Dell Technologies World 2021: 6 Biggest Product Launches

From a new edge reference architecture and Apex to a new partnership with Equinix, here are the eight biggest announcements today at Dell Technologies World 2021.

The Most Important Dell Technologies World News Today

Thousands of customers, channel partners and executives are set to attend Dell Technologies World Digital Experience 2021 today to learn about the vision and market strategy ahead for the $94 billion IT giant.

The most important launches at Dell Technologies World today all revolved around Apex, Dell’s new flagship as-a-service portfolio that is becoming generally available in the market. Apex, which replaces Dell Technologies Cloud offerings, changes how customers and channel partners buy, sell, deploy, manage, and maintain Dell’s vast infrastructure product portfolio.

“Apex is essentially the creation of the new Dell as we move forward,” said Dell Technologies Sam Grocott, senior vice president of product marketing. “We’re transforming internally every facet of the business, as well as externally, as we drive this change to as-a-service consumption model for our entire portfolio.”

CRN breaks down the six biggest product launches and announcements today at Dell Technologies Word 2021.

Apex Data Storage Services

Apex Data Storage Services is Dell’s first infrastructure as-a-service offering, providing a portfolio of scalable and elastic storage resources. Dell says Apex Data Storage Services provides transparent pricing and no overage fees with performance unmatched in the public cloud.

Customers select the either block or file data services, their preferred performance tier, base capacity – which starts as low as 50 terabyte – and one- or three-year subscription terms. Customer also select the deployment location whether it be in a data center, edge or colocation facility. Organizations pay only for what they use with single rate transparency and no overages. The turnkey infrastructure of Data Storage Services is owned and maintained by Dell.

“This is an outcome-based way to precure technology for their data center as simply as you would provision resources in a public cloud,” said Akanksha Mehrotra, vice president of product marketing for Apex.

Dell Partners With Equinix To Drive Apex Colocation

At Dell Technologies World, Dell announced an expanded collaboration with global colocation data center giant Equinix to broaden the availability of Apex.

“Equinix is the world’s largest data center colocation provider for customers who want more location optionality for Apex services,” said Dell’s Mehrotra. “We’re hearing from our customers as well as others that they don’t want to manage their own data center, but they don’t want to also deal with the trade-offs of going to a public cloud. Equinix gives them that third option. With our Apex Data Storge Services, they’ll be able to pick this as an option.”

With Dell infrastructure and Platform Equinix along with the company’s International Business Exchange data centers, organizations can meet unpredictable IT and storage requirements more efficiently. Dell said businesses will have access to “near infinite scaling” of storage resources in Equinix data centers.

Equinix has more than 220 data centers across five continents and an ecosystem of more than 10,000 companies.

“The relationship with Equinix is a pretty powerful one,” said Michael Norring, CEO and President of GCSIT, a Seattle-based Platinum Dell partner. “Because data centers require space. A lot of customers don’t have the space to naturally grow their data centers. I really like that concept. That’s a powerful statement for Dell.”

Apex Cloud Services

Dell’s new Apex Cloud Services provide integrated compute, storage and networking resources to customers with support for both traditional and cloud-native applications.

“This brings the power of cloud to wherever it’s needed. It’s for customers who are looking for infrastructure to help bridge the gap between resources on-premises and those in public clouds so that they can run their applications securely in a multi-cloud world,” said Dell’s Mehrotra. “Customers can subscribe to either a private or a hybrid cloud based on the level of control they want and operational consistency that they’re seeking. It’s a simple subscription process.”

Apex Cloud Services offer two flavors: Apex Hybrid Cloud and Apex Private Cloud.

Dell said it can deliver and deploy Apex Cloud Services in just 14 days, with expansion in as few as five days.

Apex Custom Solutions

At Dell Technologies World 2021, Dell also launched Apex Custom Solutions which brings one of the industries largest infrastructure portfolios to customers as-a-service. Apex Custom Solutions is the company’s more flexible as-a-service offering that allows customers to create their own on-demand as-a-service IT environment compared to the more turnkey Apex Cloud Services and Apex Data Storage Services.

Apex Custom Solutions includes two options: Apex Flex on Demand and Apex Data Center Utility.

Apex Flex on Demand provides Dell servers, storage, data protection and hyperconverged infrastructure as-a-service. Businesses can select the exact product and services they want and scale usage up and down while paying for only what they us.

Apex Data Center Utility adds an additional level of flexibility through custom metering and manage services applied across the data center.

“Apex Flex on Demand is our premier flexibly consumption solution that delivers elastic capacity and pay-per-use across the entire infrastructure portfolio. … We will turn that entire environment into pay-per-use,” said Dell’s Mehrotra. “With Data Center Utility, it’s even more flexible and they can adapt that across their entire data center portfolio.”

Apex Console

Wrapping up Apex together, is the Apex Console. The new self-service console is where customers, and in the future channel partners, can manage a businesses entire Apex lifecycle.

The Apex console is used to identify and subscribe to Apex services that map to their needs while Dell matches the technology and services to deliver the desired outcomes. The console provides monitoring and management of Apex services to meet the changing needs of their business.

“It guides them through the entire technology lifecycle, starting with a discovery through subscription, deployment, monitoring, optimization through end-of-life decommissioning as well as growing services. It’s all available in one place,” said Dell’s Mehrotra. “Once they have a subscription, they can view their active subscriptions across multiple environments. They can use it to monitor the performance and health of the Apex resources that they may have deployed at a different location. They can also view billing on pending invoices, they configure alerts, etc. … Over time, partners will have access to this as well so that they can manage it on behalf of their customers.”

Dell’s New Manufacturing Edge Reference Architecture

Dell also unveiled at Dell Technologies World today the new Dell Technologies Manufacturing Edge Reference Architecture With PTC that integrates with Apex Private Cloud.

The new edge reference architecture aims to help manufacturing companies gain insights from workstations, computers, mobile devices and other endpoints within the manufacturing environment. With access to edge data in one place, companies can increase production line reliability, reduce operational costs and make more informed real-time decisions, Dell said.

Integrated with Apex Private Cloud, the edge reference architecture offers a high-availability edge framework as-a-service enabling companies to virtualize and containerize applications. Manufacturing customers get a consistent cloud experience and pay only for what they use.