Resilient and Secure Data Protection for VMware Telco Cloud

In the dynamic landscape of telecommunications, where 5G networks are rapidly evolving, ensuring data protection is paramount. As communications service providers (CSPs) embrace cloud-native platforms like VMware Telco Cloud Platform, they need robust solutions to safeguard their critical workloads and components. Enter Dell Technologies PowerProtect Data Manager, a comprehensive data protection solution designed specifically for VMware Telco Cloud Platform.

The Challenge: Protecting Modern Telecom Infrastructure

VMware Telco Cloud Platform empowers CSPs to deploy and manage virtual network functions (VNFs) and containerized network functions (CNFs) across distributed 5G networks. With its holistic visibility, orchestration capabilities and operational consistency, the VMware Telco Cloud Platform enables CSPs to modernize their infrastructure efficiently. However, any modernized environment requires a robust data protection strategy to prevent downtime and data loss, and to ensure rapid recovery in case of disasters.

Introducing Dell Technologies PowerProtect Data Manager

Dell Technologies recognizes the critical role of data protection in today’s telecom landscape. The PowerProtect Data Manager is purpose-built to address the unique challenges faced by CSPs deploying VMware Telco Cloud Platform. Let’s explore its key capabilities:

• Software-defined data protection. PowerProtect Data Manager offers flexible data protection and compliance across applications and cloud-native IT environments. Its software-defined approach ensures adaptability to changing workloads and applications.
• Unique protection for telco cloud platform components. CSPs rely on VMware’s Telco Cloud Platform components for mission-critical operations. PowerProtect Data Manager ensures the availability of these components without business disruption. Whether it’s management/workload clusters or application instances, your critical workloads remain protected.
• Autonomous operation. Automated discovery and protection are at the core of PowerProtect Data Manager. It seamlessly safeguards databases, virtual machines, file systems and Kubernetes containers. This results in competent and reliable data protection without manual intervention.
• Efficient data protection. PowerProtect Data Manager integrates seamlessly with Dell PowerProtect DD series appliances. You can protect data directly to these appliances, with optional replication to secure Cyber Recovery vaults. Efficient, reliable and scalable data protection is now within reach.
• Self-service backup and restore. Empower data owners with self-service capabilities. From our native interfaces, CSPs can initiate backups and restores effortlessly. No more dependency on specialized IT teams for routine data protection tasks.

This solution is more than just technology. It has been fully developed and verified in in Dell’s Open Telco Ecosystem Lab (OTEL), which validated the effectiveness of PowerProtect Data Manager for VMware Telco Cloud Platform. Dell’s OTEL facilities provided access to the latest cutting-edge technologies and tools to develop this solution. Our hybrid connectivity model enabled seamless collaboration between Dell and VMware through a global, virtually accessible lab. This approach allowed us to validate this solution effectively making it more consumable for mobile operators. Rest assured that you are deploying a solution that meets industry standards and best practices.

As CSPs embrace VMware Telco Cloud Platform, Dell Technologies stands by their side with robust data protection solutions. PowerProtect Data Manager ensures the resilience and security of your Telco Cloud Platform components and workloads. Modernize confidently, knowing that Dell Technologies is safeguarding your critical data.

Source: dell.com

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Future-Proofing Your Business With Sustainable IT Strategies

In a world where technology evolves at breakneck speed, the question of sustainability in IT practices has never been more critical. How do organizations and their leaders approach the complexities of sustainable IT amidst new AI priorities and an ever-changing landscape? Read on for a recap from three of the industry’s most prominent thought leaders across Computacenter, Creative Strategies and Dell Technologies.

Key Takeaways

◉ The importance of compliance with evolving regulations

◉ The role of governance in sustainability

◉ The impact of AI on sustainability goals

◉ The necessity of collaboration for collective success

The Regulatory Landscape

Moderated by Carolina Milanesi, President and Principal Analyst at Creative Strategies Inc. and Founder of The Heart of Tech, the panel began with asking each leader—Wendy Coticchia, sustainability champion and SVP Head of Compliance for the Americas, and APAC at Computacenter and Jamila Cowan, Director of Strategic Relationships, Sustainability and ESG at Dell Technologies—about actionable advice businesses should consider within their AI strategies.

Coticchia emphasized the need for businesses to have a plan for compliance, citing the influx of new regulations from across the world, specifically the European Union, United Kingdom and California. She highlighted the importance of internal alignment on whether to comply with the evolving regulations: “It’s about deciding, are we just looking to comply with the law, or do we want to do more because we think that gives us a competitive advantage? Or is our purpose such that we want to make meaningful change? Once you’ve got that alignment, then you really can start to prepare.”

Sustainability Beyond Environmental Factors

Milanesi pointed out that while many focus solely on the environmental aspect of sustainability, it encompasses much more, including supply chain operations and pay equity: “If we double down on sustainability, what do you think the core role of sustainability is in really safeguarding your future from a business perspective?”

The Role of Governance

Cowan stressed the significance of an end-to-end approach to sustainability and collaboration across organizations, especially in a period of increasing stakeholder demands, rising energy costs, new regulations and reporting requirements: “We’ve centralized our ESG operating model and governance. We’ve adopted a hub and spoke model that includes participation from every aspect of our business. And so, this has been a game changer for us.”

Sustainability and AI

The panelists agreed that AI had a significant role to play in sustainability, despite its energy-intensive requirements. Coticchia highlighted the need for companies to work with trusted partners who include sustainability and social responsibility in their AI solutions: “Are we utilizing renewable energy? Are we using the AI itself to make our solutions more efficient? Are we considering things like circular services so that we’re ensuring we’re recycling or reusing or repurposing those devices?”

Cowan shared insights from Dell’s Concept Luna, explaining how learnings from the project have been applied across their product portfolio: “Sustainability isn’t just the responsibility of the sustainability team.”

The Path Forward

Concluding the discussion, each leader emphasized both the urgency and importance of sustainable IT strategies in business. The panelists urged businesses to start their sustainability journey, leverage AI for positive impact and foster collaboration for faster progress. “We can go further, faster together,” Cowan said. “We have customers who are just beginning their sustainability journey, and it’s more of a conversation around how we set our goals.” The session was a reminder that sustainability is a shared responsibility. Sustainability requires transparency, trust and collective action to ensure a viable future for businesses and the planet.

Source: dell.com

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Dell’s AI Infrastructure Makes Waves in Forrester Report

Dell is excited to announce its recognition as a Leader in The Forrester Wave: AI Infrastructure Solutions, Q1 2024. We believe this recognition highlights Dell’s pivotal role as a modern infrastructure provider, helping customers simplify, streamline and safeguard their AI adoption within the dynamic landscape of artificial intelligence.

A Look Inside the Forrester Wave

For those unfamiliar, The Forrester Wave assesses the strengths and weaknesses of key players in tech markets like AI infrastructure, evaluating vendors based on specific criteria. In The Forrester Wave™: AI Infrastructure Solutions, Q1 2024, Forrester stressed the importance of platforms optimized for generative AI (GenAI) workloads, with a focus on data prep, model training and model inferencing.

The Results Are In: Dell a Leader in AI Infrastructure

The Forrester Wave evaluated the 12 AI infrastructure providers that matter most based on their current offerings, strategy and market presence. Here’s why Dell was recognized as a Leader:

Current offering. Dell received the highest scores possible in the criteria of architecture, configuration and training. Forrester acknowledges the complexities of running diverse AI workloads for organizations, yet Dell is dedicated to simplifying this with our “meaty” reference architectures. The Forrester report also cited Dell’s extensive portfolio, including our acceleration-optimized PowerEdge Servers and the wide range of storage solutions Dell offers, such as PowerFlex, PowerScale and more.

Strategy. Dell achieved the highest scores possible in the vision, partner ecosystem and supporting services and offerings criteria. The report states, “Dell’s superior vision is to offer the quickest, most integrated solution to enterprises for on-premises and colocation deployments.” The report also states, “Reference customers appreciate Dell’s exceptional level of service in quickly designing custom AI infrastructure that integrates with its existing IT infrastructure.”

Market presence. Dell’s significant market presence stems from its global reach and extensive customer base. According to the Forrester report, “Dell is a good fit for enterprises that wish to deploy on-premises or at a colocation [facility] and want an ongoing partnership to smoothly evolve AI infrastructure as demand increases.”

Accelerating AI Workloads: Dell Powering the Future of AI Infrastructure

AI is transforming how we work and innovate. Organizations need the right data, strategy, technology and tools to take proof of concept to proof of productivity. They need the path to be simple, have control over their models and maintain their data sovereignty. Dell makes this a reality by bringing AI to the data. Here’s how:

Easy button for the enterprise. Dell drives end-to-end GenAI outcomes by providing comprehensive solutions for IT and data scientists to apply AI and boost productivity. By helping customers right-size their models for specific use cases and applications, and ensuring seamless integration across the AI stack, Dell amplifies the value from AI deployments. Whether it’s workstations, edge, core or cloud, Dell delivers a consistent experience yielding positive outcomes, regardless of data growth or diversity. Bringing Dell AI solutions to the data results in more efficient and effective models, reduced costs and energy savings.

The latest example of Dell’s continuing AI innovation and end-to-end outcomes is the Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA. Announced just this week, the Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA is the industry’s first comprehensive, turnkey AI solution designed to address the complex needs of enterprises seeking to leverage AI. It integrates Dell’s compute, storage, networking, client devices and software capabilities with NVIDIA’s AI infrastructure and software suite. The Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA supports a wide range of AI use cases and applications, and also offers enterprise-grade professional services to accelerate AI adoption. Additionally, it is available through Dell APEX subscriptions, providing pay-as-you-go flexibility.

Broadest GenAI solutions and services portfolio. Dell boasts the world’s broadest AI solutions portfolio from desktop to data center to cloud. With a diverse silicon lineup including NVIDIA, AMD, Qualcomm and Intel, we offer versatile and powerful solutions for advanced AI applications. Our GenAI solutions are purpose-built for AI use cases, enhancing time-to-value and mitigating AI adoption risks. For example, Dell Generative AI Solutions with NVIDIA provide customers with integrated, turnkey solutions that are validated to support all aspects of the GenAI lifecycle, from model training and tuning to inferencing and retrieval augmented generation (RAG). In comparison to public cloud alternatives, Dell AI solutions provide superior control over data and who can use it.

Broad, open ecosystem of partners. As a strategic integrator across the AI stack, Dell has built a broad, open ecosystem of independent software vendors (ISVs) and diverse AI models. This ecosystem encompasses both commercial and open-source developer tools, offering complete flexibility to meet any need. We collaborate with AI leaders like NVIDIA, AMD, Hugging Face, Meta, Starburst and a wide array of partners spanning colocation, silicon vendors and global systems integrators. Our commitment extends to providing support for software models and machine learning frameworks, as well as access to an extensive data analytics toolbox. This comprehensive approach is designed to streamline any AI journey, minimize risks and expedite GenAI onboarding for our customers.

Level Up Your AI with Dell

Dell AI solutions are tailored for the most essential AI use cases, with leading infrastructure from the desktop to the data center to the cloud. By bringing AI to our customers’ data, we drive efficiency while ensuring robust data security and control. Right-sizing models to each customer’s unique needs not only trims costs but also reduces energy consumption. Our expert services, open partner ecosystem and Dell GenAI solutions promise smooth AI integration with minimized risk, setting us apart in the industry.

Source: dell.com

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