[ADVERTORIAL] In recent years, most companies have found their way to the cloud. The costs of a cloud strategy can prove to be a setback after a while, especially for small and medium-sized companies. Many companies therefore prefer a multi-cloud approach, but this also comes with challenges – leading to difficulties in rapid scaling and innovation. Dell APEX eliminates this complexity with a consistent, scalable IT infrastructure.

Agility, flexibility, sustainability… These are all terms that play a role in every corporate strategy. While a cloud model appears to meet all of these requirements, organizations are questioning the cost and security of running data and applications in a cloud environment. For this reason, they often explore options to move their workloads back on-site.

“At Dell, we view the cloud not as a location, but as an operating model. With APEX, we give our customers the flexibility they know from the cloud, but on-premises,” said John Mariani, Consumption Sales Leader at Dell Technologies. “APEX delivers a modern cloud and consumption experience that extends the benefits of a cloud operating model to devices, applications and data. Consider not only cost effectiveness, but also simplified management and improved security. Because you use your own data in your own environment, you have control over what happens in your systems at all times.”

Immediately available infrastructure

With Dell APEX subscriptions, customers can scale immediately with the infrastructure already available on-premises. The customer commits to a certain share of the solution, after which further use, if desired, will be charged at the same price as within the scope of the commitment. This gives customers the ability to tailor their usage to their spending without being penalized for on-demand usage.

Therefore, it is not necessary to invest a lot of capital in hardware and software in advance. This also means customers don’t have to deal with supply chain issues or rising costs. A transparent price list is created on the first day. Even if costs rise in the market, customers continue to benefit from transparent billing. Dell offers companies the opportunity to purchase IT resources such as storage, compute and networking services on a pay-per-use basis.

“The solution is transparent and ensures that you no longer have to wait until certain hardware or capacities can be delivered,” says Mattias Denys, Inside Sales Manager Mid Market at Dell Technologies. “Previously this wait could easily be a month or more, but with APEX you enjoy immediate value.”

No risk of supplier lock-in

Dell APEX is a total solution that provides ultimate flexibility for a hybrid cloud environment. “If customers already use software in Azure Cloud or AWS, for example to protect data, thanks to APEX they can use the same software in their on-prem environment,” explains Denys. “It also works the other way around, so that companies can count on their usual functionality and performance in any environment.” No system change or employee retraining is required to get started with the new technology. Dell APEX simplifies the hybrid, multi-cloud world. Wherever your data is, we’ll take care of it.”

One of the biggest risks of a multicloud approach is vendor lock-in. Dell APEX offers an answer here too. “Once you want to move a workload from one CSP to another or on-premises, you may need to rewrite the application for this new environment,” says Mariani. “In addition, you need the right skills to properly manage this process. With APEX you avoid lock-in and decide for yourself which services you use in a hyperscaler environment. For example, thanks to the hybrid cloud architecture that seamlessly combines the advantages of cloud and on-premise, you can enable AI services from Azure Cloud for on-premises workloads.”

The quality of Dell technology

Dell APEX is more than a consumer model. This allows companies to leverage the quality of Dell technology in a flexible and cost-effective way. “With APEX, customers get the opportunity to use our technology with a transparent payment mechanism – with features that help them better understand the technology, including cyber intelligence, alerts, etc.,” says Mariani. “From hardware and software to the cloud, in every area and for every solution, Dell is a market leader. We have now bundled all of this into one model.”

In addition, customers not only enjoy Dell’s quality, but also the highly acclaimed Intel technology. “Almost all of our technology runs on Intel,” says Mariani. “In my experience, Intel supports a wide range of workloads, from AI and HPC to traditional business applications and cloud-native solutions. In addition, they ensure safe and responsible AI operations with hardware-supported confidential data processing and protect sensitive data and models during use. This makes Intel Xeon ideal for high-performance AI tasks in APEX.”

In addition to the technology, Dell also provides the people to support the APEX model. “Our local presence ensures that customers receive quick help. But our global experts are also very open,” explains Denys. “And we also have partners who are APEX certified and provide customers with added value in implementing the right infrastructure.”

The results are clear. An IDC study shows that with Dell APEX, companies deploy new capacity up to 60% faster and experience 64% less downtime. Additionally, their operating costs decrease by 39% over a three-year period.

What does the future hold?

Mariani and Denys see three trends that will only make Dell APEX more relevant in the future. “The IT footprint is an important point for companies,” says Denys. “That’s why we offer our customers tools that give them more insight into the operation of their systems. This allows them to make predictions and, just like with the cloud, decide to run a system at a lower level on weekends, for example, to save energy. We can dynamically move workloads to make optimal use of servers and other resources. And at the end of its life, Dell as the owner can safely recycle the technology kit.”

Another trend, according to Mariani, is the risk of urban sprawl. “We have found in both virtualization and cloud computing that users often create and purchase components without thinking. There’s a good chance we’ll see this happen again with the emergence of AI applications. It is therefore important to have a validation step that checks whether certain AI services are useful, ethical and cost-effective. Today, with AIOps, our APEX customers are one step closer to that goal.”

Finally, the growing amount of data also presents us with challenges. “We generate a lot of data that we cannot deduplicate or compress. With AI, you just have to look at the data that computer vision generates, for example in self-driving vehicles, where multiple cameras record several terabytes of unique data every minute,” says Mariani. “We need to store and process all this data somewhere. That’s why at Dell we offer solutions that… edge, core and cloud life. So with APEX you are prepared for the future.”

This is an article submitted by Dell. The publishers are not responsible for the content. Want to learn more about Dell APEX? Learn all about this unique solution here and be sure to come to the Dell Technologies Forum on November 21st where you can attend a session about Dell APEX.