Dell expands Apex cloud and on-prem storage options

Dell Technologies is charging ahead with its Apex consumption-based sales portfolio with a total of seven new launches, while also expanding its public cloud integration for a broader multi-cloud experience for its customers.

Dell sees the writing on the wall and that the future is hybrid and multicloud. Today, 92% of organizations have a multi-cloud strategy in place or underway, and 82% of large enterprises have adopted a hybrid cloud infrastructure. And a new Forrester study commissioned by Dell Technologies found that 83% of organizations have adopted a multi-cloud approach or plan to within the next 12 months.

The company sees that the mainstream enterprise market is adopting the hybrid, multi-cloud model with a mix of on-premises and public cloud deployments and wants to get in on that business.

“Today’s multi-cloud reality is complex as data becomes more distributed across on-premises and colocation data centers, multiple public clouds and edge environments,” said Jeff Boudreau, president, Infrastructure Solutions Group, Dell Technologies in a statement.

The first new offering is Apex Multi-Cloud Data Services, which will provide file, block, object and data protection services for simultaneous access to all major public clouds from a single source of data. It will connect storage and data protection to preferred public clouds and services through its integration with the Apex Console.

The second storage-related announcement is Apex Backup Services, which scalable end-to-end, secure data protection with centralized monitoring and management for SaaS applications, endpoints and hybrid workloads. It can be deployed in minutes and scaled on-demand, covering SaaS applications like Office 365 and Salesforce.

Third, the company will extend its storage portfolio with Project Alpine, an effort to bring Dell’s flagship block- and file-storage software to public clouds. Customers will be able to purchase storage software as a managed service using existing cloud credits, taking advantage of a consistent storage experience from on-premises to public clouds and easily sharing data across multiple clouds.

Keeping with the storage news, Dell announced an expansion of its Apex Data Storage Services into 13 foreign countries. Apex Data Storage Services is an on-premises, as-a-service solution of scalable and elastic storage resources. Think of it as AWS S3 for your data center. Apex Data Storage Services is now available across multiple Europe and Asia Pacific nations.

And while Apex Data Storage Services are meant as an on-premises play, Dell also announced that the services are now available with colocation services via Equinix in the US, UK, France, Germany, and Australia.

Also, Apex Cloud Services with VMware Cloud is now available in the US, UK, France and Germany. The services, jointly developed by Dell and VMware, provide a secure and consistent Dell-managed platform for workloads running across multiple cloud and edge environments.

For Developers

Some of the news was also developer-oriented. Dell is expanding its Kubernetes offering, Amazon EKS Anywhere, so it can run on its PowerStore and PowerFlex storage products, which will enable running Kubernetes orchestration across public or on-premises clouds.

It also announced that SUSE’s Rancher container-management platform is available on  VxRail, Dell’s HCI-based clustered solution, providing multi-cluster, multi-cloud Kubernetes management.

Finally, Dell said it is expanding its Dell Technologies Developer portal to serve as a one-stop shop for application developers and DevOps teams looking to provide infrastructure as code. The portal will provide continual access to the latest Dell APIs, SDKs, modules and plug-ins.