Dell Technologies has unveiled its APEX portfolio of As-a-Service offerings to simplify how businesses consume technology. Dell and its partners architect and manage the infrastructure. Organizations can deploy APEX IT resources in 14 days and expand their APEX footprint in “as little as” five days. Customers can monitor and manage their APEX offers in one place.
Dell Technologies launched its Apex project last year as a concept, but now the service is taking a definite shape.
“Today’s IT leaders are increasingly turning to as-a-Service, and IDC predicts that by 2024, half of data center infrastructure will be consumed as-a-Service,” said Matthew Eastwood, senior vice president, IDC. “Dell Technologies APEX is yet another example of Dell’s agility when addressing the needs of a transforming marketplace and is in tune with the way customers want to use, consume and simplify IT.”
Dell is initially introducing Apex Data Storage Services. Through this service, clients no longer buy physical storage servers, but consume storage through a service model on hardware from Dell. Those servers are located in private data centers. This way, organizations would get the experience of the public cloud while keeping their infrastructure and data in a secured local environment. Billing will be based on the number of terabytes being used.
Next, Dell Technologies introduces its Apex Cloud Services. This offering will follow the same principle as Apex Data Storage Services. It is much broader though, offering clients a total package. They’re offered instances with compute, network and virtualization capabilities, which customers can purchase either privately or in a hybrid model with a piece of public cloud. Apex Cloud Services is promoted by Dell as delivering a consistent cloud experience across public cloud, private cloud, and the edge. As with public cloud, Dell Technologies is able to offer predefined instances with a focus on compute or memory. Apex Cloud Services are available already in the US, Germany, UK, and France, and are coming to APAC soon.
The hardware of Apex Cloud Services will generally run in a co-located data center. Dell has entered into a partnership with Equinix for this purpose. For clients, the experience would be quite close to that of the public cloud. Sure, Dell Technologies has been inspired by the cloud model, but it doesn’t include instant delivery though. Instead, as said, Dell allows for deployment options in 14 days while clients can expand their APEX footprint in “as little as” five days.
APEX Custom Solutions and Console
With APEX Custom Solutions, clients can select the exact solutions and services they need and scale their use of these resources while paying only for what they use. APEX Data Center Utility adds even more flexibility through custom metering and managed services that are applied throughout their data center environment. APEX Flex On Demand brings Dell Technologies servers, storage, data protection and hyper-converged infrastructure as an as-a-Service offering.
APEX Console offers clients a self-service and interactive experience where customers can manage their entire APEX lifecycle. Customers can use the APEX Console to identify which APEX services best fit their needs. Dell can then align the technology and services to deliver the desired results. The APEX Console is intended to simplify the IT experience by offering monitoring and management of APEX services, with actionable insights and predictive analytics. Customers have access to a variety of reports, including usage and spend.
“The world is innovating faster than ever to meet new demands of customers, students, patients and constituents – driving the need for a more agile and simple technology approach. This is what APEX offers,” said Allison Dew, chief marketing officer and executive vice president of Dell Technologies APEX. “With the industry’s leading IT portfolio, decades of data center services experience and an unmatched global supply chain and partner network, no other as-a-Service portfolio comes close to our capabilities.”
Equinix Data Centers, Channel Business
Through the Apex console clients can manage their instances across entire hybrid infrastructures. The hardware management is entirely in Dell’s hands, and billing is again done via a consumption-based OpEx model.
Dell Technologies intends to manage the IT infrastructure in an Equinix data center of the customer’s choice. For clients it means that colocation costs will be aggregated on one invoice. The combination of Dell infrastructure and Equinix’s global presence would allow organizations to leverage Dell’s APEX services where they are needed. It would help them move to an OpEx model where they pay only for the resources they actually use and deploy.
For Dell channel partners still moving boxes and just deploying the hardware, the Apex as-a-service model might have some implications. The majority of profits being made today within channel partner businesses will probably be around customer engagement, managed services and solving client issues, rather than just the hardware deployment and ongoing maintenance. Dell Technology partners will eventually get access to the Apex Console where end clients manage their entire Apex lifecycle. Solution providers will be able to manage the Apex Console on behalf of their customer.
