10 Ways Dell’s Multi-Cloud Strategy Is Taking Shape: Jeff Clarke

“We’re talking about… taking all of these individual clouds that we’ve mentioned several times, and combining them, building an orchestration layer that actually allows them to work as a distributed platform,” Dell’s co-Chief Operating Officer and Vice Chairman Jeff Clarke says. “That’s where we’re going.”

Jeff Clarke, Cailin Gordon Talk New Innovation At Dell Tech World

At Dell Technologies World this week, Dell rolled out a slew of major software enhancements, hardware features and cloud partnerships—all of which are geared to prepare channel partners for a multi-cloud future.

“If you think about what we described around multi-cloud, we can begin to take pools of our different storage assets and create one, common, single pool for storage for developers and whatever tools they want to use,” said Jeff Clarke, Dell’s co-chief operating officer and vice chairman. “Then we’re talking about moving from there, taking all of these individual clouds that we’ve mentioned several times, and combining them, building an orchestration layer that actually allows them to work as a distributed platform. That’s where we’re going.”

Clarke said Dell is building out this technology ecosystem while at the same time boosting its API-driven software development across its broad portfolio. Through Project Alpine, Dell is taking its data protection and enterprise data services and making those available in the public cloud. With its Snowflake partnership, Dell said it is bringing cloud-based analytics to on-prem architecture.

The stream of announcements each echo Dell CEO and founder Michael Dell’s keynote proclamation: “the future is multi-cloud.”

“Today’s announcements are really a trifecta of storage innovation across our industry leading storage portfolio. Delivering more than 500 new-value, high-value features for PowerMax, PowerStore, and PowerFlex that enable a continuously modern storage experience with highly adaptable software architectures, comprehensive cyber-resiliency and multi-cloud flexibility,” Clarke said. “Our storage portfolio offers the most comprehensive range of multi-cloud support for hyper scalers and DevOps Orchestration Platforms. The breadth of our portfolio is unmatched in the industry today.”

Joining Clarke on stage to introduce new hardware features, and software enhancements, was Rahul Tikoo, senior vice president of Dell’s Client Product Group; Caitlin Gordon, vice president of product management; and Clarke Patterson, head of product marketing at Snowflake.

At Dell Technologies World 2022, these top executives broke down the most important aspects of the new innovations launched this week including PowerMax, PowerStore and PowerFlex Dell storage software; Latitude 9330 PC and Dell Cyber Recovery for Azure, to name a few.

The ‘Most Exciting’ Things About The New Dell And Snowflake Collaboration.

“This collaboration between Dell and Snowflake is going to bring our two wonderful platforms together,” said Snowflake’s Patterson. “I think what’s most exciting about this is this the first time we’re bringing on-premise datasets to the Snowflake data cloud. So now, users of our respective platforms are going to be able to bring all their data, regardless of whether it sits in the cloud, or on premises, get the benefits of analytics through Snowflake, and be able to connect and share that with their customers and suppliers.”

“For the data that we want to retain on premise, for whatever reason; security, privacy, whatever reason we choose, we now have access to Snowflake analytics without having to move our data. We’re using a native set of capabilities in Snowflake called external stages, and external tables that allows us to expose data in object storage platforms like Dell to make it look like that data is native to Snowflake, so you can just get right at it and not have to worry about any complexity.”

‘Next Generation’ Of PowerMax

“We are introducing the next generation of PowerMax,” Clarke said. “The world’s most secure, mission-critical storage designed with zero-trust architecture. The updated PowerMax OS 10 provides more than 200 new features, adding more intelligence and automation that further enhances the built-in artificial intelligence engine that makes over 6 billion decisions a day, taking on many of the basic storage administration tasks.’

“Key advancements: industry leading cybersecurity resiliency, multi-factor authentication, continuous ransomware detection. A native isolated cyber-vault, and 65 million immutable snapshots per array. That’s 30 times more than any array on the planet today. This one is my favorite: 4-to-1 data reduction guarantee, making it the industry’s first compression from mainframe storage.”

PowerStore: ‘Most Modern Mid-range Architecture In The Industry’

“The most modern mid-range architecture in the industry today and our fastest ramping architecture ever as a company,” Clarke said. “When I think about the operating system updates, PowerStore OS 3.0 helps you innovate and enhance while increasing data mobility, enterprise-file cybersecurity, VMware integrations and system automation across the board. More than 120 new features are now available to both new customers and existing customers at no charge.

“(PowerStore’s) mixed workload performance is up by 50-percent with max capacity up by more than 60-percent. (PowerStore’s) native replication for any workload now protects files, VMware vaults and block. Software-only native MetroSync in five clicks, no extra hardware required, end-to-end. And then lastly, an upgraded platform that brings Intel’s latest microprocessor and 100 gigabit ethernet with NVMe/TCP supports embedded.”

PowerFlex ‘Knows No Bounds’

“What PowerFlex really is, it’s a software defined infrastructure product that knows no bounds,” Clarke said. “You can push the limits on consolidation and automation. It’s a software defined architecture that delivers unrestrained IO performance and linear scalability for a whole host of workloads ranging from bare metal to virtualized, to modern cloud native.”

“The PowerFlex 4.0 OS delivers over 200 new features to modernize and expand our multi-cloud capabilities and enhance our cyber resiliency. It’s the only device on the planet that can do this. It’s the only software capable of doing this support for file and block, making PowerFlex the only software defined infrastructure that supports Bare Metal hypervisors, file and block, all on a single platform.

The new lifecycle management helps boost productivity by up to 95 percent. The embedded cybersecurity software protects and isolates mission critical data. And the NVMe/TCP support allows us to simplify deployments and we’ve expanded the container platform capability by including AWS EKS anywhere.”

Cyber Recovery for Azure

“This software enables you to create an air-gapped, cyber vault of your data in the public cloud,” Gordon said. “It’s also a really efficient to practice your recovery processes.”

“Now, since we brought cyber recovery to AWS about six months ago, the number one I’ve question I’ve gotten from customers is when is it coming to Azure?” said Gordon. “We’ve officially announced that it is coming to Azure next.”

“So you can log directly into our cyber recovery software in the cloud to be able to understand what happened and recover from an attack. (If) there was a ransomware attack detected in (your) most recent back up, now we can use the cyber recovery software right here to find the last known good backup copy, and recover to it,” she said.

Concept Luna ‘Is Our North Star Vision’

“So Concept Luna is our North Star vision for product design in the long term for reusability recycling, such that we can reduce our carbon footprint,” Dell’s Tikoo said. “There are a few really great ideas that we’re testing out as a part of Concept Luna. We’ve reduced the motherboard size, almost 75 percent using 20% less components. And that reduces the carbon footprint of the motherboard. And if you’re into system design, that’s one of the carbon intensive parts of a system.”

“The other thing that we’re doing with Concept Luna is we are making it much easier to access the system internals,” he said. “We’re going from hundreds of screws down to four, and building a modular design, so you can very easily disassemble it and easily get to the parts that you to get to repair, reuse, refurbish.”

“Finally, we’re making a lot more intentional material choices in our products. With Concept Luna, we have started working on bio-based printed circuit boards, hydro-power process aluminum. And so, if all of these ideas were really to come to life, you’re looking at about a 50 percent reduction in the carbon footprint,” Tikoo said.

Dell’s Bullish Project Alpine

“Project Alpine is our initiative to bring our block, file, and object storage software to all of the main public clouds,” Dell’s Gordon said. “Our goal with Project Alpine is really to enable operational consistency, drive greater efficiency and simplify data mobility.

“There’s just a few simple choices around performance, capacity and location. We select AWS and hit deploy. All of the deployment and the configuration is fully automated, and takes just a few minutes to deploy,” said she. “Once that’s done, you get a quick overview of the deployment. Now we just need to move the database over.”

“There are just two simple steps to configure replication from your on-prem PowerStore to move that database into the public cloud. We ask a couple quick questions about the source and the target. Once that copy operation is complete, the development team can get back to work now to bring this to life even more. At your AWS console you can see the block storage software that we just deployed. You can even log to its element manager. You can see it’s the same UI and of course the same APIs as you have on prem, so there’s no new tools to learn. No new skills required,” said Gordon.

Concept Nyx Reimagines ‘Edge Computing’

“ What we’re doing now is reimagining what role edge computing would play in gaming, to really solve this problem with cloud gaming of low latency, high performance gaming at the edge,” Tikoo said. “And what’s the most important edge for all of us, it’s our homes. So that’s what concept Nyx is about.

“We’re able to play with each other, stop and go, as we like. So that’s smart switching. The thing that has to happen for this to work is it’s not just a software application or the Alienware PC. The entire gaming ecosystem has to work well together. So think about Alienware PCs, home servers, game controllers, and we all have multiple pieces of glass in our house, software intelligence, all of it working together to really deliver this seamless, low latency, high performance gaming experience in your home,” he said. “That’s what Nyx is about.”

Latitude 9330 With ‘Collaboration Touchpad’

“Video meetings are here to stay. And so what we are bringing to the Latitude 9330 is the industry’s first collaboration touchpad,” Tikoo said. “So you can scratch, ‘I’m sorry I was muted off your Zoom bingo card.”

“We are bringing together cool software like Dell optimizer and innovative touchpad technology to get some controls right at your fingertips. You can turn on and off your microphone. You can turn on and off your camera. You can share your screen,” he said.

Dell Optimizer Updates

“We’ve had it on our systems for several years now,” Tikoo said. “It’s an AI machine learning based software tool that we put on most of our commercial PCs and I call it the heart of the PC, because what it really does is brings this personalization personal back into the personal computer. Some of the features that we’re enabling in Dell Optimizer are things like Intelligent Audio, where it removes all of the background noise from your environment. Another cool feature that we’re really excited about is Simultaneous Multi-network Connection.”

“For the first time, you can connect to multiple networks, giving you more bandwidth, reducing latency and you know, you can be connected and collaborate with your colleagues anywhere,” he said.