Enabling Multi-Cloud Data Service Advantage with Flexible Payment Solution

Faction is a multi-cloud, data service provider offering private, public and hybrid cloud solutions to clients in the United States and United Kingdom. Building out a multi-cloud environment is a key enabler for many enterprises looking to better manage the explosion of data available to them. Oftentimes it is the client’s top asset. Generating value from data housed in the cloud and seeking ways to leverage that data to deliver growth and gain a competitive edge is of the utmost importance.

As a lean and rapidly growing company, Faction faces two key challenges. First, the company wants to conserve valuable cash as it builds its technology infrastructure. The second and more difficult goal is to tightly align capital expenditures to income. In short, it must efficiently preserve capital as it grows to meet expanding customer and data demands. To address these issues, Faction turned to a Dell Technologies Technology Rotation solution.

Technology Rotation changes the traditional upfront CAPEX approach to technology acquisition to an OPEX model that provides businesses flexibility and liquidity over time. Organizations can accelerate and enhance digital transformation with a planned refresh of assets, thus optimizing productivity and overcoming challenges throughout the technology lifecycle. By rotating solutions, outdated, slower, and inefficient technology are replaced with cutting-edge products at a pre-defined time, helping ensure the organization is ready for the next wave of innovation from Dell Technologies.

Scalability

Faction provides multi-cloud and data protection services at scale. With a fast-growing business like theirs, there is a need to continually add and scale IT infrastructure, while avoiding large capital outlays and saving cash. With a Technology Rotation OPEX approach, equipment can scale and rotate in more quickly than solutions procured through a CAPEX acquisition process, all without a heavy cash injection.

We want to put as much of our cash as possible into scaling our business to acquire customers and deliver services versus using capital to purchase service delivery equipment.” – Derek Pilling, Chief Financial Officer, Faction

Performance Optimization

Periodically refreshing infrastructure and solutions is critical to take advantage of constant technology advancements. Technology Rotation was the most cost-effective way to keep equipment current while helping Faction better manage IT infrastructure life cycles and employee endpoints. Aged hardware is refreshed with new hardware more easily and employees can work with higher performing technology.

We can focus more on growth and serving customers and less on keeping gear updated.” – Josh Ferris, Director of Procurement, Faction

Cash Flow Management

There are many ways to fund a growing business, such as borrowing money or raising equity. Faction chose a Technology Rotation flexible payment solution to match cash outlays with forecasted revenue. A custom Technology Rotation payment structure was a cost-effective way to fund infrastructure purchases. Unlike traditional financing solutions, there is no equity interest or cumbersome restrictions imposed on the business.

“This simplifies and streamlines procurement, saving us time.” – Josh Ferris, Director of Procurement, Faction

Technology Rotation provides increased flexibility to manage cash flow and helps avoid valuable cash from being locked into intensive capital expenditures. Cash is freed from long-term IT infrastructure investments by spreading payments over time. Short-term or long-term payment terms can be selected based on business needs.

Financing capital purchases with Technology Rotation is a perfect match for our financial objectives.” – Derek Pilling, Chief Financial Officer, Faction

Business Priorities

Technology rotation provides Faction with the flexibility to have a first-mover advantage. Faction can accelerate digital transformation by rotating into the latest technology and replacing obsolete equipment more quickly. Energy and focus can then be directed toward their customers’ mission critical projects such as cancer treatment and autonomous driving cars.

Strategic Relationship

Faction considers their Dell Technologies partnership to be a highly transparent, collaborative and strategic working relationship. The combination of Dell hardware solutions and flexible Technology Rotation payment options help Faction’s cloud data services better serve their customers’ multi-cloud requirements. It’s a win-win-win for Faction and Dell Technologies.

Source: delltechnologies.com

Continue reading

Four Steps to Omnichannel Retail with Edge and 5G

New retail use cases emerge to address shifting retail demands

Digital transformation is at the top of the agenda in many industries, but no sector faces more significant challenges or imminent change than retail. The retail industry has experienced steady disruption for more than a decade, as e-commerce and mobile shopping offered new alternatives and the economics of brick-and-mortar retail sometimes faltered. These changes have accelerated as both consumers and merchants have been compelled to interact in altogether new ways – in-store social distancing and mask-wearing, mobile order ahead and curbside pickup and the practically instant conveyance of local products directly from the merchant or via third-party delivery services.

The challenge retailers face can be made plain with a couple of data points from this 451 Research infographic, “Retail Is Being Transformed. Is YOUR Business Ready?”:

◉ The expectations of today’s digitally-savvy consumers are sky-high: 80% of consumers say they will stop doing business with a merchant due to a poor customer experience.

◉ Most of today’s retailers know that the key to improving those experiences is to better understand their customers. This understanding is made possible by capturing and analyzing data about their needs, desires and activities – both online and in-store. Yet just 12% of retailers say their customer experience decisions are primarily data-driven today.

The rise of the intelligent, data-driven edge

To address that disconnect, retailers must modernize their IT systems and architectures to support an intelligent and data-driven edge – IT infrastructure deployed in or near store locations where data is generated and can be acted on to create immediate, essential value. It is a requirement borne out of experience that has revealed an important truth. Many of the most critical retail workloads simply won’t run optimally – and fail to deliver mission-critical business outcomes – when deployed exclusively to the cloud or other centralized venues. These workloads require a high-performance, low-latency connectivity and compute environment that can support real-time transactions, insights and actions that deliver a seamless, frictionless omnichannel experience for customers.

A more capable enterprise edge fulfills the always-on, data-driven needs of new and emerging retail use cases, such as demand-driven inventory management, location-based marketing and contactless payment. It also supports the compute-intensive requirements of new applications, such as artificial intelligence-driven customer behavioral analysis, more engaging artificial reality/virtual reality (AR/VR) shopping experiences and autonomous vehicle and drone-based deliveries.

Technologies catalyzing transformation at the edge

The primary catalyst of this transformation is the confluence of edge computing, 5G networks, Internet of Things (IoT) devices and artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) enabled insights. Such connected retail technologies enable real-time management of outcomes and omnichannel operations. They are the key to future retail success, ushering in a new era that is customer-centric, data-driven, personalized  and dynamic, providing consumers with seamless physical and digital shopping experiences.

Retailers are busy deploying that intelligent edge today in the form of application management modernization, IoT sensors, edge compute and storage, 5G connectivity and AI/ML enabled analytics. Those efforts are nascent, but accelerating rapidly. According to 451 Research, 37% of retail IT infrastructure is deployed at the edge today and 77% of retailers expect to increase edge deployments significantly in the next two years.

Four steps to delivering an intelligent edge for omnichannel retail

To successfully deliver that intelligent edge, retail line of business (LoB), operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT) executives and teams should take these steps:

◉ Work closely to align business needs, digital processes and technology requirements.

◉ Be responsive to retail changes and evolving customer requirements.

◉ Understand how technologies like edge compute, 5G and AI can enable digitally-capable, omnichannel operations.

◉ Deploy the right technologies and enterprise architectures to differentiate their retail operations from less tech-savvy and single-channel rivals and turn yesterday’s shortfalls and challenges into tomorrow’s business gains and opportunities.

Explore how a more intelligent, capable enterprise edge is helping to reshape retail experiences and operations in this research advisory paper developed by 451 Research and sponsored by Dell Technologies and Intel:  Transforming Retail with Edge Compute, 5G, IoT and AI.

Source: delltechnologies.com 

Continue reading

Empowering Work from Anywhere: VDI as-a-Service with APEX

For many years now, organizations have used virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) to enable their employees to work remotely. VDI makes it easy for workers to move fluidly between the lab or company office and their remote locations, working on secure systems all the while. From an IT perspective, the benefits of VDI include streamlined security and compliance operations with respect to desktop infrastructure, removing additional legwork for the IT staff.

However, over the past two years VDI has risen in importance as huge numbers of people have shifted to working from home offices full time. Surveys indicate that about 40% of the workforce will continue to work remotely in the months and years ahead — that’s two times more than before the massive shift to remote work. And over the next three years remote work will continue to expand, with up to 50% of employees working away from the university or office.

In this new world of remote work, VDI is king. And that’s a problem for many IT leaders, as organizations looking to adopt or expand VDI have typically faced several hurdles, including long planning and procurement cycles, management complexity and higher than anticipated infrastructure costs.

These hurdles can cause some hesitation despite the many security and productivity advantages VDI provides. Nevertheless, organizations need solutions that simplify and accelerate the process of acquiring virtual desktop infrastructure for their growing remote workforces – all while reducing complexity and costs.

So how do you get there? In short, head to the APEX with Dell Technologies.

The APEX answer

Dell Technologies APEX for VDI delivers real workforce transformation by giving your organization what you need to create your own on-demand environment with infrastructure and services customized to order, accessed via a pay-per-use consumption model or an enterprise-scale managed utility. All without sacrificing flexibility and choice.

Here are a few of the ways Dell Technologies APEX for VDI can empower your “anywhere workforce” by streamlining and optimizing the implementation of VDI:

◉ Work and learn from anywhere. VDI enables users to run company applications and full desktops from anywhere, on any device, to enhance collaboration and productivity.

◉ Secure your environment. With hosted desktop infrastructure, your organization’s data remains protected behind the corporate firewall, helping maintain security without sacrificing performance.

◉ Increase efficiency while reducing costs. With flexible engineering-validated designs, your IT team can spend less resources procuring, deploying, testing and supporting your ever-changing VDI environment.

Benefits like these help deliver real workforce transformation, enabling people to be productive on their own terms.

To stay flexible and resilient in times of uncertain demand, secure remote management should remain top of mind as a business requirement. Dell Technologies APEX Custom Solutions for VDI consists of products and services designed to enable organizations to reap the full benefits of desktop virtualization and modernize the design and deployment of VDI optimized for performance, cost-effectiveness and security.

For customers looking for a turnkey solution, Dell Technologies APEX Cloud Services for VDI provides day-to-day, hands-on management of the VDI environment. Desktop virtualization services from Dell Technologies can help organizations identify ideal use cases for cloud-based VDI – such as rapidly deploying virtual workspaces for employees in a remote environment or accommodating changes in seasonal demand spikes and personnel – and provide qualitative and quantitative data to support those instances.

Either way, Dell Technologies APEX for VDI provides the path towards taking IT and workforce transformation to the next level.

A case study

The power of VDI emerges most clearly in real-world use cases. That’s the way it is with the city of Amarillo, Texas, which recently accelerated its IT modernization efforts with a VDI and hyperconverged infrastructure solution from Dell Technologies and VMware.

VDI has been a big win for the city in several ways. It simplified the management of client endpoints for several thousand city workers, helped the city save $800,000 in police car hardware costs and enabled all but essential city employees to shift to working from home during the pandemic.

Key takeaways

Here’s the bottom line: Today’s enterprises and public organizations need to find ways to enable their employees to maintain the highest levels of productivity while working remotely. That’s APEX for VDI. With Dell Technologies APEX for VDI, you can provide remote access to virtual desktops and company applications anytime, anywhere. And you can do it all with a best-in-class cloud solution that puts the user experience first.

Source: delltechnologies.com

Continue reading

APEX Cloud Services: Simple and Transparent Pricing

I dislike going to malls for shopping. But I love online shopping because of the ease, efficiency and convenience it offers. With just a few clicks, I can easily compare products or services, see prices and place an order.

This seamless experience I described above has traditionally been provided by public cloud vendors to IT organizations. At Dell, we have been incredibly busy bringing these cloud experiences to wherever your workloads live. At VMworld, we announced APEX Cloud Services with VMware Cloud, an infrastructure as-a-Service offering that delivers secure and consistent operations across multi-cloud environments. APEX Cloud Services with VMware Cloud combines the security and control of private cloud with the ease and simplicity of public cloud. It is ideal for customers looking to eliminate the burden of managing their infrastructure and wanting to build a hybrid cloud for consistent multi-cloud operations. It includes deployment of infrastructure on-premises or at a colocation facility, management of infrastructure, 24×7 monitoring, security patches, software updates, compute resources for SDDC management, redundant resources to accommodate hardware failures and a customer success manager who will be with you every step of the way. The service comes with flexible and scalable virtualized compute, storage and networking resources so customers can run their essential workloads without worrying about performance limitations. To learn more about this service, please head over to the APEX Cloud Services with VMware Cloud page.

Today, we are a step closer to bringing this service to a data center or a colocation facility near you. A couple of important aspects of delivering the cloud experience are self-service and transparent pricing. In August, we launched the APEX Data Storage Services pricing calculator. Today, we are excited to announce our pricing calculator for APEX Cloud Services with VMware Cloud.

From the comfort of your chair, you can configure and see the pricing with just four clicks. We made this self-service experience intuitive, immersive and delightful – which happen to be our guiding principles for the APEX user experience.

Choose the appropriate instance type matching your workload type. An instance is made up of compute and memory resources, and we offer different types of instances to suit a variety of workload types. For example, Memory Optimized instances deliver optimal performance for workloads such as relational databases, mid-size in-memory databases, data mining and web scale in-memory caches. These different instance types come with varying Memory-to-Core ratios of 4:1 for Compute Optimized; 8:1 for General Purpose, 16:1 for Memory Optimized and 32:1 ratio for Large Scale Memory Optimized type. We provided some example workloads to make it easy for you to select the right instance type. You can, of course, play around by choosing different instance types and see how the price changes. No matter which instance type you choose, be assured that we have you covered for a wide range of enterprise workloads.

Drag the slider to choose the number of instances you need. Putting it simply, number of instances is nothing but number of physical cores. Based on how large your workload is, you would simply select the number of instances. Large workloads require more instances. For example, if you select 512 instances of Compute Optimized instance type, you will end up with 512 cores and 2,048GB of memory (512 x 4 – the number 4 came from the memory-to-core ratio).

Choose the amount of storage capacity you need. Not all types of workloads require the same capacity, therefore we offer flexibility in the amount of storage with each configuration. The storage we offer is high-performance all-flash storage.

The subscription term defaults to 3 years, but you can change this to see how it affects pricing. Regardless of whether you choose 1- or 3-year terms, we offer the flexibility of upfront, yearly or monthly payments.

Once you make these selections, you will see pricing dynamically and instantly on the right-hand side. It’s that simple.

Source: delltechnologies.com

Continue reading

Escalate the Probability of Becoming Dell EMC Data Science Associate

Companies are currently hiring fresh Dell EMC Data Science Associate to help make crucial business decisions through accurate data comprehension. This is the reason why knowing about Dell EMC is a brilliant way to advance your career as an IT professional. Being a data scientist with expertise in Dell EMC is not a complicated process, so we will lay down all the points that you require to remember in this discussion.

The demand for cloud-based infrastructure has grown over the years through the pandemic, and now companies see it as a cost-effective and more straightforward solution. A data-driven approach is also evolving significantly as businesses realize their potential.

Data scientists require knowledge in various information technology sub-fields, including algorithms, data structures, programming languages, and statistical methods.

While the domain of Data Science is computer science-centric, statistical and domain expertise is needed.

Accordingly, data scientists may specialize in different fields, including business, physics, biology, finance, and economics.

Chalking Out the Path to Becoming a Dell EMC Data Science Associate

To reach your goal of becoming a Dell EMC Data Science Associate, you have to follow the correct path to attain it quickly. Before we move forward with providing you with all the other information, understand that Dell EMC is a data service that makes it easier for businesses to have a virtual infrastructure. It has integrated tools for databases, analytics, servers, and storage along with hybrid cloud facilities to provide that companies get all such services under the singular umbrella of Dell EMC.

Research indicates that about 85% of the Fortune 500 companies are now proud users of Dell EMC. This trend reflects the requirement of Dell EMC Data Science Associates in the newly employable market. Now is the golden time to train as a data scientist by following the correct certification path. The simplest way is to obtain a certification from Dell EMC, but more details later.

The Data Science Associate gives students the skills to analyze, procure, store and process large amounts of data. The study of Data Science will have students dealing with data from disparate sources in the modern context of the Internet, in different unstructured forms, and across academic disciplines.

The certification can benefit your career while opening your paths to better jobs and higher salary packages. The certificate is also proof of your dedication and commitment towards the subject, as you went a step forward to study and get certified.

Job Description of Dell EMC Data Science Associate

Before you go on and follow a career as a Dell EMC Data Science Associate, you should learn all that this job entails. This discussion will reflect what you should anticipate from your future career. The primary job of a data scientist is to analyze data and decipher actionable insights from them. Along with that, some of the essential job requirements of Data Science Associates are:

• Writing programming codes to run and deploy models.
• Work with experimentation and metrics.
• Create codes for machine learning algorithms for other data scientists’ usage.
• Work directly or indirectly with the clients to resolve technical issues.
• Develop new features of the products or develop new products.
• Address several business issues with various analytical techniques and machine learning tools.
• Use machine learning strategies to train, assess, and deploy models to address business objectives with AI solutions.
• Use other applications for speech processing, predictive analytics, computer vision, and natural language processing.
• Assure that all ethical, governance and privacy implications are incorporated in the solutions.

Expected Salary for a Data Science Associate

According to the data by LinkedIn, there are over 9000 vacancies for Data Science Associates in the United States. Globally, the vacancies cross 50,000, demonstrating that the demand for Data scientists with valid certifications will only increase.

The average annual income of a Data Science Associate is US$95,102 in the United States. With experience and skills, the pay can rise to US$110,000 per annum. As this industry attracts fresh candidates, all aspirants should ensure that they possess excellent prerequisite skills and additional accolades to stand apart from the competition.

In Conclusion

This entire discussion can act as your roadmap to becoming a Dell EMC Data Science Associate. The IT sector is on a crash, and every individual should grasp these emerging opportunities as IT professionals. The hour demands to learn to capitalize on the importance of data and its management like an emerging tech skill. Simultaneously, suppose you enroll in a data science associate course. In that case, you will require proper guidance and training material to qualify for the examination and obtain your certificate.

Therefore you should also select the right platform to help you prepare and achieve your objective of becoming a Data Science Associate. By committing to the goal that you want to achieve, you can assure your success.

Continue reading

Power Up Oracle Application and Database Use Cases

According to a recent research study commissioned by Oracle in concert with ESG, 84% of organizations surveyed use at least one emerging technology in production to enhance finance and/or supply chain operations. Examples cited include:

◉ Artificial intelligence (AI) to recommend products, predict equipment malfunctions, and optimize store inventories.

◉ Internet of things (IOT) to drive operational health and insight (eg: automated inventory, asset, and fleet monitoring).

◉ Digital assistants with secure conversational AI for complex questions, such as financial position, sales forecasts, etc.

◉ Blockchain to create trust and efficiency across the supply network (eg: decentralized ledgers, sales documents, contracts).

Underpinning this change are new database architectures and capabilities, such as Oracle’s converged database advancements that now replicate the functionality of multiple special-purpose databases, bringing together structured operational data with unstructured data, AI, ML and IoT. The result? Traditional ERP and finance applications work with emerging applications in a data-driven business, making it possible to:

◉ Reduce IT cost and complexity with a single database that supports multiple data types and workloads.

◉ Provide consistent security, scalability and high availability for applications and data.

◉ Create data-driven applications by employing modern development paradigms, such as CI/CD, REST APIs, powerful SQL and event-streaming capabilities and Oracle database containers.

What does this mean for IT?

Simply stated, IT is being disrupted. From the Oracle side, as applications and database managers plan their roadmaps for embracing new Oracle application capabilities, IT infrastructure and services must be prepared to:

◉ Operate Oracle with maximum efficiency on modern Infrastructure as a service (IaaS).

◉ Scale Oracle infrastructure with predictability, flexibility and control.

◉ Enable intelligent data-driven Oracle applications by securing developer productivity and visibility for all data.

How Dell Technologies APEX comes into focus

First, we work with IT to operate Oracle with maximum efficiency by consolidating complex Oracle landscapes with APEX Custom Solutions on modern IaaS, freeing up valuable resources for high-value Oracle projects. We handle the day-to-day infrastructure management and keep you informed about issues, activities and performance, relieving Oracle DBAs and IT staff from these repetitive tasks. When it comes to performance, protection and availability, we provide efficient, intelligent IaaS that scales with Oracle demands.

Second, we enable you to scale your Oracle IT as you grow to maintain predictability, flexibility and control of IT investments. Since not all Oracle environments and landscapes are the same, we provide choice and flexibility with an end-to-end portfolio of IaaS (compute / storage/ data protection) designed specifically with Oracle applications in mind. And, when it comes to consumption, we offer metering and utility-based financial options that scale to match your actual usage.

Third, we enable data-driven Oracle applications and databases, addressing developer productivity by supporting demands of Oracle’s newest databases and applications. Examples include:

◉ Securing data with cyber confidence by protecting Oracle applications data with cyber‑resilient IT and a path to recovery from ransomware and destructive cyberattacks.

◉ Accelerating DevOps with persistent storage services that simplify the provisioning and protection for Oracle container-based databases supporting stateful apps and databases.

◉ AI‑enabling infrastructure that provides modern compute, GPUs, storage and networks to ensure high performance for in-memory database workloads with ML, blockchain.

◉ Streamlining data ingestion and access, unifying data streams with unlimited retention providing access to both real-time and historical events working with object storage.

Use Cases

A key ingredient for Dell Technologies APEX is our Validated Designs for Oracle. Dell Technologies Validated Designs are tested and proven configurations for Oracle use cases. I have highlighted a few below for your reference:

Consolidate Oracle landscapes

Whether planned or unplanned, over time, sprawling Oracle application and database landscapes running core business functions can become complex to manage and maintain. To address this, a great starting point is to consolidate and reduce TCO for Oracle running on “siloed” IT, with platforms ready to run mixed OLTP, OLAP and analytic workloads.

Run Oracle databases on containers

While container technology enables development teams to quickly provision isolated databases without the traditional complexities, when it comes to stateful applications dependent on consistent data, you need to maintain persistent data somewhere on the network, providing performance, scalability, resiliency and availability. Dell EMC storage platforms address this by dynamically provisioning persistent volumes and securing the Oracle databases containers.

Oracle Big Data SQL 

To move from information source to actionable insights, organizations are investing in data management strategies that use data warehouses, data marts, data lakes and so on. Dell Technologies validated designs for data virtualization provide an efficient and seamless experience with Oracle Big Data SQL and highly scalable storage services.

Oracle MySQL Database

Oracle MySQL InnoDB is one of the most widely used open-source databases. A key feature is its ability to support different storage engines. Depending upon the engine used, MySQL can accelerate workloads, including Online Transaction Processing (OLTP), in-memory OLTP, data warehouses and Very Large Databases (VLDB). Dell Technologies combines the value of MySQL with InnoDB clustering and the advanced storage capabilities for a high availability solution that transforms both traditional and modern workloads.

Source: delltechnologies.com

Continue reading

Is it Time to Transition Exclusively to NVMe?

The NVMe host controller interface has made a lot of noise since its inception less than a decade ago. It introduced new forward-looking concepts to the storage market that were undeniably valuable, such as non-volatile memory and the high-speed PCIe bus. These design implementations made NVMe technology ideal for high performance data processing and large amounts of stored data – a perfect reason for bigger enterprise businesses to adopt the superior technology, even with its premium price point. It didn’t take long to catch on, as businesses understood that the world of data is rapidly evolving and wanted to stay ahead of the curve. NVMe storage was globally accepted as the premium storage solution.

However, what was once a novel technology had become conventional within a matter of years. Any business working with large data knew that NVMe storage was the best solution for increased speeds, reliability and security. It was also built to grow alongside developing technology rather than fall behind it, as SAS and SATA have been for some time. This shift inclined suppliers to create more competitively priced NVMe models for budget-conscious customers also wishing to transition over. Soon enough, the NVMe interface was a viable offering for everyone.

Fast-forward to today; there is a new solution that is both high-performance and affordable, with a price-point approaching even SATA. This new solution is the PCIe Gen4 Data Center (DC) NVMe drive, and its existence warrants an important discussion – is it time to start transitioning completely to NVMe?

Figure 1 – Dell U.2 PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD

To determine our answer, we must analyze the two most valuable metrics for comparing PCIe Gen4 DC NVMe, SAS and SATA – performance and pricing. Figure 2 provides a transparent illustration of how NVMe, SAS and SATA random read and write performances stack up against one another:

Figure 2 – Bar graph comparing read and write performance for three storage mediums (Gen4 DC NVMe, SAS, and SATA)

This bar graph portrays random read and write performances for 3.84TB Gen4 DC NVMe, SAS and SATA drive capacities. When the average Gen4 DC NVMe performance has a relative baseline of 1.0x, we can see very clearly that the average performance of the other two storage interfaces falls short. PCIe Gen4 DC NVMe drives actually outperform the competitors by a longshot for every metric, with a performance increase multiplier ranging from:

◉ 7x – 5.8x when compared to SAS.

◉ 2x – 13.3x when compared to SATA.

In regard to pricing, making comparisons can be tricky to accurately discuss as prices are always shifting. Therefore, we will determine relative pricing percentages for vendor-agnostic models from the Dell Technologies Q4 2021 price list. For this exercise, if PCIe Gen4 DC NVMe drives have a baseline price of 1.0x, then for the same capacity we can expect an average price multiplier of:

◉ 43x price increase for SAS.

◉ 77x price decrease for SATA.

Based off of this performance and pricing data we can conclude with 100% certainty that there is no benefit in choosing SAS over PCIe Gen4 DC NVMe, as it is both more expensive and has much lower performance.

All that is left to determine is if there is any unique value proposition for SATA that would warrant a customer to purchase it over PCIe Gen4 DC NVMe. We have already determined that PCIe Gen4 DC NVMe has significantly greater performance than SATA. However, we have also determined that PCIe Gen4 DC NVMe is slightly more expensive than SATA.

Source: delltechnologies.com

Continue reading

2022 and Beyond – Technologies That Will Change the Dialogue2022 and Beyond – Technologies That Will Change the Dialogue

We are living in a do-anything-from-anywhere economy enabled by an exponentially expanding data ecosystem. It’s estimated 65% of Global GDP will be digital next year (2022). This influx of data presents both opportunities and challenges. After all, success in our digital present and future relies on our ability to secure and maintain increasingly complex IT systems. Here I’ll examine both near-term and long-term predictions that address the way the IT industry will deliver the platforms and capabilities to harness this data to transform our experiences at work, home and in the classroom.

What to look for in 2022: 

The edge discussion will separate into two focus areas – edge platforms that provide a stable pool of secure capacity for the diverse edge ecosystems and software defined edge workloads/software stacks that extend application and data systems into real world environments. This approach to edge, where we separate the edge platforms from the edge workloads, is critical. If each edge workload creates its own dedicated platform, we will have proliferation of edge infrastructure and unmanageable infrastructure sprawl.

Imagine an edge environment where you deploy an edge platform that presents compute, storage, I/O and other foundational IT capacities in a stable, secure, and operationally simple way. As you extend various public and private cloud data and applications pipelines to the edge along with local IoT and data management edges, they can be delivered as software-defined packages leveraging that common edge platform of IT capacity. This means that your edge workloads can evolve and change at software speed because the underlying platform is a common pool of stable capacity.

We are already seeing this shift today. Dell Technologies currently offers edge platforms for all the major cloud stacks, using common hardware and delivery mechanisms. As we move into 2022, we expect these platforms to become more capable and pervasive. We are already seeing most edge workloads – and even most public cloud edge architectures – shift to software-defined architectures using containerization and assuming standard capacities such as Kubernetes as the dial tone. This combination of modern edge platforms and software-defined edge systems will become the dominant way to build and deploy edge systems in the multi-cloud world.

The opening of the private mobility ecosystem will accelerate with more cloud and IT industries involved on the path to 5G. Enterprise use of 5G is still early. In fact, today 5G is not significantly different or better than WiFi in most enterprise use cases. This will change in 2022 as more modern, capable versions of 5G become available to enterprises. We will see higher performance and more scalable 5G along with new 5G features such as Ultra Reliability Low Latency Communications (UR-LLC) and Massive Machine Type Communicators (mMTC), with dialogue becoming much more dominant than traditional telecoms (think: open-source ecosystem, infrastructure companies, non-traditional telecom).

More importantly we expect the ecosystem, delivering new and more capable private mobility, will expand to include IT providers such as Dell Technologies but also public cloud providers and even new Open-Source ecosystems focused on acceleration of the Open 5G ecosystem.

Edge will become the new battleground for data management as data management becomes a new class of workload. The data management ecosystem needs an edge. The modern data management industry began its journey on public clouds processing and analyzing non-real-time centralized data. As the digital transformation of the world accelerates, it has become clear that most of the data in the world will be created and acted on outside of centralized data centers. We expect that the entire data management ecosystem will become very active in developing and utilizing edge IT capacity as the ingress and egress of their data pipelines but will also utilize edges to remotely process and digest data.

As the data management ecosystem extends to the edge this will dramatically increase the number of edge workloads and overall edge demand. This correlates to our first prediction on edge platforms as we expect these data management edges to be modern software-defined offerings. Data management and the edge will increasingly converge and reinforce each other. IT infrastructure companies, like Dell Technologies, have the unique opportunity to provide the orchestration layer for edge and multi-cloud by delivering an edge data management strategy.

The security industry is now moving from discussion of emerging security concerns to a bias toward action. Enterprises and governments are facing threats of greater sophistication and impact on revenue and services. At the same time, the attack surface that hackers can exploit is growing based on the accelerated trend in remote work and digital transformation. As a result, the security industry is responding with greater automation and integration. The industry is also pivoting from automated detection to prevention and response with a focus on applying AI and machine learning to speed remediation. This is evidenced by industry initiatives like SOAR (Security Orchestration Automation & Response), CSPM (Cloud Security Posture Management) and XDR (Extended, Detection and Response). Most importantly we are seeing new efforts such as the Open Secure Software Foundation in the Linux Foundation ramp up the coordination and active involvement of the IT, telecom and semiconductor industries.

Across all four of these areas – edge, private mobility, data management and security – there is a clear need for a broad ecosystem where both public cloud and traditional infrastructure are integrated. We are now clearly in a multi-cloud, distributed world where the big challenges can no longer be solved by a single data center, cloud, system or technology.

What to look for beyond 2022:

Quantum Computing – Hybrid quantum/classical compute will take center stage providing greater access to quantum. In 2022 we expect two major industry consensuses to emerge. First, we expect the industry will see the inevitable topology of a quantum system will be a hybrid quantum computer where the quantum hardware or quantum processing units (QPU) are specialized compute systems that look like accelerators and focus on specific quantum focused mathematics and functions. The QPUs will be surrounded by conventional compute systems to pre-process the data, run the overall process and even interpret the output of the QPUs.

Early real-world quantum systems are all following this hybrid quantum model and we see a clear path where the collaboration of classical and quantum compute is inevitable. The second major consensus is that quantum simulation using conventional computing will be the most cost effective and accessible way to get quantum systems into the hands of our universities, data science teams and researchers. In fact, Dell and IBM already announced significant work in making quantum simulation available to the world.

Automotive – The automotive ecosystem will rapidly shift focus from a mechanical ecosystem to a data and compute industry. The automotive industry is transforming at several levels. We are seeing a shift from internal combustion engines to electrified vehicles resulting in radical simplification of the physical supply chain. We are also seeing a significant expansion of software and compute content within our automobiles via ADAS and autonomous vehicle efforts. Finally, we are seeing the automotive industry becoming data driven industries for everything from entertainment, to safety to major disruptions such as Car-as-a-Service and automated delivery.

All of this says that the automotive and transportation industries are beginning a rapid transition to be driven by software, compute and data. We have seen this in other industries such as telecom and retail and in every case the result is increased consumption of IT technology. Dell is actively engaged with most of the world’s major automotive companies in their early efforts, and we expect 2022 to continue their evolution towards digital transformation and deep interaction with IT ecosystems.

Digital twins – Digital twins will become easier to create and consume as the technology is more clearly defined with dedicated tools. While gaining in awareness, digital twins is still a nascent technology with few real examples in production. Over the next several years, we’ll see digital twins become easier to create and consume as we define standardized frameworks, solutions and platforms. Making digital twin ideas more accessible will enable enterprises to provide enhanced analytics and predictive models to accelerate digital transformation efforts. Digital twin adoption will become more mainstream with accelerated standardization and availability of solutions and framework, bringing deployment and investment costs down. Digital twins will be the core driver of digital transformation 3.0 combining measured and modeled/simulated worlds for direct business value across industry verticals.

As a technology optimist, I increasingly see a world where humans and technology work together to deliver impactful outcomes at an unprecedented speed. These near-term and long-term perspectives are based on the strides we’re making today. If we see even incremental improvement, there is enormous opportunity to positively transform the way we work, live and learn and 2022 will be another year of accelerated technology innovation and adoption.

Source: delltechnologies.com

Continue reading

Dell’s Latest Concepts for Seamless Work Experiences

Hybrid work is about flexibility and enabling productivity for all, anywhere. We know that seamless transitions between devices and locations will set the foundation for great hybrid work experiences. 

As previously shared in our vision for “The Future of Work Reimagined,” technology plays an even more critical role in our new world. That is why our teams have been working on several concept solutions that could help facilitate better communication, collaboration and location equality for all. We are excited to share three of our latest concepts today.

Concept Flow

Hybrid work means that team members will be more mobile than ever and that brings new opportunities and considerations for IT managers and facilities teams when thinking about office environments and technology infrastructure. Concept Flow is our vision for a personal, seamless transition to productivity as you move between locations during your day. 

Moving between spaces while working can be extremely disruptive: Why do my settings sometimes change when I switch spaces? Why does it take a while for my laptop to get up and running when I dock? Can you hear me? Can you see my screen? How do I connect to this display? How do I start this meeting?  

Concept Flow is an adaptable concept solution that could eliminate many of these frustrations and productivity disruptors. Our teams have married devices, industry standard wireless charging technology, intelligent software applications and Wi-Fi 6E docking technology to create a singular, seamless experience. Imagine walking up to an intelligent workspace where your laptop automatically connects to the displays, mouse, keyboard and your trusted network before you’ve sat down. You are ready to pick up exactly where you last left off. Simultaneously, as you place your laptop down, it receives power wirelessly (no more fumbling for cords or awkwardly crawling under desks). And when you’re ready to move to your next location, Concept Flow’s proximity detection feature disconnects you automatically when you leave. That transition between spaces becomes frictionless.  

This vision is more than an idea. Below you’ll see Concept Flow in action – and while we are still learning, fine-tuning and collaborating with partners, this concept puts us a step closer to what we see as work experiences reimagined.

Concept Pari

When we talk about inclusive environments for all in a hybrid world, we’re really talking about reducing barriers to collaboration and communication between team members. It’s making sure that everyone has equal experiences regardless of where they are working or joining from that day.  

Love them or hate them, virtual meetings are here to stay. However, we recognize that engagement fatigue is real – especially over video where you are constantly glancing between participants trying to read body language or social cues, while also maintaining eye-contact and taking notes or presenting slides.  

Our designers and engineers have been thinking about camera placement for a while and knew they wanted a solution that could help foster more meaningful human interaction and also allow them to share their offscreen sketches and prototypes easily during calls. They adopted an agile approach with fast iteration, and after countless mockups featuring flashlights, adhesives, suction cups and magnets, Concept Pari was created.  

Concept Pari is a simple, moveable wireless web camera with innovative features to help bring more natural, intuitive experiences to virtual collaboration. It can be placed directly – anywhere on compatible displays, in a charging dock, on a stand or even held in the hand. This allows users to make direct eye contact with the people they are speaking with and allows for easy sharing of additional offscreen content and viewpoints. Small and light (~1 ounce / 30g) yet mighty, this iteration features a microphone and can deliver 1080p video over Wi-Fi. It has useful built-in features like a power indicator, vertical indicator light to help with perfect alignment and great angles every time, plus an integrated USB-C dock for wireless charging. The dock can even cradle and charge a reversed camera for extra peace of mind when it comes to privacy.  

What’s more, the small footprint, flexibility and simplicity of Concept Pari means it could appeal to anyone engaging in regular video calls and could easily be a companion accessory that forms part of a “hybrid work” toolkit as people transition between different locations for work. 

Concept Stanza

Small technological improvements can have a big impact on our everyday work experiences, so when we thought about new ways of working, we knew there was an opportunity to reconsider one of the most common aspects of working life – note taking. 

Almost everyone will agree; extra screen real estate can improve productivity and collaboration. Concept Stanza takes our exploration of multi-screen solutions a step further. It’s a new kind of thin, light, port-less 11” companion device solely designed to make the note-taking process that much easier and smarter. 

Such a simple concept at first glance. Yes, we deliberately chose not to include cameras or speakers, for a distraction-free experience. Every element has been thoughtfully crafted so when you use Concept Stanza, there is no learning curve required; it almost feels like you are taking notes with a pen and paper, except you could double tap to convert your handwriting to text instantly. And with additional intelligence, screen extension functionality and software features, your content could be retrievable, searchable and shareable across devices, so no more frantically digging through multiple notebooks to find that reminder or note that you vaguely recall. No more having to take a photo of your handwritten notes to email them to yourself or coworkers. Concept Stanza blends the best of analog and digital, and was even developed with a pen and mic for transcribing notes – take a look: 

Reimagining Work Experiences 

The promise of hybrid work goes beyond productivity; we believe that the pinnacle of great hybrid work experiences helps achieve balance, and that requires both a culture shift and advancements in technology.  

My team continues to dig into collaboration tools, ecosystem solutions, device intelligence and planning for how future technology solutions will be much more aware of context. There are opportunities for us to re-imagine how technology can help us achieve more than ever before, and we’ll continue to explore ways to improve work experiences.

Source: delltechnologies.com

Continue reading

How Columbia Southern University Fueled Distance Learning with PowerStore

When it comes to technology adoption, higher education organizations are, as an industry, traditionally laggards. In the past, less than 5% of college budgets were dedicated to IT spending, which includes enlisting outside help to improve in-house systems. With so much focus on virtual learning in the past 17 months, it’s easy to forget that the traditional higher learning experience is years behind other industries. However, each statistic has its outliers.

Based in Alabama, Columbia Southern University (CSU) provides students online higher education. Since 1993, CSU has offered distance education degree programs at the associate, bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate levels in occupational safety and health, criminal justice, business administration, health care administration and more. CSU curriculum provides more than 31,000 students a flexible learning format.

Even before the events of the last year, CSU served non-traditional students including people with full-time jobs, disabilities and military or family responsibilities; people that needed the flexibility the university offered. Academic courses are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so students can attend class at their convenience. Due to its diverse and geographically distributed students, CSU deems it mission-critical that students, faculty and staff stay connected through email, telephone and video conferencing.

This year, as schools around the world transitioned to virtual learning, CSU faced a number of challenges. To differentiate themselves from other universities, CSU needed to ensure they were using the most modern, innovative solutions that provided their students with leading-edge resources to power online learning. Moreover, the boom in online learning increased awareness of online universities, making them an attractive option for students who were previously unaware of learn-from-anywhere educational opportunities. CSU knew they were poised for growth and wanted to future-proof their technology solutions’ ability to scale.

After beta-testing a Dell EMC PowerStore storage system in 2019, the university made the decision to migrate all its data workloads off its legacy systems in July 2020 and within four months, was fully up and running. When making the decision to transition, a key consideration was that the equipment upon which the virtualized environment resides was approved and supported by VMware. The tight integration between VMware and Dell Technologies made the transition to PowerStore seamless and ensured the companies could offer a joint solution if a problem ever arose.

Since moving to Dell EMC PowerStore, CSU has reduced latency by more than half and achieved 4:4 data reduction – a 27% improvement from its previous system. It has also increased capacity by almost 7,000 GB in three months. Dell EMC PowerStore gave CSU the ability to grow while maintaining the performance necessary for them to be competitive by ensuring they are using leading-edge IT systems. As they grow, the university can scale capacity two-fold without having to purchase another appliance.

CSU has used other Dell Technologies offerings, such as servers, desktops, workstations and monitors. Additionally, the company’s virtualized environments are powered by VMware. CSU plans to take advantage of Dell EMC PowerStore’s CloudIQ feature to monitor, assess and manage the system in the future, including recently announced cybersecurity functionality.

Andrew Schellhase, CSU senior systems administrator, says “Our relationship with Dell Technologies has always been a positive one and our transition to Dell EMC PowerStore was no different. The company has provided exceptional support from purchase to installation. The system has changed the game for us from a performance standpoint.”

Dell Technologies is committed to providing innovative solutions in higher education that allow these institutions to better support their students and faculty.

Source: delltechnologies.com

Continue reading

Optimize Your Edge with VxRail Satellite Nodes

A recent study conducted by IDC found that more than 50% of new IT infrastructure will be deployed at the edge by 2023.¹ From a management point of view, IDC predicts that 90% more new operational processes will be deployed on edge infrastructure by 2024.² There should be no doubt that the edge is the fastest growing area in the IT industry. Companies who do not adapt to such change and do not plan properly for it will find themselves struggling to keep the lights on while derailing attention from delivering the right IT services to the business.

The current state of the edge is very chaotic. A huge part of it is built on siloed infrastructure hosting proprietary operating systems, protocols and data sources creating unintentional architectures that only increases complexity as the number of edge locations grow.

Dell Technologies has been a leader in consolidating and simplifying the workloads on the edge with our 2-Node VxRail hyperconverged solution. For a while, it has been a sweet spot at the edge where customers have deployed multiple applications and standardized on x86 architectures all virtualized on vSphere. Deploying the 2 node VxRail solution at edge locations provides the following benefits:

◉ Reducing cost through infrastructure reduction.

◉ Accelerating infrastructure deployment at edge areas.

◉ Reducing infrastructure complexity through a standardized, centralized management console.

◉ Reducing risk of unplanned downtime and human error through automated lifecycle management (patching and upgrading).

However, as the number of edge locations grow, so does the need to optimize the cost of infrastructure there while maintaining the same benefits enjoyed by deploying a 2-Node VxRail solution.

Enter VxRail satellite nodes

VxRail satellite nodes are single nodes designed specifically for deployment in edge environments and managed through a centralized primary VxRail cluster running version 7.0.300 or later (likely at the core data center).

Similar to a normal 2-Node VxRail cluster or a traditional multi-node VxRail cluster, satellite nodes include VxRail HCI system software, providing a consistent VxRail operational experience across the edge and the core. But since satellite nodes are single nodes with no shared storage, they do not include any VSAN licenses. This has a positive impact on cost reduction when multiple edge location infrastructure is required. vSphere is still required to consolidate as many virtual machines as possible on a single solution.

Edge location estates are usually small and concentrated, VxRail satellite nodes are a perfect choice since they come in 2 form factors; E660/F (1U chassis) and V670F (2U chassis) packed with high CPU cores, RAM and high-density storage (hybrid or flash, depending on the application requirements) so customers can consolidate even more.

Which use cases are a great fit for VxRail satellite nodes?

◉ Healthcare: VxRail clusters can be installed in data centers at regional and local hospitals while VxRail satellite nodes can be used at doctors’ offices, imaging facilities and localized urgent care.

◉ Retail: Once again corporate and ROBO data centers can run large and small clusters while stores are able to consolidate workloads like point of sale, video analysis, security and more on VxRail satellite nodes.

◉ Manufacturing: Oftentimes manufacturing customers want to partition off systems that are used in manufacturing plants. In those cases, we see VxRail used across multiple sites for corporate IT, and in parallel the Operational Technology (OT) teams install highly redundant and locally managed VxRail clusters in the manufacturing facilities, firewalled or DMZ’ed from the rest of the environment.

◉ IoT: VxRail satellite nodes can be installed in edge locations where sensors are present to capture and process data in real time.

◉ Telecom: VxRail satellite nodes can be of great value when installed in tower locations that are growing heavily with a very small real estate footprint.

With satellite nodes, customers can have consistent and centralized operations in the data center and at the edge (with VxRail management all the way), fully automated lifecycle management for VxRail satellite nodes – hardware and software – with minimal to no manual intervention required. Satellite nodes are optimized for cost by reducing virtual storage licensing and reducing the need for multiple nodes at the edge and also support GPUs for processing graphic intensive data at the edge. With VxRail satellite nodes, you can design once and install many.

It’s time to operationalize your edge with VxRail satellite nodes.

¹ IDC FutureScape, “Worldwide IT Industry 2021 Predictions,” October 2020.

² IDC blog, Edge Computing: Not All Edges are Created Equal, June 2020.

Source: delltechnologies.com

Continue reading

Helping Developers Succeed with the Touch of a Button

At Dell Digital, Dell’s IT organization, our transformation mantra is to remove infrastructure complexity for our developers so they can focus on creating solutions to meet business demands. That means deploying the right application platforms to provide ready-to-use capabilities securely and efficiently.

We are using VMware Tanzu to create a resilient, highly scalable platform-as-a-service in our private cloud that helps our developer community succeed.

Four years ago, Dell Digital began to modernize many applications, transforming monolithic solutions into microservices and migrating them to our private cloud. We are continuing to expand on providing fast, simple IT capabilities for developers at the touch of a button, along with comprehensive resource monitoring, end-to-end security and automation.

With Tanzu Application Service and Tanzu Kubernetes Grid, Dell Digital provides developers with an experience comparable to that of public cloud providers internally within our private cloud.

As a result, we now have some 71,000 Tanzu Application Service containers and 28,000 Tanzu Kubernetes Grid integrated pods deployed across six data centers at Dell. And those numbers are climbing rapidly each quarter.

Our developers are able to use a self-service portal and automated DevOps to provision the capabilities they need within 20 to 30 minutes and start building applications, compared to a traditional IT provisioning process that would previously take months.

Growing our self-service platforms

We initiated our application modernization by implementing cloud-native platform Pivotal Cloud Foundry, now VMware Tanzu Application Service. It provides a turnkey cloud-native framework and offers automated, self-healing and efficient lifecycle management features for both public cloud and on-premises workloads.

With Tanzu Application Service, our developers can select the environment they need—focused primarily on containers—from ready-to-use infrastructure. They don’t have to worry about working with the infrastructure team to provision infrastructure, or the database team to provision a database. The platform takes care of creating and running the containers in a multi-tenant platform-as-a-service.

If a developer wants to create a container, for example, the network, cluster and namespace configurations are all set up in the catalog and ready to go. The developer can select that option and start using it within minutes.

Because not all development solutions can be accommodated with the Tanzu Application Service platform, we also use Tanzu Kubernetes Grid—a container orchestration platform that offers more choices for applications that may need added components. A solution, for example, may need to run database-as-a-service, or run an application that has integration with storage.

Developers can decide which infrastructure components they want and how they will fit together with Tanzu Kubernetes Grid. Container orchestration is for the developer that wants some cloud features but also wants the flexibility to fine tune the underlying infrastructure the way they want to. At the click of a button, Tanzu Kubernetes Grid uses APIs and a set of configurations to go provision what is requested.

Any application that supports business solutions and any capability that is built as a service uses one of these two platforms.

We offer an expanding selection of container capabilities for our developers through an internal self-service catalog called the Dell Digital Cloud.

Automation and visibility

Besides creating a marketplace of self-services where developers can instantly provision what they need, we also use VMware Tanzu to enable us to provide management, monitoring and security capabilities.

The platform services let developers see what they are using, how their solutions are utilized and the performance and health of their systems. We provide insights into how their containers securely move from build phase all the way to production phase.

The platforms measure what resources developers are consuming and analyze how much they might require in the future. They also provide auto-scaling of applications to meet changing demands. If added capacity is needed during increased holiday sales, for instance, apps can automatically scale up and then scale down when demand drops.

Zero downtime on platform upgrades and maintenance is another crucial feature of our system. We are able to support apps without interrupting their operations. Tanzu enables seamless upgrades of the technology stack below hosted applications, so that our services are always able to benefit from the latest features without having to cope with long, labor-intensive outages for upgrades typically associated with legacy infrastructure.

Tanzu helps us enable all of these capabilities to create a cross-datacenter, active-active data environment which provides data synchronization and load balancing between data centers to offer improved availability, resiliency and fast recovery.

Added network security

In conjunction with Tanzu Application Service and Tanzu Kubernetes Grid, we leverage another VMware product called NSX-T to improve network security within our modern container ecosystem by using network segmentation. With NSX-T, we can create network zones and rules on who can access them to further refine our security.

We are also working to deploy Tanzu Service Mesh to our platform in the future which will help us move from perimeter-based security to zero trust. Service Mesh is going to take care of the end-to-end protection with the last mile security enabled.

Overall, our application platforms with Tanzu technology provide a self-service, secure and efficient environment where developers can focus on building creative solutions for business users instead of worrying about procuring infrastructure or securing, scaling and maintaining applications. We are continuing to enhance those capabilities every day.

Source: delltechnologies.com

Continue reading