Data & AI: The Crystal Ball into Your Future Success

Years ago, the future was much opaquer. Now, it’s tangible, visible and rising up all around us.  It seems to be taking shape in real time, much of which can be attributed to innovation in data and infrastructure, across their respective and collective aspects.

As innovation in these areas accelerates, it rapidly gains in capabilities, particularly for enterprises who have reached a point of digital maturity, ensuring access to quality data and accelerated infrastructure at scale. Yet, for others, their data and analytics initiatives are still lacking. As their data continues to expand, they do not have the right building blocks in place to grow and change with it.  In fact, a recent McKinsey survey of more than 500 executives found that more than 85% acknowledged they are only somewhat effective at meeting the goals they set for their data and analytics initiatives.

With both growing and mature data sets, the effects of enterprise deep learning and machine learning can be significant – automating processes, identifying trends in historical data and uncovering valuable intelligence that strengthens fast and accurate decision-making abilities – all of which can be used as a virtual crystal ball to refine predictions about the future and potentially its successes.

To do this correctly, companies should look at using their data analytics capabilities to not only improve their core operations, but also to launch entirely new business models and applications. First, they must solve for problems in the way data is generated, collected, organized and acted upon. Because, while the mechanics are important, the ultimate value of data doesn’t come from merely collecting it, but acting on the insights derived from it.

The key lies in a fundamental mind shift of evolving your organization into a technology company with a data-first mentality.

In my experience, there are three certainties for every company:

1. Your data is going to grow faster than you expected.
2. The use cases for this data are going to change.
3. The business is always going to expect outcomes to be delivered faster.

The first step in the journey to becoming a technology company is simplifying the infrastructure by moving from legacy data systems to a more nimble, flexible modernized data architecture that can bridge both structured and unstructured data to deliver deeper insights and performance at scale. Once consolidated onto a single, scalable, analytics platform, the pace of discovery and learning can be accelerated to drive a more accurate strategic vision for both today and tomorrow.

At Dell EMC, we are dedicated to bringing new and differentiated value and opportunities to our customers globally. We are always looking toward current and future trends and technologies that will help customers better manage and take advantage of their growing data sets with deep learning and machine learning at scale.

Dell EMC Isilon does just that.

As an industry leading scale-out network-attached storage, designed for demanding enterprise data sets, Isilon simplifies management and gives you access to all your data, scaling from tens of terabytes to tens of petabytes per cluster.  We also deliver all-flash performance and file concurrency up to the millions, allowing us to support the bandwidth needs of 1000’s of GPUs running the most complex neural networks available.  As a bonus, we accomplish this this very economically, with over 80% storage utilization, data compression and automated-tiering across flash and disk in a single cluster.  Finally, Isilon based AI increases operational flexibility with multiprotocol support, allowing you to bring analytics to the data to accelerate AI innovation with faster cycles of learning, higher model accuracy and improved GPU utilization.

In an era of change and ongoing data expansion, creating a crystal ball for your business is not a matter of luck or fortune telling.  It takes place through a focused strategy for doing more with the data you have at hand.  By offering innovative new ways to store, manage, protect and use data at scale, Isilon moves customers that much closer to both becoming technology companies and future proofing their businesses.

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Introducing Tactical Azure Stack for the Intelligent Edge

Harsh operating environments for both workers and machinery are one of the key challenges in the mining industry. There are still many incidents where casualties happen due to explosions, cave-ins and equipment related accidents. Workers are also facing regular risks due to the toxic operating conditions. To overcome these occupational hazards while maximizing worker safety and efficiency, mining companies are investing in developing smart appliances and systems that harness the power of the Internet-of-Things (IoT).

“Connected Mine” is a well-established industrial concept that enables mining companies to infuse IoT within their operations by performing smart data analytics on connected devices at the edge. Worker safety and efficiency procedures such as collision monitoring, remote digging, worker mobility, and augmented reality simulations heavily depend on real-time analysis of a massive amount of telemetry data. This data is generated by thousands of IoT devices and analysed using artificial intelligence to aid in real-time decision making at a mining site. While the public cloud can provide the extensive compute power required for such advanced solutions, connectivity to the surface above and integrating solution components under challenging environmental conditions have always been a barrier for further advancements.

This is where hybrid cloud solutions such as Microsoft Azure Stack come into play. As an extension of Microsoft Azure, Azure Stack provides many of the same Azure Services while operating in edge and disconnected sites. It can address latency and connectivity requirements by processing data locally in Azure Stack and then aggregating it in Azure for further analytics, with common application logic across both platforms. The following example is based on the Azure Stack AI at the Edge architecture published by Microsoft. It explains how we can deploy a trained AI model and integrate with local applications running in Azure Stack to provide low-latency intelligence.

In this example, an AI model is trained using Azure Machine Learning Service and a Big Data cluster in Microsoft Azure. Next, it is packaged as a containerized application and deployed into an Azure Container Registry. The trained model can then be deployed to a Kubernetes cluster running on Azure Stack. After that, it is integrated with an Azure IoT Hub which receives telemetry data from Azure IoT Edge-enabled devices and the data is scored against the deployed model. The local application places any insights and anomalies from scoring into a queue, for sending to Azure Storage using an Azure Function. The solution in Azure will leverage the data from edge scoring to improve the model while retaining the globally-relevant and compliant insights in the global web application.

However, this leads to the question of how to address the challenges described earlier with isolated and harsh operating conditions such as mining sites. An ideal solution would be to leverage the Dell EMC Tactical Azure Stack, a ruggedized and field-deployable product for Azure Stack tactical edge environments. It can provide an Azure consistent cloud to any operating environment with:

◈ Limited or no network connectivity
◈ Fully mobile, or high portability (“2-person lift”) requirements
◈ Harsh conditions, including those requiring military specifications solutions
◈ High security requirements, with optional connectivity to Azure Government and Azure Government Secret

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VxRail Rockets from Data Center Modernization to Hybrid Cloud

Over the last three years, we have built VxRail to be the fastest and simplest way to modernize and extend your VMware environment. From talking with our customers, we know many of them are looking for a hybrid cloud strategy. In fact, according to a recent survey by Enterprise Strategy Group, 92% of respondents reported that their company’s cloud strategy includes on-premises data centers1. And with good reason! No single cloud offering is a perfect fit for the great breadth of workloads that IT organizations are tasked to support.

Hybrid cloud allows IT organizations the flexibility to choose the resources best suited to address application and business needs. However, implementing a hybrid cloud architecture can introduce additional complexity and risk.

It was only natural for us to extend our market leading platform and address the changing needs of our customers. Once again, through joint development with VMware, we are helping our customers get the benefits of a hybrid cloud strategy while alleviating the complexity and risk that may be introduced.

I am thrilled to announce the arrival of VMware Cloud Foundation on Dell EMC VxRail—a fast and easy path to deploy and operate hybrid cloud through a fully integrated platform. Cloud Foundation on VxRail offers the operational hub for your hybrid cloud, delivering consistent infrastructure and consistent operations with full stack integrity—meaning a seamless experience from the hyperconverged infrastructure

With the first and best integration for full stack integrity, VxRail delivers an experience that is not available on any other on-premises infrastructure running VMware Cloud Foundation. Delivering a unified user experience, VMware Cloud Foundation on VxRail is lifecycle managed as one complete, automated, turnkey on-premises experience, greatly reducing risk and increasing IT operational efficiency. This tight integration facilitates smooth, rapid deployment and a simplified management experience while also delivering infrastructure agility that can accelerate your organization’s ability to offer IaaS and PaaS.

Optimized for performance, scalability, user experience and TCO savings, Cloud Foundation on VxRail incorporates many unique Dell EMC and VMware jointly engineered integration features that simplify, streamline and automate the operations of your entire SDDC stack with end-to-end lifecycle management. In its recent releases, VMware has made architectural updates to Cloud Foundation that marry well with core VxRail functionality, such as networking flexibility enabling Dell EMC networking  benefits, as well as deployment options ranging from appliance . Another example of the synergistic relationship between the two companies is the synchronous release of VxRail and VMware software updates, so the latest HCI and cloud software benefits are in customers’ hands sooner. Not only sooner, but better—Cloud Foundation on VxRail is based on VMware SDDC best practices, an approach that is future-proof for next-generation VMware cloud technologies that will be developed around the same architectural design principles.

If you’ve determined that hybrid cloud is in your IT organization’s future, I want to leave you with this: the best way to improve service outcomes and reduce operational risk while evolving to a hybrid cloud operating model is by leveraging trusted technologies and operational processes. Dell EMC VxRail is designed with VMware, for VMware, to enhance VMware-enabled organizations’ ability to streamline operations and predictably evolve. Cloud Foundation on VxRail empowers the next step of that evolution.

I’ll be attending Dell Technologies World next month to discuss Cloud Foundation on VxRail, as well as other exciting hyperconverged happenings. One of my favorite things about these events is the opportunity it affords to interact with our amazing customers who are leveraging our technology to make a difference in the world.

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New Dell EMC Ready Solution Powers SQL Server, the Complete Performance Platform for Your Databases

Working on the new Dell EMC Ready Solution for SQL Server was like going from 0 to 60 mph in under 3 seconds. The exhilaration of being pushed into the seat as the road roars past in a blur is absolute fun. That’s what the combination of Dell EMC PowerEdge R840 servers and the new Dell EMC XtremIO X2 storage array did for us in our recent tests.

The classic challenge with most database infrastructures is diminishing performance over time. To use an analogy, it’s like gradually increasing the load a supercar must pull until its 0-to-60 time just isn’t impressive anymore. In the case of databases, the load is input/output operations per second (IOPS). As IOPS increase, response times can slow and database performance suffers. What is interesting is how this performance problem happens over time. As more databases are gradually added to an infrastructure, response times slow by a fraction at a time. These incremental hits on performance can condition application users to accept slower performance—until one day someone says, “Performance was good two years ago but today it’s slow.”

When reading about supercars, we usually learn about their 0-to-60 mph time and their top speed. While the top speed is interesting, how many supercars have you seen race by at 200+ mph? Top speeds apply to databases too. Perhaps you have read a third-party study that devoted a massive hardware infrastructure to one database, thereby showing big performance numbers. If only we had the budget to do that for all our databases, right? Top speeds are fun, but scalability is more realistic as most infrastructures will be required to support multiple databases.

Dell EMC Labs took the performance scalability approach in testing the new SQL Server architecture. Our goals were aggressive: Run 8 virtualized databases per server for a total of 16 databases running in parallel, with a focus on generating significant load while maintaining fast response times. To make the scalability tests more interesting, 8 virtualized databases used Windows Server Datacenter on one server and the other 8 databases used Red Hat Enterprise Linux on another server. Figure 1 shows the two PowerEdge R840 servers and the 8-to-1 consolidation ratio (on each server) achieved in the tests.

Figure 1: PowerEdge R840 servers

Quest Benchmark Factory was used to create the same TPC-E OLTP workload across all 16 virtualized databases. On the storage side, XtremIO X2 was used to accelerate all database I/O. The XtremIO X2 configuration included two X-Brick modules, each with 36 flash drives for a total of 72. According to the XtremIO X2 specification sheet, a 72-drive configuration can achieve 220,000 IOPS at .5 milliseconds (ms) of latency with a mixture of 70 percent reads and 30 percent writes using 8K blocks. Figure 2 shows the two X-Brick configuration of the X2 array with some of key features that make the all-flash system ideal for SQL Server databases.

Figure 2: XtremIO X2

Before we review the performance findings, let’s talk about IOPS and latency. IOPS is a measure that defines the load on a storage system. This measurement has greater context if we understand the maximum recommended IOPS for a storage system for a specific configuration. For example, 16 databases running in parallel don’t represent a significant load if they are only generating 20,000 IOPS. However, if the same databases generated 200,000 IOPS, as they did on the XtremIO X2 array that we used in our tests, then that’s a significant workload. Thus, IOPS are important in understanding the load on a storage system.

Response time and latency are used interchangeably in this blog and refer to the amount of time used to respond to a request to read or write data. Latency is our 0-to-60 metric that tells us how fast the storage system responds to a request. Just like with supercars, the lower the time, the faster the car and the storage system. Our goal was to determine if average read and write latencies remained under .5 ms.

Looking at IOPS and latency together brings us to our overall test objective. Can this SQL Server solution remain fast (low latency) under a heavy IOPS load? To answer this question is to understand if the database solution can scale. Scalability is the capability of the database infrastructure to handle increased workload with minimal impact to performance. The greater the scalability of the database solution, the more workload it can support and the greater return on investment it provides to customers. So, for our tests to be meaningful we must show a significant load; otherwise, the database system has not been challenged in terms of scalability.

We broke the achievable IOPS barrier of 220,000 IOPS by more than 55,000 IOPS! In large part, the PowerEdge R840 servers enabled the SQL Server databases to really push the OLTP workload to the XtremIO X2 array. We were able to simulate overloading the system by placing a load that is greater than recommended. In one respect we were impressed that XtremIO X2 supported more than 275,000 IOPS, but then we were concerned that there might have been a trade-off with performance.

The average latency for all physical reads and writes was under .5 ms. So not only did the SQL Server solution generate a large database workload, the XtremIO X2 storage system maintained consistently fast latencies throughout the tests. The test results show that this database solution was designed for performance scalability: The system maintained performance under a large workload across 16 databases. Figure 3 summarizes the test findings.

Figure 3: Summary of test findings

The capability to scale without having to invest in more infrastructure provides greater value to customers. Would I recommend pushing the new SQL Server solution past its limits like Dell EMC Labs did in testing for scalability? No. Running database tests involves achieving a steady state of performance that is uncharacteristic of real-world production databases. Production databases have peak processing times that must be planned for so that the business does not experience any performance issues. Dell EMC has SQL Server experts that can design the Ready Solution for different workloads. In my opinion, one of the key strengths of this solution is that each physical component can be sized to address database requirements. For example, the number of servers might need to be increased, but no additional investment is necessary on XtremIO X2, thus, saving the business money.

If I were to address just one other topic, I would pick the space savings achieved with a 1 TB SQL Server database. In figure 4, test results show a 3.52-to-1 data reduction ratio, which translates to a 71.5 percent space savings for a 1 TB database on the XtremIO X2 array. Always-on inline data reduction saves space by writing only unique blocks and then compressing those blocks to storage. The value of inline data reduction is the resulting ability to consolidate more databases to the XtremIO X2 array.

Figure 4: XtremIO X2 inline data reduction

Are you interested in learning how SQL Server performed on Windows Server Datacenter edition and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server? I recommend reading the design guide for Dell EMC XtremIO X2 with PowerEdge R840 servers. The validation and use case section of that guide takes the reader through all the performance findings. Or schedule a meeting with your local Microsoft expert at Dell EMC to explore the solution.

Why Ready Solutions for Microsoft SQL?

The Ready Solutions for Microsoft SQL Server team at Dell EMC is a group of SQL Server experts who are passionate about building database solutions. All of our solutions are fully integrated, validated, and tested. Figure 5 shows how we approach developing database solutions. Many of us have been on the customer or consulting side of the business, and these priorities reflect our passion to develop specialized database solutions that are faster and more reliable.

Figure 5: Our database solutions development approach

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How Protected Is Your Data?

That’s what we asked organizations worldwide – and the results are in…

Achieving success in digital transformation is predicated on your data capital. It’s the foundation of your future: how you manage and protect it is essential to deriving value.

We recently conducted a global survey to gauge the data protection readiness of organizations. In the Dell EMC Global Data Protection Index study, over 2,000 IT decision-makers were interviewed in both public and private organizations of 250 or more employees, across three global regions, 18 countries and 11 industries. The results show a challenging landscape for organizations looking to get the most from their data.

Recognition vs. reality

Data is now regarded as an asset for most companies, with 92% of them seeing its potential value, and 36% of them recognizing it is extremely valuable and currently monetizing it. This has resulted in companies keeping substantially more data.

Worldwide, data is growing at a phenomenal rate: the Global Data Protection Index reports that between 2016 and 2018, the volume of global data rose from 1.45PB to 9.70PB. This has created a challenging landscape for data protection, as organizations struggle to keep up with data growth.

Protecting data against data loss is proving to be even more important than the threat of downtime. While more organizations experienced downtime than data loss in the previous 12 months (41% versus 28% respectively), the average cost per data loss incident was much higher – in fact, at an average cost of $996,000, nearly double than of unplanned systems downtime.

But has this recognition resulted in robust data protection measures? The answer seems to be: not for enough people. Almost two-thirds of respondents (63%) said they weren’t very confident they could meet their own service level objectives to fully recover their systems and data, while 84% think their current data protection solution will not enable them to meet all future business challenges.

Leaders and laggards

The Dell Global Data Protection Index grouped respondents into four categories, from Laggards, through Evaluators and Adopters, to Leaders. On average, Leaders have 18 times more data than Laggards, and are seven times more likely to be monetizing it. This explains why, for Leaders, the threat of data loss is so much greater: the average cost of data loss for them is almost 12 times higher than it is for Laggards.

In short, while Leaders are in better shape to avoid incidents, they are also more exposed, because their operations are more reliant on data.

Who’s in front?

The Global Data Protection Index ranks countries on the maturity of their approach to data protection, awarding organizations in each country more points for shorter recovery times, confidence in their infrastructure, modern data protection systems, and the extent to which they saw value in their data.

So – which countries came out on top? The answers may surprise you. To find out more, read the Dell Global Data Protection Index Ebook here. There is also a handy infographic – and a set of nurture emails for you to send customers.

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How Customer Feedback Spawned a Global Business

A lot of companies claim to listen and act on customer feedback but how many can actually back that up? Fact check! Did you know that a division of our company – now over a $4 billion business in its own right – was set up 21 years ago in direct response to customer demand? Seriously – it’s true.

OEM started with Industrial Automation

Back then, when we visited Emerson Automation Solutions, located close to our global headquarters in Texas, they told us that they wanted to keep their existing hardware platform for an extended period. They also asked if we could help them add customization features so that they could provide a standard yet tailored system solution for their industrial customers in vertical industries.

A complementary but separate business division

What we do

What does this boil down to? In a nutshell, we take care of all aspects of bringing a product to market from solution design through to inventory management, customized manufacturing and field support. We offer expertise in IoT design and deployment plus in-depth knowledge of more than 40 vertical industries, for example, industrial automation, healthcare, telco, security and defence.

Specifically, we help customers select the right compute power for their solution, modify the appropriate Dell EMC system to optimally run their IP, certify it to industry standards or regulatory requirements and build it. We work closely with key partners like Intel and can deliver pretty much anything the customer wants, including adding specially designed brackets and switches, labelling, integrating third-party cards, creating custom bios as well as managing branding and validation.

Beyond system customisation and certification, we also offer ruggedised systems for punishing environments, long lifecycle products with managed product transitions plus specialist expertise through a range of partners – channel, application and IoT. Customers enjoy access to a team of dedicated engineers and project managers, a global supply chain, shipping and logistics expertise, award-winning support and importantly, tier 1 tried and tested architecture.

Fast forward to today and we are now proud to serve over 3,500 customers worldwide. Our solutions can be found in factories, mines, oil-rigs, laboratories, sports stadiums, hospitals and supermarkets around the globe. You name it – we are there! In fact, thanks to our customers and partners – we achieved the hard-won status of #1 OEM Provider worldwide.

Industrial Automation is personal

For me, the moral of the story is that it always pays to listen to feedback and act on good ideas. We certainly owe that first customer a debt of gratitude for planting the seed of a multi-billion dollar business. As you can guess, for me, the industrial automation market is special – after all, it was the trigger for the business that I now head up in Europe. It’s where it all began.

Alive, well and kicking

Today, industrial automation continues to be one of our biggest revenue drivers globally. While the industry certainly has had to contend with ups and downs over the last few decades, the good news is that contrary to many reports, it’s alive, well and kicking.

Spirit of innovation

In my view, that’s largely down to the great spirit of innovation and continuous improvement in the industrial automation industry. Instead of resisting technology, those guys have always embraced new ways of doing things faster, smarter and better. Today’s factories now have the IT tools to collect, analyse and act on data in real time to optimise operations, lower costs, increase throughput and gain a competitive edge.

From the Edge to the Core to the Cloud

For the last twenty years, our customised PowerEdge servers and Precision workstations have been integrated into central automation and control rooms (now called the “Core”) to collect data .In contrast, the factory floor (now known as the “Edge”) was traditionally characterised by proprietary hardware and software solutions.

Standardisation, cyber security and IoT services

That’s all changing now. With the Industrial IoT, data needs to be collected, analysed and integrated with different “data consumers”, close to the action on the factory floor, either on the premises or in the Cloud. As a result, we are seeing a big move towards standard hardware devices at the Edge (Embedded PCs and Gateways) and software interoperability in the field.

One-stop shop

The good news is that we can provide everything from the Edge to Core to Cloud, depending on the amount of data being processed and your analytics requirements. And of course, in terms of cybersecurity and services, we offer a one-stop-shop with customers also enjoying access to the broad Dell Technologies portfolio, including RSA and VMware Pulse IoT Center.

Powering control rooms

A picture paints a thousand words so let me give you a few examples of how we help our industrial automation customers solve problems. Our customised solutions power the control rooms at some of the biggest energy plants around the world. Their focus is on reducing downtime and improving profitability by remotely monitoring critical equipment (think of a power station, mine, refinery or an off-shore oil rig) with sensors, edge gateways and sophisticated cloud-hosted analytics tools.

Detecting quality in car manufacturing

In other industries, such as automobile manufacturing, factories are using our technology to conduct real-time testing and quality control during the assembly process in order to make adjustments and prevent potential problems before they occur.

For example, one customer uses our products to power 3D metrology industrial machines that use robots with rotating cameras to precisely measure production parts down to micron level. In fact, we even have experience in connecting Dell EMC systems to non-IT equipment, such as trucks, trains and planes and are actively involved in delivering a customer solution for car testing and certification.

Predictive maintenance

By using the Internet of Things and our Gateways, other customers are tracking the condition of manufacturing equipment, second by second and accurately predicting when customer maintenance should take place to increase uptime and save money.

Looking ahead

The industrial automation market continues to play a huge role in the global economy and leads the way in the adoption of new technologies. In fact, I believe that it’s driving huge innovation worldwide. Where industrial automation leads, others eventually follow. Emerging trends include augmented reality, 3D printing, robotics, artificial intelligence, cloud-based supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems and programmable automation controllers (PACs).

Transformation not happening fast enough

The key question is, what is the current state of play? We recently commissioned Vanson Bourne to survey 3,800 business leaders from around the world to gauge their predictions and preparedness for the future. The research shows businesses are split by divergent views of the future.

◈ 82 percent of business leaders expect their workforce and machines will work as integrated teams within five years.

◈ Leaders are divided on what this future means for them, with 50 percent saying automated systems will free-up their time, while the other half disagrees.

◈ Organisations are united in the need to transform and how; but they are not moving fast enough.

It’s the future

I know a lot of people are afraid of automation and worry about impacts to employment. I understand that fear but believe that we need to keep using technology to reinvent processes and strengthen the industry’s ability to hire workers with the right, high-tech, high-touch skills needed in this digital age.

Just as there was a move from farm work to factory work back in the early 20thcentury, almost every sector will need new kinds of workers. The truth is that the industry will continue to need talented people who can manage new operations, programme the robotics and adapt and maintain new equipment.

Dell EMC OEM is proud to contribute to the transformation of this important industry. And customers, don’t stop telling us what you need – we’re listening!

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Accelerating HPC and AI: From the Desktop to the Data Center

Coming to NVIDIA GTC

High-performance computing and artificial intelligence might conjure up visions of futuristic data centers. However, HPC and AI workloads — including research, CAD, and data analysis — typically begin on a laptop or desktop workstation. From there, teams can tap into data center resources.

Diagram from TACC user guide for Stampede2.

Dell Precision Workstations with NVIDIA GPUs can accelerate anything from gaming to data analytics, design to visualization. On my personal wish list for design, is the Dell Precision 7730 mobile workstation with up to 8.9TFLOPS with the NVIDIA Quadro P5200 GPU, and 8TB of storage! With up to 64GB of memory, it easily tackles virtual reality, analytics and graphics/design. If you don’t have enough room for the 17” display in your motorcycle backpack, check out the sleek Precision 5530 with Ubuntu® Linux. It has memory expansion capabilities up to 64GB for a good balance of price and performance in a mobile workstation.

In cool new tech, the NVIDIA Quadro RTX 8000 can render complex models and scenes with physically accurate shadows, reflections, and refractions, to empower users with instant insight. And it will be available in Dell Precision 5820, 7820 and 7920 towers.

Extending the gains with GPU virtualization

The NVIDIA virtualization platform now extends the power of GPUs to support up to 32 virtual desktops running performance-hungry workloads. Often these solutions leverage NVIDIA virtual GPUs (vGPUs) and familiar VMware technologies used in data centers around the world, with everything integrated into VMware Horizon desktop and application environments.

Plenty of Vroom with GPUs

Dell EMC PowerEdge servers including the R640, R740/xd and R7425, can get a boost from NVIDI T4 Tensor Core GPU accelerators. NVIDIA T4, with 320 Tensor Cores and 70W low-profile design, can support a wide range of workloads from machine learning to virtual desktops. From the PowerEdge T640 tower servers to R940xa rack servers, the NVIDIA V100, equipped with 640 Tensor Cores, delivers 125 teraFLOPS of deep learning performance. In the PowerEdge C4140 server, with NVIDIA NVLink interconnect technology, V100 accelerators can be interconnected at up to 300GB/s to unleash even more application performance. And there’s more good news: GPUs can accelerate more than 580 HPC applications.

Take it with you

Via the NVIDIA GPU Cloud (NGC), you can bring your deep learning containers with you wherever you’re working, while reducing complexity. For example, NVIDIA RAPIDS open-source software is available in containers accessible via the NGC container registry. This suite of open source software libraries is designed to give people the freedom to execute data science and analytics pipelines on GPUs.

The fastest-adopted GPU now in the world’s best-selling PowerEdge Server

The new NVIDIA T4 accelerator for distributed computing environments can accelerate training and inference, video transcoding, and virtual desktops. It can also accelerate mainstream applications in enterprise environments, enabling companies to analyze massive amounts of data and make accurate business predictions at unprecedented speed.

NVIDIA reports that this next-level GPU accelerator has become the fastest-adopted server GPU. And, it is now available in one of the world’s best-selling servers, the Dell EMC PowerEdge R740. The T4 GPU is also available in PowerEdge R740xd, R640 and R7425 servers.

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Improving the User Experience in the Digital Workplace

Ensuring a good user experience is a challenge for businesses interested in moving toward a digital workplace. While it seems intuitive that user experience improvement leads to increased productivity, that’s not the primary goal. “Increasingly, the success of digital workplace programs is being defined by how well business goals align with user needs, rather than just by productivity and costs savings,” said Esteban Herrera, partner and global head of ISG Research, in a news release about ISG’s recent Digital Workplace of the Future report.

In the digital environment, the user’s emotions and attitudes define the user experience. Aligning with user needs includes providing an experience that enhances how a person perceives and feels about the digital workplace. In fact, the ISG report identifies a shift away from traditional service level agreements (SLAs) in favor of end-user experience agreements (XLAs). The goal of an XLA is to monitor the user’s experience, identify gaps affecting the user, and then take corrective action. Ultimately, if the user enjoys working in the digital workplace, the benefits can include embracing new digital tools that improve productivity and collaboration with the business to further improve the digital transformation.

Operating systems and digital workplace applications are also designed to enhance the user experience, as software companies realize the important role that the application experience plays in the selection process. For example, each version of the Windows operating system has made advances in improving the user experience. In my own experience, it was an adjustment moving away from using shortcut keys, to the more visual experience provided by the Quick Access Toolbar in Office programs. However, in exchange, we receive a visually rich and intuitive user experience that created a demand for improved graphics virtualization.

It’s interesting how the presentation of color can play a significant role in the user interface of a program. “Research reveals people make subconscious judgments about a person, environment, or product within 90 seconds of initial viewing and that between 62% and 90% of that assessment is based on color alone,” according to CCI Color Institute for Color Research. This research highlights the importance of the presentation layer in the digital workplace. While a graphics processing unit does not affect the selection of color used in a user interface, it does affect color depth. In general, the greater the color depth the broader the spectrum of colors available.

The new NVIDIA T4 data center GPU with NVIDIA GRID software is designed to provide a native-PC user experience in a digital workplace. Users can use multiple screens and watch 4K video. The T4 also supports VP9 video decode and H.265 (HVEC) encode/decode and provides support for more than 1 TB of system memory.

Dell EMC now offers an integrated, validated, and tested solution for the digital workplace. The virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solution combines PowerEdge servers with the NVIDIA T4 and GRID software and provides a comprehensive pathway to improving the user experience. After component integration, the solution is performance-tested to ensure its validity. As part of the testing process, engineers tune the system to maximize performance and efficiency, and document best practices. Finally, a separate team of experts evaluate the test results to ensure that the systems can be properly configured and sized for customers.

Monitoring the Dell EMC VDI solution is free and easy with Live Optics. Live Optics is a remote and agentless software for collecting data about your PowerEdge environment. It streams workload data from your system to an online analytics engine that measures, analyzes, and reports workload characteristics. Live Optics saves time by automating data collection and drives transparency by enabling system monitoring.

The goal of the new Dell EMC solution is to accelerate the time-to-value for the business in achieving an enhanced user experience for digital workplace users. Every digital workplace solution is different, requiring the design and size of the solution to match a customer’s requirements. This solution offers a great deal of flexibly in how it can be configured and sized for digital workplaces. Thus, customers have the capability to start with a foundation that matches their current requirements and incrementally grow as the business grows.

The user experience in the digital workplace doesn’t have to be a challenge. Companies can quickly enhance the digital workplace with a powerful combination of NVIDIA T4 cards, GRID software, and PowerEdge servers. This VDI solution was developed by a team of experts who have used digital workplaces, designed solutions, and been customers themselves. They understand the value of solutions that are easy to use and enable your business to quickly achieve its goals.

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Hindsight to Insight: Why Digital Transformation is Not an Option

If you’re a Star Wars fan like I am, you have always been able to imagine a world where technology is at the heart of everything we do. Today, a digital world is no longer the stuff of great sci-fi, it’s our reality. Fueled by our thirst for knowledge and our ‘on-demand’ appetite; technology, and the data it’s creating, are advancing and increasing at exponential rates. Like never before, businesses are able to tap into a rich pool of data to turn hindsight to insight, identifying unique trends and operating efficiencies that help to propel their business forward and provide a competitive advantage. Digital transformation is about making sure that your business is ready and able to tap into what the digital world has to offer. It’s about having the technological power to unlock and capitalize on the value of your data.

Earlier this year Dell Technologies launched the second edition of the Digital Transformation Index. The study was commissioned to survey 4,600 business leaders from around the globe to analyze their organizations’ digital transformation efforts, as compared to the initial study done in 2016. The results were surprising. While there were some improvements from the study results two years ago, almost four in ten businesses are still spread across the two least digitally mature groups on the benchmark.

Here are a few key findings that I found most interesting:

◈ Emerging markets are continuing to disrupt the business landscape and are scoring higher in digital maturity than developed markets, boasting more digital leaders. These businesses are entering the market with a huge competitive advantage; they are building their businesses with digital engrained in their DNA. In fact, 53% of business leaders in emerging markets believe their business will “disrupt rather than be disrupted” within five years.

◈ In contrast, 51% of businesses in mature markets today believe they’ll struggle to meet changing customer demands within five years.

◈ The study indicates that many businesses are not ready for a digital world and it’s no longer just budget and resources holding them back. Today the data indicates that external influences are having a bigger impact on businesses and their digital transformation efforts.

Slide 15: DT Index Executive Summary

Ironically–the very reasons why businesses should transform; data privacy and security concerns, regulations and legislative changes, immature digital culture, and information overload, are now becoming the very reasons why they are struggling to do so. This is a dangerous position to be in for two reasons. First, digital transformation does not happen overnight. Change takes time. And our study depicts the slow advancement over two years. Second, internal influences are easier to solve for than external ones. External influences are unpredictable and are driven by many factors out of your control.

In marketing, we see these changes firsthand. Every month new tools and apps are being launched, and the amount of data we gather about our business is increasing by the day. Part of my job is to ensure my team understands and leverages the data available to them to drive innovation that best serves our customers and delivers positive business outcomes. Instead of driving a “one-size-fits all” marketing strategy, we leverage customer data to provide content that is tailored to our customer’s needs and aligned to where they are on their customer journey; driving towards our vision of personalization at scale. None of which is possible without the ability to store vast amounts of data, secure the data and then analyze it to understand the valuable insights the data holds.

In the fast-paced, always-on world we live in, it’s easy to forget that only a mere 23 years ago less than 1% of the world’s population had an internet connected device. Today, every industry has been impacted by digital transformation. Businesses need an offensive plan to survive and thrive in this digital world. Our study tells us that while progress is slow, business leaders around the globe are taking notice of the importance and potential implications of our digital world and the opportunities available to businesses that are poised to seize them.

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Simplify and Automate Your Organization’s Data Protection with Dell EMC

An Increasing Focus on Automation

Digital transformation is not only changing businesses and operating models, it’s putting more pressure on IT organizations to automate. Many IT teams have already achieved some efficiencies by virtualizing and automating compute resources. However, the management and delivery of provisioned resources on top of critical compute, storage, network, and most importantly, data protection resources need improvement. Automation solves many of these problems. Automation enables IT agility in a way that’s standardized, consistent, scalable, repeatable, and secure. A fully automated environment can reduce the time it takes to deliver production-ready resources to business stakeholders from weeks to less than a day.

Automated and Orchestrated Cloud Data Protection

To keep up with the demands of the business, organizations need a modern data center with a unified platform for managing private, public, hybrid cloud and multi-cloud environments. With VMware vRealize Suite (vRS), the foundation of the VMware Cloud Management Platform (CMP), is designed to help your organization gain the agility and speed that are essential to claiming and maintaining a competitive advantage. At the same time, the IT team gets the tools they need to manage uptime, performance, and cost of infrastructure and applications.

As more users adopt VMware and VMware vRealize Automation (vRA), Dell EMC’s deep integration with VMware’s user interface becomes more and more important. Pair VMware vRealize Suite with Dell EMC Data Protection and the solution offers automation, governance and compliance for users with the deepest integration points for your cloud orchestration portal.

Automate and Simplify Data Protection

The vRA Data Protection Extension from Dell EMC delivers Backup as a Service and self-service data protection for VMware environments. The extension offers data protection natively as part of vRA Advanced Services and all data protection tasks occur from within the vRA UI. Data protection is embedded into the blueprints, ensuring that data protection is automatically included during the deployment of applications and compute services. The extension also supports application consistent backup and recovery through built in agents.

Benefits of vRA and Dell EMC’s vRA Data Protection extension:

◈ Data protection offered as part of vRA advanced service

◈ Application consistency

◈ Backup as a Service with Self-service data protection

◈ Business agility

◈ Get transparency and control over the costs/ quality of IT services

◈ Control/optimize IT budget

◈ Align IT with business priorities

◈ Ensure automated data governance and compliance

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Disaster Recovery to VMware Cloud™ on AWS using Cloud DR

Disaster recovery is one of the most important aspects an organization needs to handle, not only for business continuity, but also for regulatory reasons. Not every business can or wants to handle the additional cost of a physical site for disaster recovery. The cloud seems to be the optimal solution for that.

Dell EMC’s Data Domain Cloud Disaster Recovery is a solution that allows users to extend their on-premises data protection to the cloud, and orchestrate the disaster recovery of a protected machine on the cloud. The solution has been available since early 2017 and many customers are already using it for their disaster recovery. Cloud Disaster Recovery is also included in the Integrated Data Protection Appliance (IDPA), which means that customers who are working with IDPA have by default, the ability to leverage the Cloud DR abilities.

The Cloud DR process starts by copying data created on the on-premises by Avamar. Data is stored on Data Domain systems, including our integrated appliances (IDPA DP4400), or snap-based replication data created by RecoverPoint for VMs to an S3 bucket on your AWS account. This process is called protection and data is sent compressed over HTTPS/TLS 1.2, where it is stored securely and deleted by the cloud retention policy, which is configurable through the protection or replication solution (Avamar or RecoverPoint for VMs).

After the data of a backup or a replication is available on the S3 bucket, the next backups can be incremental, meaning only new changes made to the machine will be sent to the cloud, so cloud storage usage and the billing are significantly reduced. When a machine needs to be recovered from the backup stored on the cloud, users have the ability to select a backup copy using the Cloud DR Server modern HTML 5 user interface and can recover in just a few button clicks.

Leveraging VMware Cloud™ on AWS as a DR Site

It’s been over a year since VMware™ Cloud on AWS was announced and it has gained popularity among organizations who seek the familiar VMware products and technology, without the hardware costs and complexity of building the entire infrastructure. It allows businesses to take advantage of the scalability the cloud can offer.

The Cloud DR’s vision is to provide customers the opportunity and flexibility to work with different protection technologies and cloud platforms. Starting with the 18.2 release, which was available beginning in May 2018, Data Domain Cloud Disaster Recovery provides the ability to recover from an existing backup on the cloud directly to VMware Cloud™ on AWS.

Cloud DR allows you to recover to VMware™ Cloud easily and intuitively. After configuring your software defined data center (SDDC) on VMware Cloud, you’ll be able to deploy a Cloud DR Add-on (CDRA) on the vCenter running on your SDDC. The SDDC doesn’t have to run all the time. You can configure it to run just for disaster recovery and continue with the CDRA deployment and configuration. This includes connecting the CDRA to your AWS account, and the vCenter on the SDDC. This process takes just a few minutes.

During the configuration, make sure to enable the CDRA for direct failovers. Once this option is enabled from the CDRA, you’ll be able to use the Cloud DR Server (CDRS) to recover from a backup copy directly to the vCenter on the SDDC. Simply select a protected VM, any of its available cloud copies, and the target vCenter and CDRA (multiple CDRAs could be deployed on the same vCenter).

After the recovery is initiated, the CDRA will create a new VM on the vCenter running on your SDDC on VMware Cloud, and that VM will retrieve the data that is stored on the S3 bucket.

It wouldn’t take long to fully recover a VM to VMware Cloud, and the process is usually much quicker than a recovery to AWS because there is no data conversion process and because the internal connectivity between the SDDC and the resources on AWS. In internal lab qualifications, it took several minutes to recover a 150 GB Linux VM to VMware Cloud.

You’ll can find several demos on Dell EMC’s YouTube channel, including the following:

◉ Recovery demo to AWS and to VMware Cloud

◉ Deployment demo

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Easy, Economical Cloud DR to AWS with RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines

The most recent RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines v5.2.1 release, adds the capability to protect VMs directly to AWS S3 object storage, using proprietary snap-based replication, with RPO that can be measured in minutes. This blog recaps the capabilities that Cloud DR 18.4 unlocks for Recover Point for Virtual Machines.

RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines works with Cloud DR to protect your VMs by replicating them to the AWS cloud. Replicated data is compressed, encrypted, and stored as incremental snapshots on Amazon S3 object storage. You can set parameters around the snap-replication policies for reliable and repeatable Disaster Recovery! Your VMs are protected using built-in orchestration managed from within vSphere Web Client, test and fail over the protected snapshots in AWS. Dell EMC Cloud DR Server is being used for managing the cloud copies and running orchestrated recovery flows to native AWS EC2 instances, or to virtual machines running within VMware Cloud™ on AWS. Cloud DR provides crash-consistent, image level VM recovery to AWS and VMware Cloud™ on AWS. After failing over, you can fail back in minutes to an on-premises vCenter. Using a single interface to manage your VMs eliminates excess complexity and makes this latest release simply powerful.

With no additional licensing required to enable Cloud DR services, Dell EMC is helping cut cost while implementing seamless functionality. Whether you’re leveraging the cloud currently or it’s going to be a vital part of your Data Protection/DR strategy moving forward, RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines continues to set the industry standard for any point in time recovery on premises. Now we offer cost-effective proprietary snapshot replication to AWS with RPOs that are measured in minutes.

RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines with Cloud DR provides a huge cloud enhancement enabling our customers with confidence to. Increased efficiency for Instant recovery on/off premises. If you have any questions about Cloud DR with Recover Point for Virtual Machines reach out to your Dell EMC representative or read more on the RecoverPoint site.

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When Three Worlds Collide: HPC, Analytics and AI

High-performance computing, data analytics and artificial intelligence are converging, and that’s good news for today’s enterprises.

When people talk about high-performance computing, data analytics and artificial intelligence, they tend to treat this trio of technologies as three separate entities, each living in its own world. While that’s true to some extent, this view of disparate technologies misses the digital-transformation forest for the technology trees. That’s because these three complementary technologies are rapidly converging, and anymore, it’s hard to see where one ends and the other begins.

If HPC, data analytics and AI are so different, then why was it that all of the HPC customers I talked to at SC18 were already doing AI, in addition to data analytics? They have and will continue to provide infrastructure and services for a wide variety of workloads in both research and industry.

HPC, data analytics and AI are all technologies that are designed to unlock the value of data. And they are all converging as enterprises come to understand that analytics and AI are essential tools for solving big‑data problems that require the powerful, scalable compute, networking and storage provided by high performance computing.

Formerly the domain of specialists using expensive, proprietary supercomputers, HPC has entered a new era. Thanks to amazing advances in compute, networking and storage technologies, high performance computing capabilities — and by extension data analytics and AI — are available to organizations using small clusters, workstations and even cell phones. While this changes the game for some of the more traditional applications of HPC in academic and government institutions, it also puts AI within reach for a much wider range of use cases.

So what does HPC mean in this new era?

There was a time when many people thought HPC was synonymous with visualization, modeling and simulation. And in some ways it still means the same. Don’t you want to visualize your data? In AI, we’re creating and training models so machines can simulate human behavior. Hmm… It seems like we’re speaking the same language, or at least focusing on some of the same things, when we talk about AI and HPC.

And then there’s the big data side of the story. Isn’t all of HPC dealing with big data? I mean who wants to visualize a small amount of data or model something that’s, well, statistically insignificant? Maybe for fun. By its very nature, HPC means big data.

And that brings us back to data analytics. When it comes to data, aren’t we all looking at and analyzing data to get the next insight, to make the next discovery? Insight is at the heart of data analytics, and discovery is at the heart of HPC. If you discover a new galaxy, do you gain insights? Of course you do. Discovery and insight go hand in hand, just like HPC, data analytics and AI.

Let’s get down to business.

The convergence of HPC, analytics and AI is a big step forward for today’s businesses — and by that, I mean enterprises of all sizes, institutions, labs and universities. Oh, do you think that universities aren’t businesses? Well, have you paid your kids’ tuition bill lately? You bet academic institutions are in business, and most of them have Microsoft®, VMware® AND research computing clusters.

Universities around the world are partnering with industries and governments to use leading-edge technology — including HPC, analytics and AI — to drive discovery and innovations. For example, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign maintains many close industry partnerships. Boeing, Caterpillar, Deere, Dow, GE, P&G and Rolls-Royce are all members of NCSA’s Industry Program, which has served nearly 60 percent of manufacturers in the Fortune100.

The University of Michigan supports a great deal of research focused on the automotive and transportation industries. This work includes support for research carried out at the Mcity initiative, a one-of-a-kind urban test facility. At Mcity, industry, government and academia come together to improve transportation safety, sustainability and accessibility for the benefit of society.

Meanwhile, the University of Cambridge is using Hadoop and Openstack to make self-service AI capabilities available to research teams and private industry. And then, of course, enterprises like Mastercard are using AI and powerful HPC systems to protect customers from fraud, while startups like ZIFF Inc. are putting AI to work to gain insight from unstructured image, audio and video data.

In the end, they’re all providing a service that leverages the convergence of HPC, data analytics and AI. Along the way, these businesses are contributing to human progress, helping to shape to a future that will increasingly weave artificial intelligence – or at least machine learning – into our everyday lives.

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EMEA OEM Decision-Makers Share Their Views on the Market

Despite technological advances, some things remain constant in our ever-changing world. I shared the story a while back about how customer feedback led to the establishment of our now global, multi-billion dollar OEM business. 22 years on, customer feedback is as important as ever. We’re always keen to understand changing market trends and what we can do better.

Listening to OEM decision makers across EMEA

True to form, we recently commissioned the analyst team at Futurum Research to conduct an independent, global OEM Partnership Survey which included canvassing the views of 272 senior decision makers in OEM-type business models across EMEA, mainly in the UK, France, Germany and Spain. 94 percent of those surveyed were either primary decision makers or key influencers.

The survey included the full spectrum of businesses from 500 to 50,000 plus employees with the majority coming from the category of 1,000 to 4,999 employees. In line with our diverse customer profile, industry sectors included Consumer Products, Healthcare/Pharma, Defense, Energy and Utilities, Banking and Finance, Industrial plus Media and Technology.

Key EMEA takeaways

As we move into 2019, I believe that the report provides valuable insights into current trends and provides a window into the future of the OEM market. My marketing colleague Ethan Woods has already shared his views on the overall survey here. Today, I want to share the key EMEA takeaways.

Overcoming barriers to innovation

What jumped off the page for me? As head of Dell EMC OEM in EMEA, it’s gratifying to see that over 80 percent of respondents in the region say that OEM relationships and solutions have helped them overcome barriers to innovation.

Faster time to market

In the competitive marketplace, it’s no surprise that decision-makers say time to market matters more than ever and that finding the right technology can make the difference between winning and losing. How do you keep up with complex and rapidly evolving technology? Well, 82 percent say they’ve been able to empower their business and embrace new and emerging technologies by outsourcing development efforts to OEM partners.

At present, over a quarter of businesses have leveraged OEM partnerships to deploy Augmented and Virtual Reality solutions (currently the single largest area of focus), but I anticipate that Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (currently at 24 percent), IoT (currently at 13.5 percent) and Blockchain (currently at 16 percent) will grab more of the spotlight this year.

How much faster?

Drilling down, the ultimate question is, how much faster do OEM partnerships help in translating ideas into market offerings that can drive business value? While 55 percent said their incremental increase in deployment was between 11 and 30 percent faster, it’s great to see that 21 percent cite between 31 percent and 50 percent faster time to value.

Moreover, the majority of EMEA respondents cite OEM partnerships as either very or critically important in achieving measurable business goals centered around competitive advantage, increased revenue and improved customer experience.

Partnership speeds internal transformation

Faster to market for customer-facing products and services is great but being innovative within your business is equally important. When asked, if OEM relationships had specifically helped “your organization accelerate product/service innovation efforts”, 89 percent give a resounding yes. However, the value of OEM partnerships doesn’t stop there.

In fact, over two-thirds say OEM partnerships are very or critically important to improving or accelerating their efforts in digital transformation (82 percent), IT transformation (75 percent), security transformation (74 percent), and workforce transformation (68 percent). Relatively speaking, while workforce transformation lags at 68 percent, I believe this is largely due to the complexity of it being a technology, people, and physical asset play and I believe this will increase over time.

Cost reduction benefits

In terms of cost reductions, the results highlight a clear “OEM over internal” benefit with at least 35 percent of respondents estimating a 21 to 40 percent cost reduction for initiatives in customer service, manufacturing, sales & marketing, distribution & logistics, plus research & development.

The right technology matters most

And now, we come to the burning question – what matters most for customers? Respondents rate product performance and features, scalability, cost reduction and business unit requirements as the most critically important decision drivers when choosing to go with an OEM partner, highlighting a common theme in technology today: more for less.

And while custom engineering and contractual flexibility are currently ranked behind these factors, I believe that this will change over time to reflect the growing importance of emerging technologies. In my experience, customers are already beginning to opt for more flexible contracts along with financing options as this enables them to be more agile and adopt new solutions faster.

OEM partnerships set to increase

Looking ahead, over 71 percent of respondents say they expect their use of OEM partnerships in EMEA to increase over the next year with 12 percent predicting a dramatic increase while only 23 percent predict that it will remain steady.

Huge opportunity for sales growth and cost reductions

Interestingly, the report predicts that the global market opportunity for adoption of OEM partnerships is significant, indicating that it could grow by a CAGR of 20 to 25 percent over the coming decade. The good news is that Futurum also believe that companies that engage in above-average levels of OEM partnerships can accelerate sales growth and cost reductions by an impressive 35 and 45 percent by 2025.

Finally, according to the report, as emerging technologies, such as AI, Blockchain, AR/VR, mature, they will become increasingly “table stakes” for businesses looking to establish long-term trust with their customers – if you don’t have them you won’t find a seat at the table.

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