Security is a Team Sport

Heading to Fal.Con in a few weeks? Now in its seventh year, CrowdStrike’s flagship conference offers security and cloud professionals an opportunity to experience the solutions, understand the trends and learn the latest techniques to better protect their enterprise. As a Premier sponsor this year, Dell Technologies is excited to bring our expertise and experience as a trusted technology partner to the conversation.

As the threat landscape evolves and adversaries find new vulnerabilities to exploit, one thing is clear: Security must function as a team sport. For instance, imagine the chaos that ensues if individual players on a sports team operated in siloes. Unfortunately, when it comes to security, this is what a lot of organizations struggle with today. IT and security practitioners have made significant strides in shoring up enterprise defenses in recent years. That said, there’s still much to be done. According to a 2023 global survey of 4,000 IT decision makers commissioned by Dell, only 33% report their organization has embarked on an exercise to consolidate their security applications.

To be fair, consolidation is a massive undertaking. But we see an equally massive upside. When systems and security applications work together, you tighten the IT-security gap that makes many organizations vulnerable to attack. You are better able to prevent threats. You can detect and respond to suspicious activity more effectively. Essentially, your individual solutions do what they do best, and your overall security program performs better.

Now, what if security providers took on the burden of consolidation for you?

That’s exactly what Dell, Intel and CrowdStrike have done. We have taken a huge step in closing the IT-security gap by combining the power of Dell Trusted Devices, the industry’s most secure commercial PCs, based on the Intel vPro(R) platform and CrowdStrike’s industry-leading endpoint Falcon security and XDR platform.

Multiple, integrated layers of protection.

Our new integrated endpoint security offering will be a key topic for us at Fal.Con. View the agenda and bookmark a session you won’t want to miss: How Hardware-Enhanced Detection Stops Targeted Attacks. Geared toward practitioners, this 200-level session will demonstrate the value of combining hardware and software security to improve fleet-wide defense in the face of the stealthiest attacks.

While you’re at the event, be sure to stop by Dell and Intel’s booth (#401) to sit in on snackable sessions covering key security topics and demo our solutions.

Source: dell.com

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How Are Smart Homes and PC Support Alike?

Running a business is like running a household. There just aren’t enough hours in a day to complete everything we want to get done. For most, the goal is to minimize the time we spend on mundane day-to-day tasks so we can maximize the remaining time.

When the “Internet of things” came on the scene, my family turned to home automation to help us streamline certain areas of our personal lives. We started with a doorbell and then got a smart thermostat. We could see who was at the door and program our A/C from afar – which was cool, but I didn’t feel the full impact until we took the time to fully connect these smart solutions and utilize all the things they could do.

As we added more smart devices, our home automation really took off. We had fun with it. I made more ice remotely (handy when my son had marching band practice outside in the Texas heat), and I rang the remote dinner bell at mealtime (a family favorite). But the true automation began when I set up our household routines like turning down the thermostat at night, locking the doors and setting alarms. And even better – when the devices recognized my regular habit patterns, the system prompted me to see if I wanted to automate additional routines I hadn’t even considered.

Though somewhat trivial, these repetitive tasks took time. And as our home got smarter, it made me realize how many of those “just a minute” minutes were adding up in my day.

In my work life, I’m a product manager for ProSupport Plus for PCs, Dell Technologies’ flagship support service for businesses. I’ve noticed that when I talk to IT leaders and support desk managers, they often feel that same kind of ongoing burden maintaining and supporting PCs for hundreds or thousands of employees. Those repetitive tasks – checking for outdated drivers and pushing updates, getting system data, maintaining ongoing security and more – bog down the IT staff and the end users. And doing so for all their devices compounds the time it takes.

That’s why we added automation into our support capabilities. In addition to expert break/fix repair, issue alerting and the ever-popular accident coverage, our ProSupport Plus service plan helps with proactive and predictive issue resolution. IT admins can connect to our technology, SupportAssist for Business PCs, to automate tasks across their PC fleets via a cloud console – significantly reducing the administrative time for IT managers.

In a recent report from Principled Technologies, hands-on testing found device driver and firmware updates could be pushed to an entire fleet in as little as 37 seconds using the automation capabilities of ProSupport Plus for PCs. And additionally, organizations could save up to 641 hours of admin time annually on recurring tasks for a 1000-device fleet. That’s a lot of time that could be reallocated toward working on other projects. Why would you want more time in your day? Said no one, ever.

Beyond the time savings aspect, the automation benefits of our PC support are remarkably like the ones my family enjoys at home too – productivity, safety, ongoing security, awareness, convenience of remotely keeping tabs on things from anywhere.

Automation – both at home and at work – helps free us up from an endless cycle of tasks, saving time and giving us peace of mind. Often, the technology is already there in the product and we just need to tap into it. Your account rep or Service Account Manager can help you take advantage of automation with ProSupport Plus for PCs. Make your day better with automation.

Source: dell.com

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Making 5G Real at MWC Las Vegas

At this year’s MWC Las Vegas, we won’t just discuss 5G. We’ll bring it to the event with a fully operational, standalone 5G private network. It’s part of a collaborative effort between Dell Technologies, Airspan Networks, DISH Wireless and Druid Software to show how pre-validated, pre-integrated private wireless solutions can deliver secure 5G connectivity anywhere, quickly and efficiently.

The live demo will feature several use cases, including video surveillance, real-time video streaming, remote collaboration and more. It will include a mix of 5G-ready video cameras, software applications and phones. Each company is bringing something unique to the party: Dell provides the hardware infrastructure and installation expertise, Airspan brings the radio and RAN software, DISH delivers licensed spectrum and Druid adds Raemis™, the 5G core platform, to bring it all together. It’s a great example of how a team of best-of-breed companies can combine their open, standards-based private wireless technology to show a pre-validated solution that solves customers’ business challenges.

Simplicity, Scalability and a Small Form Factor

Private 5G wireless networks have several compelling use cases. They can deliver 5G connectivity in retail stores or remote areas. They can enable automated factory floors or autonomous vehicles. They can provide security and surveillance in cities. The ecosystem and technology will continue to evolve, leading to even more complex use cases to be resolved. But what communications service providers (CSPs) and enterprises are discovering is that private wireless can be complex and costly to build when you must do all the validation and integration work yourself.

And that’s where Dell, Airspan, DISH and Druid are making a big difference.

We’ve created an end-to-end private wireless solution in a small form factor that’s simple to set up and deploy, reliable for mission-critical applications and scalable enough to grow from one to 1000 radio units (RUs). The demo at MWC Las Vegas will showcase the scalability and throughput of the private wireless solution and how it can handle several use cases simultaneously.

Private Wireless Innovation

Under the hood of this private 5G network solution is a best-of-breed mix of hardware, software and services from some of the industry’s leading 5G innovators. At the center of it all is Druid Software’s Raemis™ 5G core platform, which authenticates and manages all the 5G devices, providing the 5G functionality and application integration that enterprises need to manage and customize their 5G network for specific use cases. Raemis™ supports interoperability with over 36 different 5G RAN and virtualized RAN (vRAN) vendors, including Airspan Networks. The Airspan AirVelocity 1901 RAN system has been fully integrated and validated with Druid Software over 5G deployments globally to provide lightweight, powerful 5G communications for indoor use cases. The AirVelocity 1901 combines the distributed, centralized, and radio units (DU/CU/RU) in a compact device that can be mounted on walls or ceilings.

DISH Wireless will deliver priority access licensed (PAL) CBRS radio N48 band spectrum for 5G communications. PAL connectivity offers high priority for CBRS communications, which, combined with DISH’s built-in network reliability and security, ensures the private wireless solution meets the requirements of enterprise-critical applications.

The solution is all deployed on Dell’s purpose-built infrastructure, the Dell PowerEdge XR400. The solution is also pre-validated and available for highly scalable use cases on VxRail or Microsoft Azure hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) platforms.

Simplify Private Wireless Deployments

Private wireless is indeed more complex to deploy than other networking technologies such as Wi-Fi. We aim to reduce this gap and remove some of these complexities. As a first step, much of the complexity can be solved before deploying a single server by doing the hard stuff – the integration, validation and even some of the configuration – before the solution is shipped. The private wireless solution we will showcase at MWC Las Vegas proves that you can roll out and scale up (or tear down) a secure private wireless network quickly and reliably almost anywhere – even at a busy venue where space and time are limited.

If you plan to attend MWC Las Vegas this year, stop by the Druid booth (booth #1024) and learn more about our private wireless solution and what it can do for your business. Or ask your Dell representative for a private demonstration of our private 5G solution featuring Druid, DISH Wireless and Airspan products and services. See you at MWC Las Vegas!

Source: dell.com

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PowerEdge Domination: How Dell Is Redefining Server Performance

In the realm of cutting-edge technology and server performance, one name consistently stands out - Dell. With a legacy of innovation spanning decades, Dell's PowerEdge servers have redefined the landscape of server performance. In this article, we delve deep into how Dell has achieved this remarkable feat, reshaping the industry and setting new standards for server excellence.

The Power of PowerEdge

Unparalleled Performance

Dell's PowerEdge servers are renowned for their unparalleled performance. Featuring the latest advancements in hardware and software, these servers are designed to handle the most demanding workloads with ease. Whether you're running complex data analytics, hosting a website with heavy traffic, or managing a virtualized environment, PowerEdge servers deliver the raw computing power required for optimal performance.

Cutting-Edge Technology

Dell's commitment to innovation is evident in every aspect of PowerEdge servers. These servers incorporate the latest technological advancements, including high-speed processors, ample RAM, and state-of-the-art storage solutions. This ensures that businesses can stay at the forefront of technology, meeting the ever-growing demands of the digital age.

Scalability Redefined

Scalability is a key factor in modern IT infrastructure, and Dell has redefined it. PowerEdge servers are designed with scalability in mind, allowing businesses to expand their computing resources seamlessly as their needs grow. Whether it's adding more processing power, increasing storage capacity, or enhancing networking capabilities, PowerEdge servers offer the flexibility required for business growth.

Reliability Beyond Compare

Robust Build Quality

One of the cornerstones of Dell's reputation in the server industry is its commitment to robust build quality. PowerEdge servers are engineered to withstand the rigors of continuous operation. With redundant components and fail-safe mechanisms, these servers ensure minimal downtime, providing uninterrupted service to businesses.

Proactive Management

Dell's integrated management tools empower businesses to monitor and manage their servers proactively. With real-time insights into server health, administrators can identify and address issues before they impact operations. This level of control and visibility enhances overall system reliability.

Security at the Core

Data Protection

Security is a paramount concern in today's digital landscape, and Dell recognizes its importance. PowerEdge servers come equipped with robust security features, including hardware-rooted security, encryption, and intrusion detection. These measures safeguard sensitive data and protect against evolving cyber threats.

Compliance and Certifications

Dell's commitment to security is further exemplified by its adherence to industry standards and certifications. PowerEdge servers meet stringent compliance requirements, making them suitable for businesses operating in highly regulated sectors such as finance and healthcare.

Exceptional Support and Service

Dell ProSupport

Dell's dedication to customer satisfaction extends to its support and service offerings. With Dell ProSupport, businesses have access to 24/7 expert assistance, ensuring rapid issue resolution and minimizing downtime. This level of support is invaluable in maintaining the performance and reliability of PowerEdge servers.

Conclusion

In the world of server performance, Dell's PowerEdge servers reign supreme. Their unrivaled performance, reliability, and security make them the preferred choice for businesses of all sizes. With Dell's commitment to innovation and customer satisfaction, PowerEdge servers continue to redefine server excellence, setting new standards for the industry.

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Dell Technologies Named Google Cloud Partner of the Year

Google Cloud has distinguished Dell Technologies as a “2023 Partner of the Year” for Backup and Disaster Recovery (DR) infrastructure solutions. This recognition highlights Dell’s dedication to advancing multicloud data protection innovations in collaboration with Google Cloud.

Dell and Google’s joint cyber resiliency and data protection offerings help organizations simplify and modernize IT while ensuring critical workloads remain protected, secure and resilient from cyberthreats. Dell multicloud data protection solutions integrate seamlessly with Google Cloud and help deliver increased IT simplicity.

The solutions empower cloud architects, backup administrators, developers and data owners with automated tools that protect and secure workloads in Google Cloud the same way they are protected on-premises for a consistent experience. The benefits of this approach? It offers industry-leading enterprise data protection, simplicity in IT processes, boosted operational efficiency and scalability and cyber resiliency. Notably, using Dell’s solutions results in an 81% cost reduction in cloud data protection on Google Cloud, compared to other backup solution providers.

As more businesses use the cloud, it’s imperative they have simple, consistent and efficient solutions to ensure data is secure and protected. It’s especially important this protection extends across all their workload types – from traditional workloads like virtual machines, SQL databases and filesystems, to modern cloud-native applications like Kubernetes containers, IaaS and PaaS.

Dell and Google provide a suite of data protection and cyber resiliency solutions in the Google Cloud marketplace. These offerings ensure simple and consistent data protection across hybrid cloud environments. Some of the key capabilities include:

◉ Cyber recovery. Ensure critical data is protected from cyberthreats, like ransomware attacks, by securely replicating backup copies to an isolated and secure digital vault using Dell PowerProtect Cyber Recovery for Google Cloud.

◉ Backup to cloud. Organizations can secure and protect any workload in Google Cloud by replicating backup copies from PowerProtect DD systems in on-premises environments to APEX Protection Storage (APS) for Public Cloud.

◉ Backup in cloud. Protect any workload in Google Cloud, such as VMs and cloud-native apps like Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), IaaS and PaaS using PowerProtect Data Manager and APS.

◉ Cloud DR. Replicate backup copies from remote offices and on-premises data centers to APS in Google Cloud for a cost-effective way to enable disaster recovery in Google Cloud.

◉ Efficiency. Using Google Cloud object storage provides an efficient and scalable way to protect and secure data in the cloud. APS enhances these efficiencies with deduplication while bolstering resiliency with immutability.

Dell and Google Cloud data protection solutions are designed for both traditional and modern workloads and deliver the consistency organizations need to simplify IT processes. This heightened simplicity enables businesses to channel more effort into innovation, moving away from cumbersome IT infrastructure management. As a result, organizations are better equipped for the challenges of the digital era.

The collaboration between Dell and Google goes beyond a mere partnership; it provides organizations with practical solutions to leverage the cloud’s capabilities while increasing data protection, security, efficiency and innovation.

Source: dell.com

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Cryptography: A Zero Trust Foundational Element

We take for granted the security of the systems we interact with daily. From checking emails to doing personal banking, to engaging in online commerce and end-to-end messaging, to command centers communications, field operations, satellite communications and digital signatures, each activity requires a high degree of trust.

While cybersecurity is a broad topic, this blog post focuses on one foundational technology of Zero Trust: cryptography.

The January 2022 Executive Office of the President memorandum on moving the U.S. government toward Zero Trust cybersecurity principles introduces the transition to Zero Trust with this statement: “We must verify anything and everything attempting to establish access.”

The keyword in that statement is “verify.”

Before entering your username to verify your identity to a system, your browser made a connection to that system. Your browser has verified the system it was talking to is the intended one. The browser used its own trust store, containing a list of digital certificates known as Certificate Authorities, to verify the signature of that remote system.

Your system then established a secure connection, and all messages exchanged thereafter were verified to ensure they had not been tampered with, using Transport Layer Security or TLS. That system, of course, needs to connect to other systems in the backend – verifying trust with all interconnected systems.

The applications and programs that run on these systems must be legitimate ones. For this, the authors of these programs have applied a digital signature on the files being executed. The operating system verifies the signature against its own trust store. To verify that its own trust store has not been tampered with, it signs its own updates and verifies them against a Root-of-Trust.

It’s all about signature generation and signature verification to establish this trust.

When Dell ships servers supporting the feature, we create a footprint of hardware and firmware components shipped, prior to leaving our assembly factory. Customers can then verify the servers they receive do not have parts or firmware modified, removed or added by using Dell Secure Component Verification, which relies on cryptographic signatures.

Whether it is usernames or passwords being encrypted in a system, secure communications between systems or the validation of software, firmware and hardware components, each shares the same foundation: cryptography.

Cryptography must also be verified to ensure proper implementation. This verification, or validation, comes from the issuance of a Federal Information Processing Standards 140 certificate, FIPS 140, issued by the Cryptographic Module Validation Program (CMVP).

This is where Dell BSAFE™ comes into play. The Dell BSAFE portfolio has a long history in the field of cryptography, with one major priority: maintaining FIPS 140 validation of our cryptographic software modules. BSAFE Software Development Kits for C and Java™ provide cryptographic implementations of major algorithms, as well as TLS capabilities required to build secure and trusted applications.

BSAFE cryptographic modules are FIPS 140-2 validated and have also been submitted to CMVP for FIPS 140-3 validation. Whether the toolkits are to be embedded in a system for distribution, in an embedded device, sent to space or underwater or used internally for business operations, they help enable a trusted foundation for an organizations’ Zero Trust journey.

Another advantage of using BSAFE cryptographic toolkits is that customers receive embargoed disclosure of security advisories prior to being made public, thus helping to prevent products or business operations from being caught by surprise by a sudden public security advisory.

Source: dell.com

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Jumpstart Your AI Journey with NVIDIA and Dell Technologies

Artificial intelligence has become an increasingly fundamental tool for businesses looking to gain a competitive advantage. However, building an AI infrastructure from scratch can be a daunting task, especially for those who are just starting out. That’s where NVIDIA and Dell Technologies come in, offering an AI starter kit that can help data science teams get started quickly and easily. Combining Dell’s expertise in hardware and NVIDIA’s expertise in software, the solution delivers on performance and flexibility.

The NVIDIA and Dell AI Starter Kit is a bundle of hardware and software that provides a high-performance computing environment for training and running AI models. It includes a Dell Precision workstation with NVIDIA GPUs, Dell PowerScale storage and NVIDIA’s AI software stack. This combination of hardware and software offers an efficient and effective solution for data science teams to build their AI infrastructure.

Giving Data Science Teams a Head Start

The NVIDIA and Dell AI Starter Kit provides a high-performance computing environment that significantly reduces the time it takes to get results. This can help data science teams to quickly iterate and refine their models, leading to better outcomes. Other benefits include:

◉ Simplified deployment. The NVIDIA and Dell AI Starter Kit is designed to be easy to deploy, reducing the time and effort required to set up an AI infrastructure and enabling data science teams to focus on building and refining models.

◉ Scalability. The NVIDIA and Dell AI Starter Kit is designed to be scalable, so it can grow with your business while your AI needs expand. This can help to future-proof your investment and avoid the need for costly upgrades in the future.

◉ High performance. The NVIDIA and Dell AI Starter Kit includes NVIDIA GPUs, which are specifically designed for high-performance computing. This can help data science teams train and run AI models faster and more efficiently.

◉ Flexibility. The NVIDIA and Dell AI Starter Kit is designed to be flexible, meaning you can tailor it to your specific needs. This can help you to build an AI infrastructure that is optimized for your business and your specific use cases.

Integrations Take Your AI to the Next Level

Still feeling overwhelmed with the implementation piece? In addition to the benefits provided by the NVIDIA and Dell AI Starter Kit, customers can also leverage integration partners to help with the hardware and software integration. Integration partners can provide expertise and guidance on how to optimize the kit for specific use cases and business needs. This can help ensure the AI infrastructure is fully integrated with existing systems and workflows, and that it meets the unique requirements of the business. 

Furthermore, integration partners can help with deploying and managing the AI infrastructure, including monitoring performance and making necessary adjustments to ensure optimal performance. This can help businesses focus on their core competencies and leave the AI infrastructure management to the experts who can maximize the value of the NVIDIA and Dell AI Starter Kit, allowing businesses to achieve their AI goals more quickly and efficiently. 

If you’re looking to get started with AI but don’t know where to start – let us help! The NVIDIA and Dell AI Starter Kit provides a solid foundation for your AI infrastructure. With faster time to results, simplified deployment, scalability, high performance and flexibility, you can be sure you’re making the right investment for your business. 

Source: dell.com

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Results Realized: VxRail Drives Efficiency and ROI

Next week we head to Las Vegas for VMware Explore 2023 where we’ll officially introduce the latest generation VxRail, built on the 4th Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors. The latest VxRail will bring 100% more processor cores, 63% faster memory with DDR5 and a 300% increase in PCIe performance with PCIe Gen5 compared to 14th Generation VxRail. This performance improvement results in less required floor space – improving energy efficiency.

You’ll also see even more configuration flexibility with up to 50% more PCIe slots, more storage capacity and more performant GPU options. This powerful hardware package is capable of running the most demanding data-intensive workloads such as virtualization, AI, machine learning and GPU-accelerated workloads. As the AI landscape continues to grow, the built-in AI acceleration engine, Intel® Advanced Matrix Extensions (Intel® AMX), delivers a significant leap in performance for certain deep learning workloads, driving up to 10x faster inference and training vs CPU alone, as well as cost savings through CPU offloading.

At VMware Explore, we’ll also have the opportunity to engage with several VxRail customers, some of whom recently participated in the IDC Business Value of Dell VxRail assessment. Once again, the results speak for themselves: our customers continue to realize incredible benefits with VxRail. IDC interviewed multiple organizations using VxRail to identify and quantify measurable benefits they now experience as a result of deploying VxRail across their IT landscape. Customers were interviewed across several verticals, including entertainment, non-profit, agriculture, education, manufacturing, state and local government, pharmaceutical and logistics.

Regardless of their size or vertical, our customers reported they have seen an average of $54,000 annual benefit per Dell VxRail node deployed. This contributed to a 463% five-year return on investment (ROI), 11 months to payback and a 61% lower total five-year cost of operations.

The VxRail Advantage

Since launching VxRail seven years ago, we have been aggressively innovating. We continuously release new features and functionality (over two dozen releases and hundreds of new features just in the last two years) to improve serviceability and support new use cases to deliver the most value to our customers – whether they are modernizing the data center, deploying multicloud or running applications in remote edge locations.

One of the core benefits of deploying VxRail across core, edge and cloud deployments is the consistent operational efficiencies delivered through our VxRail HCI System Software. The management simplicity delivered through extensive automation and orchestration is VxRail’s key differentiator in the HCI market, providing global cluster management, LCM health checks and automated operations across the entire infrastructure.

It’s this automation that helped our customers’ IT infrastructure management teams be 61% more efficient, according to the IDC white paper. This enables IT teams to spend more time focusing on value-added business activities instead of day-to-day operations and maintenance.

“The greatest benefit that my organization has had is that we have been able to grow without having to increase staff because of the standardization provided by VxRail. We had 24 clusters and we had roughly three engineers supporting it when I got here. And we still have three engineers, and we’ve more than tripled in size and have not added support staff.” – Dell Customer

More Agility with Less Risk

IT teams are being challenged to be more agile and innovative to bring additional revenue to their company’s bottom line. In one of IDC’s findings, our customers described how VxRail helps them deploy new servers, storage and VMs with more speed and agility. For instance, they calculated customers can deploy new physical servers 79% faster and new storage 54% faster.

VxRail HCI System Software delivers a seamless, automated, operational experience, as well as automated updates. This means customers spend less time planning, scheduling and implementing upgrades to take advantage of software and hardware improvements. IDC calculated VxRail customers experience 68% fewer unplanned outages per year on average. One customer commented, “VxRail has been extremely resilient and provided us with an extremely high level of availability. In six-and-a-half years, we’ve not had a single failure in any of our clusters that took an entire cluster down.” That kind of reliability is why customers continue to expand their VxRail footprint across their IT landscape.

Putting VxRail to Work for You

“IDC research demonstrates how study participants used VxRail to optimize their IT infrastructure costs with a fully integrated, high-performing platform for running business-critical workloads. VxRail enabled their IT teams to deliver more value by reducing their day-to-day operational work, thereby freeing up time to work on high-value or business-related IT projects.” - IDC Report

IT teams are constantly looking to reduce complexity, and VxRail has proven to help customers meet their most challenging goals. Our customers are at the heart of what drives our VxRail roadmap, and we are committed to helping them address their biggest challenges in order to continuously innovate. The way we do this is by actively seeking and incorporating customer feedback through user group feedback, support requests and VMware engineering, shaping future features and platforms.

I want to thank all our customers who have provided the abundance of new proof points and customer stories showing the value our customers see with VxRail. Discover more customer stories, value assessments and analyst studies and learn how more than 19,000 VxRail customers experience exceptional results.

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CloudIQ: Empowering Smarter Sustainability Decisions with AIOps

Energy efficiency is top-of-mind at Dell. It’s how we operate our business, achieving 59% renewable electricity across Dell Technologies global facilities in 2022. It’s in our IT infrastructure portfolio, with more than 500 ENERGY STAR-qualified products for increasing efficiency and reducing IT and carbon footprints. And with advanced AIOps software, we’re taking energy efficiency to the next level.

CloudIQ, the AIOps application for Dell infrastructure, will now provide energy and use phase carbon footprint tracking and forecasting at organization, individual system and workload levels. By combining these new analytics with CloudIQ’s rich infrastructure health analytics, cybersecurity assessments and metadata, you’ll have the intelligent insights to make the best sustainability decisions about workload consolidation, IT footprint reduction and energy efficient technology refresh to meet your sustainability goals.

“Dell’s inclusion of energy and carbon usage metrics in CloudIQ offers organizations a new and better way to quantify and reduce their energy consumption footprint. It is a good example of what Dell is doing to make sustainability part of the fabric of IT management.”

– Jon Brown, ESG analyst

Unlocking Sustainable Efficiency: CloudIQ Insights at a Glance

Here are examples of CloudIQ insights for making better sustainability decisions:

• A global, energy view of all your systems lets you identify underutilized, energy-inefficient systems versus more highly utilized, energy-efficient systems with the headroom to do more work. Now you know where to consolidate workloads, where to power down underutilized systems until they are needed – or retire them outright.
• Up-to-the-minute updates about system health, including physical component, capacity, performance, configuration and data protection status, give you more insights about where and when to consolidate workloads.
• Cybersecurity monitoring shows you each system’s security policies, so you know which systems are safe for accepting certain classes of workloads for consolidation and if you need to amend a target system’s policies to accept certain workloads.
• System metadata, including custom tags, indicates which systems are reserved for certain types of workloads, like financial, product development, marketing or human resources data and applications.

Altogether, you’ll have a full picture of which infrastructure systems are candidates for replacement by modern data storage and servers with the performance and capacity to handle more workloads and with higher energy efficiency. This technology refresh will reduce your entire IT footprint for lowering emissions, as well as reducing IT operations overhead.

Accurate Sustainability Analytics: Trustworthy and Customizable

To ensure you always have an accurate picture of your sustainability posture, CloudIQ’s continuous carbon emissions calculations are based on location-specific emission factors provided by the International Energy Agency (IEA) per country and the worldwide industry average power utilization effectiveness (PUE) value for data centers.

For exceptional accuracy, you can override these default values with each of your location’s unique emission factor and PUE. This truly reflects energy sources you might have, such as low carbon emission energy sources (e.g., a solar energy or wind farm) and your own data center’s precise PUE.

Machine Learning for Sustainability Anomaly Identification and Forecasting

CloudIQ, which already uses machine learning to compute seasonality (i.e., the range of normal behavior) for system performance and capacity, now applies machine learning to energy and use phase carbon footprint. By overlaying current energy and emissions metrics on top of seasonality, you can immediately identify when systems or workloads’ energy usage and emissions are abnormally high or low.

Workloads are monitored as block and file storage objects on storage systems and as virtual machines on servers and hyperconverged systems. Paired with machine learning, other algorithms look at seasonality and then forecast system, workload and total organizational energy usage and emissions so you can chart the future and plan accordingly. 

AIOps’ Trio of Analytics for Making Better Sustainability Decisions

Altogether, CloudIQ AIOps’ trio of sustainability, health and cybersecurity analytics provide the insights that indicate your best options for remediation and your best path for planning future actions. CloudIQ’s custom reporting and REST application programming interface (API) further open the door for cross-operations collaboration and automating actions to help you meet your sustainability goals.

Dell has always been committed to climate change, sustainability and accelerating the circular economy, and what we’re announcing today gets us further ahead in helping our customers achieve their goals. 

Source: dell.com

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API Technology is Automating and Transforming the Procurement Process

At Dell Technologies, we’re passionate about helping our customers and partners innovate and modernize their IT processes. With Dell Premier, we offer a comprehensive online solution that streamlines the procurement process, so you can shop your catalog in a secure platform that scales with your business to simplify purchasing and gives you greater control over the entire ecosystem.

Read More: D-DP-DS-23: Dell EMC Data Protection Design 2023

We’re committed to providing our customers and partners with the best possible experience when interacting with us. That’s why we’re constantly innovating and expanding our portfolio of integration offerings, including our API technology.

What Are APIs and How Do They Work?

Application programming interfaces (APIs) are vital tools for businesses in all industries. They provide a seamless and secure way to exchange information between two programs. Common API examples in our daily lives include social media integration, mapping and geolocation and payment gateway integration.

There are two different communication patterns to consume APIs: pull and push. Pull APIs involve the customer or partner initiating communication by sending a request to the server for data retrieval. For example, with our order status API, users can input their order number and submit it to retrieve real-time order status information from the server. With our push API, we send real-time notifications during the entire procurement process, ensuring customers and partners receive updates as their order advances through each fulfillment stage, including received, booked and shipped statuses. Thus, our customers and partners have the freedom to leverage a hybrid model, utilizing both pull and push APIs based on their individual business needs.

What Does Dell Premier Offer?

Dell Premier offers integration solutions, such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and IT Service Management Integration, to help automate and modernize the procurement process. APIs enhance the customer and partner experience by allowing us to customize integrations specific to your needs. They provide a secure way to exchange information between our system and yours, giving visibility into viewing product pricing, tracking orders, retrieving quotes, receiving advanced ship notifications and accessing other real-time information via an API integration.

Here is a sampling of Dell Premier’s available APIs.

Click here for our full API Library.

How Can APIs Benefit You?

The scalability and efficiency APIs offer our customers and partners’ businesses is undeniable. They eliminate dual-entry and offer significant time savings. Information is available in real-time directly from a secure online environment, without the need to pick up the phone or email a Dell account team member. Additionally, as we look to the future, we know technology is always changing and advancing. If you have an existing integration with us, you’re better equipped to receive expanded services as they become available.

We hear exceptional feedback about the work our account team delivers to our customers and partners throughout the entire integration process. Our work today to enhance digital transformation is not only keeping up with present technologies, but it is also seeking to stay ahead of how our customers and partners want to do business with us.

Source: dell.com

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