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TECHNOLOGY

Dell APEX portfolio advancements help customers strengthen multicloud strategies

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Dell Technologies has unveiled new Dell APEX offerings across cloud platforms, public cloud storage software, client devices and compute.

These additions to its as-a-Service and multicloud portfolio spanning data centre to public cloud and client devices could help businesses operate and innovate faster through improved management and mobility of their applications and data wherever they reside.

“Our customers continue to look for a simpler technology experience to easily manage and access their assets and applications with predictable costs and greater flexibility,” said Chuck Whitten, co-chief operating officer, Dell Technologies (pictured). “That’s where Dell APEX comes in. Now, Dell APEX spans the breadth of our portfolio to give customers greater freedom for technology to support businesses as their needs dictate – from PCs and IT on-premises to public clouds and edge locations.”

Dell APEX Cloud Platforms deliver consistent multicloud operations

Dell APEX Cloud Platforms are a portfolio of fully integrated, turnkey systems integrating Dell infrastructure, software and cloud operating stacks that deliver consistent multicloud operations by extending cloud operating models to on-premises and edge environments. Workloads can be placed in the optimal location based on desired performance, cost and security requirements with data mobility across a common multicloud storage layer. Customers will be able to move data seamlessly between on-premises environments and Dell APEX Block Storage for Public Cloud deployments. Each system is designed to accelerate IT and developer productivity using familiar management tools and software-driven automated deployment and lifecycle management.

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The cloud platforms are developed in collaboration with Microsoft, Red Hat and VMware:

  • Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azureenhances the Azure hybrid experience with full stack software integration and automated lifecycle management through Microsoft native management tools and extensive engineering collaboration between Dell and Microsoft. The platform is ideal for application modernisation and delivers faster time to value of Azure based on Azure Arc-enabled infrastructure with consistent operations and governance across on-premises data centres, edge locations, and the Azure public cloud using Azure Arc.
  • Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Red Hat OpenShiftsimplifies container-based application development and management, wherever applications are developed and deployed, through full stack software integration and automation with the industry’s leading hybrid cloud application platform powered by Kubernetes. Customers can run containers and virtual machines side by side, natively within Kubernetes, with a unified experience for a wide variety of workloads, including AI/ML and analytics, with broad GPU support across any hybrid cloud footprint. This offering represents a deep engineering collaboration between Dell and Red Hat, using enterprise Kubernetes and backed by the world’s leading enterprise Linux platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
  • Dell APEX Cloud Platform for VMwaregives customers the flexibility to deploy vSphere on a fully integrated system with highly scalable, high performance Dell software-defined storage. This new offering joins Dell APEX Private Cloud and Dell APEX Hybrid Cloud within the broader Dell APEX portfolio to offer more choice for VMware customers on their multicloud journey.

“For more than a century, Xerox has continually redefined the workplace experience,” said Tino Lancellotti, chief information officer, Xerox. “Dell APEX has helped us optimise our multicloud strategy so that we can deliver software and services that meet the needs of the modern workforce.”

Dell APEX Storage for Public Cloud enriches the public cloud experience

Delivering on the promise of Project Alpine, Dell brings the performance and advanced software capabilities of its industry-leading enterprise data storage to public clouds while delivering operational simplicity with a unified approach to Dell cloud storage and Kubernetes management.

Dell APEX Block Storage for Amazon Web Services (AWS), Dell APEX Block Storage for Microsoft Azureand Dell APEX File Storage for AWScombine Dell’s enterprise-class storage performance, scalability and cyber-resilience with public cloud economics and services, such as analytics and artificial intelligence (AI). Organisations can fine-tune their cloud strategies based on business need, and maximise existing skillsets through advanced data mobility and management consistency between Dell on-premises storage and public clouds. This approach avoids the need to refactor applications and retrain staff.

Dell APEX Block Storage can rapidly expand performance and capacity for mission critical workloads through a unique scale out architecture. Increased resiliency is achieved by distributing data efficiently across multi-availability zones. Dell APEX File Storage delivers enterprise class file performance and capabilities in the public cloud. Customers can support a broad variety of performance-intensive workloads including AI, machine learning, media and entertainment and life sciences. 

These offers join Dell APEX Protection Storage for Public Cloudas part of Dell’s portfolio of software-defined storage for public clouds. Dell APEX Protection Storage delivers industry-leading data protection storage for AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and Alibaba Cloud with more than 17 exabytes of data protected by Dell software in public clouds to date.

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Dell APEX Console enhancements include new management, deployment, data mobility and discovery software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings that make it easier for operations teams to maintain multicloud storage and Kubernetes clusters.

  • Dell APEX Navigator for Multicloud Storage is SaaS that centralises, simplifies and secures management of Dell APEX Block and File Storage with easy configuration, automated deployment, storage monitoring and data mobility between on-premises and public cloud environments. This allows organisations to manage their multicloud estate consistently and securely at scale, optimising workload placement to match their business needs.
  • Dell APEX Navigator for Kubernetes is SaaS that simplifies Kubernetes storage management, bringing advanced data services such as data replication, application mobility and observability, to containers with easily deployed and managed Dell Container Storage Modules.

“Organisations are looking to streamline their IT environments so that data and applications can live in the right place to deliver the most value for their businesses,” said Matthew Eastwood, senior vice president, IDC. “Dell Technologies has delivered a significant expansion of its Dell APEX portfolio that creates commonality between public cloud and on-premises environments to simplify workload placement.”  

Dell APEX brings the cloud experience to PCs and servers

Dell expands the Dell APEX portfolio to help users easily handle day-to-day IT operations, speed infrastructure deployment, control costs and manage device takeback securely and sustainably through an as-a-Service experience.

  • Dell APEX Computedelivers scalable, secure bare metal compute resources in a data centre, edge environment or in a colocation facility. Customers can support virtualised or container-based environments by installing the hypervisor or operating system of their choice. Organisations will be able to meet their workload and IT operations needs with scalable and secure compute resources available through a predictable, monthly subscription.  
  • Dell APEX PC-as-a-Service (PCaaS) helps companies simplify IT and deploy the latest client technology with predictable costs while freeing up capital to invest in modern employee experiences. Organisations can customise offerings across the entire PC portfolio—inclusive of devices, software and services – with flexible one- to five-year terms and scaling up or down as needed. Early customers using Dell APEX PCaaS have reported 50% less help desk effort, 30% savings in support costs and 50% less time spent onboarding employee devices.

Dell expands data management ecosystem for simpler access to data insight with Databricks’ Lakehouse Platform 

To provide customers greater freedom to extract insights from data wherever it resides, Dell and Databricks, the data and AI company, announce a new, multifaceted relationship to connect on-premises data in Dell’s industry-leading enterprise storage platformsand the Databricks Lakehouse Platform.

Dell customers can connect Databricks in the public cloud with Dell object storage, on-premises or in a co-location facility, to analyse data in-place, store results and securely share it with third parties using Databricks’ Delta Sharing capabilities. Dell and Databricks are collaborating to jointly engineer additional integrations that will deliver a seamless experience for Dell object storage within the Databricks Lakehouse Platform.

“Microsoft and Dell are simplifying hybrid cloud management with an integrated solution that gives customers consistent operations across the Azure public cloud and their on-premises and edge environments,” said Bernardo Caldas, corporate VP, Azure Edge PM, Microsoft. “Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure provides native integration of Dell’s differentiated infrastructure platforms and management software with Azure Arc, and Arc-enabled services like Azure Stack HCI and AKS for a unified experience from cloud to edge.”

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“As organisations continue to evolve and scale their cloud strategies, customers are looking for a consistent user experience across hybrid infrastructure to accelerate cloud-native application development and faster time to value,” said Stefanie Chiras, senior VP, Partner Ecosystem Success, Red Hat. “Red Hat OpenShift provides that common foundation, and through our continued work with Dell Technologies, customers can benefit from a fully integrated Red Hat OpenShift experience on Dell’s on-premises infrastructure to extend capabilities wherever they deploy applications across the hybrid cloud.”    

Want to learn more about cybersecurity and the cloud from industry leaders? Check out Cyber Security & Cloud Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

  • Duncan is an award-winning editor with more than 20 years experience in journalism. Having launched his tech journalism career as editor of Arabian Computer News in Dubai, he has since edited an array of tech and digital marketing publications, including Computer Business Review, TechWeekEurope, Figaro Digital, Digit and Marketing Gazette.

Tags: dell, multicloud

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Next-gen chips, Amazon Q, and speedy S3

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AWS re:Invent, which has been taking place from November 27 and runs to December 1, has had its usual plethora of announcements: a total of 21 at time of print.

Perhaps not surprisingly, given the huge potential impact of generative AI – ChatGPT officially turns one year old today – a lot of focus has been on the AI side for AWS’ announcements, including a major partnership inked with NVIDIA across infrastructure, software, and services.

Yet there has been plenty more announced at the Las Vegas jamboree besides. Here, CloudTech rounds up the best of the rest:

Next-generation chips

This was the other major AI-focused announcement at re:Invent: the launch of two new chips, AWS Graviton4 and AWS Trainium2, for training and running AI and machine learning (ML) models, among other customer workloads. Graviton4 shapes up against its predecessor with 30% better compute performance, 50% more cores and 75% more memory bandwidth, while Trainium2 delivers up to four times faster training than before and will be able to be deployed in EC2 UltraClusters of up to 100,000 chips.

The EC2 UltraClusters are designed to ‘deliver the highest performance, most energy efficient AI model training infrastructure in the cloud’, as AWS puts it. With it, customers will be able to train large language models in ‘a fraction of the time’, as well as double energy efficiency.

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As ever, AWS offers customers who are already utilising these tools. Databricks, Epic and SAP are among the companies cited as using the new AWS-designed chips.

Zero-ETL integrations

AWS announced new Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL, Amazon DynamoDB, and Amazon Relational Database Services (Amazon RDS) for MySQL integrations with Amazon Redshift, AWS’ cloud data warehouse. The zero-ETL integrations – eliminating the need to build ETL (extract, transform, load) data pipelines – make it easier to connect and analyse transactional data across various relational and non-relational databases in Amazon Redshift.

A simple example of how zero-ETL functions can be seen is in a hypothetical company which stores transactional data – time of transaction, items bought, where the transaction occurred – in a relational database, but use another analytics tool to analyse data in a non-relational database. To connect it all up, companies would previously have to construct ETL data pipelines which are a time and money sink.

The latest integrations “build on AWS’s zero-ETL foundation… so customers can quickly and easily connect all of their data, no matter where it lives,” the company said.

Amazon S3 Express One Zone

AWS announced the general availability of Amazon S3 Express One Zone, a new storage class purpose-built for customers’ most frequently-accessed data. Data access speed is up to 10 times faster and request costs up to 50% lower than standard S3. Companies can also opt to collocate their Amazon S3 Express One Zone data in the same availability zone as their compute resources.  

Companies and partners who are using Amazon S3 Express One Zone include ChaosSearch, Cloudera, and Pinterest.

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Amazon Q

A new product, and an interesting pivot, again with generative AI at its core. Amazon Q was announced as a ‘new type of generative AI-powered assistant’ which can be tailored to a customer’s business. “Customers can get fast, relevant answers to pressing questions, generate content, and take actions – all informed by a customer’s information repositories, code, and enterprise systems,” AWS added. The service also can assist companies building on AWS, as well as companies using AWS applications for business intelligence, contact centres, and supply chain management.

Customers cited as early adopters include Accenture, BMW and Wunderkind.

Want to learn more about cybersecurity and the cloud from industry leaders? Check out Cyber Security & Cloud Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

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HCLTech and Cisco create collaborative hybrid workplaces

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Digital comms specialist Cisco and global tech firm HCLTech have teamed up to launch Meeting-Rooms-as-a-Service (MRaaS).

Available on a subscription model, this solution modernises legacy meeting rooms and enables users to join meetings from any meeting solution provider using Webex devices.

The MRaaS solution helps enterprises simplify the design, implementation and maintenance of integrated meeting rooms, enabling seamless collaboration for their globally distributed hybrid workforces.

Rakshit Ghura, senior VP and Global head of digital workplace services, HCLTech, said: “MRaaS combines our consulting and managed services expertise with Cisco’s proficiency in Webex devices to change the way employees conceptualise, organise and interact in a collaborative environment for a modern hybrid work model.

“The common vision of our partnership is to elevate the collaboration experience at work and drive productivity through modern meeting rooms.”

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Alexandra Zagury, VP of partner managed and as-a-Service Sales at Cisco, said: “Our partnership with HCLTech helps our clients transform their offices through cost-effective managed services that support the ongoing evolution of workspaces.

“As we reimagine the modern office, we are making it easier to support collaboration and productivity among workers, whether they are in the office or elsewhere.”

Cisco’s Webex collaboration devices harness the power of artificial intelligence to offer intuitive, seamless collaboration experiences, enabling meeting rooms with smart features such as meeting zones, intelligent people framing, optimised attendee audio and background noise removal, among others.

Want to learn more about cybersecurity and the cloud from industry leaders? Check out Cyber Security & Cloud Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

Tags: Cisco, collaboration, HCLTech, Hybrid, meetings

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Canonical releases low-touch private cloud MicroCloud

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Canonical has announced the general availability of MicroCloud, a low-touch, open source cloud solution. MicroCloud is part of Canonical’s growing cloud infrastructure portfolio.

It is purpose-built for scalable clusters and edge deployments for all types of enterprises. It is designed with simplicity, security and automation in mind, minimising the time and effort to both deploy and maintain it. Conveniently, enterprise support for MicroCloud is offered as part of Canonical’s Ubuntu Pro subscription, with several support tiers available, and priced per node.

MicroClouds are optimised for repeatable and reliable remote deployments. A single command initiates the orchestration and clustering of various components with minimal involvement by the user, resulting in a fully functional cloud within minutes. This simplified deployment process significantly reduces the barrier to entry, putting a production-grade cloud at everyone’s fingertips.

Juan Manuel Ventura, head of architectures & technologies at Spindox, said: “Cloud computing is not only about technology, it’s the beating heart of any modern industrial transformation, driving agility and innovation. Our mission is to provide our customers with the most effective ways to innovate and bring value; having a complexity-free cloud infrastructure is one important piece of that puzzle. With MicroCloud, the focus shifts away from struggling with cloud operations to solving real business challenges” says

In addition to seamless deployment, MicroCloud prioritises security and ease of maintenance. All MicroCloud components are built with strict confinement for increased security, with over-the-air transactional updates that preserve data and roll back on errors automatically. Upgrades to newer versions are handled automatically and without downtime, with the mechanisms to hold or schedule them as needed.

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With this approach, MicroCloud caters to both on-premise clouds but also edge deployments at remote locations, allowing organisations to use the same infrastructure primitives and services wherever they are needed. It is suitable for business-in-branch office locations or industrial use inside a factory, as well as distributed locations where the focus is on replicability and unattended operations.

Cedric Gegout, VP of product at Canonical, said: “As data becomes more distributed, the infrastructure has to follow. Cloud computing is now distributed, spanning across data centres, far and near edge computing appliances. MicroCloud is our answer to that.

“By packaging known infrastructure primitives in a portable and unattended way, we are delivering a simpler, more prescriptive cloud experience that makes zero-ops a reality for many Industries.“

MicroCloud’s lightweight architecture makes it usable on both commodity and high-end hardware, with several ways to further reduce its footprint depending on your workload needs. In addition to the standard Ubuntu Server or Desktop, MicroClouds can be run on Ubuntu Core – a lightweight OS optimised for the edge. With Ubuntu Core, MicroClouds are a perfect solution for far-edge locations with limited computing capabilities. Users can choose to run their workloads using Kubernetes or via system containers. System containers based on LXD behave similarly to traditional VMs but consume fewer resources while providing bare-metal performance.

Coupled with Canonical’s Ubuntu Pro + Support subscription, MicroCloud users can benefit from an enterprise-grade open source cloud solution that is fully supported and with better economics. An Ubuntu Pro subscription offers security maintenance for the broadest collection of open-source software available from a single vendor today. It covers over 30k packages with a consistent security maintenance commitment, and additional features such as kernel livepatch, systems management at scale, certified compliance and hardening profiles enabling easy adoption for enterprises. With per-node pricing and no hidden fees, customers can rest assured that their environment is secure and supported without the expensive price tag typically associated with cloud solutions.

Want to learn more about cybersecurity and the cloud from industry leaders? Check out Cyber Security & Cloud Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

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Tags: automation, Canonical, MicroCloud, private cloud

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