payne, vice president of Dell Technologies Cloud product management, in an interview with CRN. “The exciting thing that’s happened in the last few weeks is that we’ve extended the ecosystem of public cloud offerings. ... So we can help our customers truly realize the benefits of having flexibility around operating a multi-cloud environment both on-premises with the Dell Technologies Cloud Platform and then having a common operating environment across AWS, across IBM Cloud, across [Microsoft] Azure and across now Google Cloud, in addition to 4,200 other cloud partners that are enabled to operate a VMware environment.”

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In possibly its biggest cloud launch in years, Dell Technologies this year took the wraps off its new hybrid cloud platform: the Dell Technologies Cloud. The cloud platform includes two similar offerings with the technology foundation being VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) and the market-leading hyper-converged infrastructure offering, VxRail.

One offering, Dell Technologies Cloud Platforms, includes VxRail and VCF with additional product options including Dell EMC servers, storage and networking products that can be sold and managed by channel partners. The other offering is Cloud Data Center-as-a-Service, which includes VxRail, VCF and VMware management that is fully managed by Dell Technologies and can be sold by partners.

“The key thing that’s going on right now is the need to bridge the gap between the business and the IT operations team so that we can enable companies to be more productive in terms of meeting the needs of their digital transformation,” said Payne.

Payne said the platform is great for Dell channel partners because it simplifies the technology stack integration all the way to a cloud stack.

“It really just takes some of the complexity of technology integration off the table and enables a richer conversation for a partner,” said Payne.

Dell Technologies Cloud provides a variety of options for how customers can buy all of the components inside, including Capex, Opex, rent, lease, consume as a service or pay per use. Dell is backing the new cloud platform with its popular Dell Financial Services arm, which allows customers to buy the platform in flexible consumption offerings, including allowing businesses to acquire elastic capacity and only pay for what they use.

“This is our opportunity to say, ‘Look, this is the best hybrid cloud platform on earth,’” said Matt Baker, senior vice president, Dell EMC strategy and planning, in a recent interview with CRN. “We need to tell the world, ‘Look, this is the best way to build your hybrid cloud.’ Customers want a consistent operating environment. … Dell and our channel partners now have a well-oiled hybrid cloud platform that can be used to help our customers achieve their cloud ambitions.”