 Hello and welcome back to elevate your multi cloud experience with Dell technologies on the queue. I'm Rob stretch a managing analyst with the cube research. We just heard from my colleague Dave Volante and Shannon champion from Dell on an overview of apex storage for public cloud. Today we're going to talk about a new standard in multi cloud management and operations from Dell. Let me welcome to the cube Maggie poor director of product management for multi cloud and Allison Langen director of product marketing from Dell technologies. Welcome both thanks for having us. Well, thank you for being here. I think this is a lot of fun. I think multi cloud is really the standard. I think cloud operating models are really where it's at. And I think it's more than just a place. It's how you actually go and build it out and operate it. So I think this is a really timely discussion that we're going to have here. So let's kind of really jump into the announcements. Allison, can you share with us what was announced? Sure. So essentially, we are delivering continuing to deliver on the promise we made at Dell technologies role earlier this year of delivering seamless management and data mobility between on premises and public cloud and continuing to extend our best in class storage software into the public cloud. And with that today, I'm excited to share that our first set of management and operations capabilities within the Dell apex navigator family are going to be generally available with the announcement of Dell apex navigator for multi cloud. And with this offer, it's essentially going to deliver improved TCO centralized management, seamless data mobility, operational consistency between on-prem and your public cloud environments and unparalleled performance. Today, specifically, what is it what we're announcing availability of is our Dell apex block storage for AWS that will support navigator. And we are also going to be delivering our day Dell apex file storage for AWS early next year. No, this is I think super exciting stuff. And I think again, it's really timely in where you can go with this and how you can get cost savings because I think everybody's looked at it and been stunned with their bill that they get at the end of the month from one of the big hyperscalers. So Maggie, why don't you really kind of drill down a little bit further into some of the compelling features that are being announced in the product? Sure. Yeah. So you know, our goal when we started to engineer and architect our product, we wanted to simply bring a centralized management tools that for our storage customers. That is not just centralized, but also provides a very secure environment for our customers, right? So really the key characteristics of the top things that we're bringing to market with this first release as Allison said, it's block storage on AWS and it revolves around five things. First and foremost, security. I just mentioned that and I'm going to keep mentioning that because Right. It is so important, right? And so we bring in that zero trust framework as we started to architect the product and really how do we deliver a secure way of operating in a multi cloud environment. The second being deployment. As we're bringing our storage endpoints to the cloud, how do we easily automate the deployment process, not just of our storage endpoint, but also the underlying public cloud infrastructure. And then the third piece as we move on is the management aspect of it. How do you manage, you know, securely, but also do life cycle management on your endpoints across the board? And so doing that as a sash portal is what we're bringing. Moving on after management, it's all about monitoring. So how do you monitor, you know, your endpoints once they are deployed in the public cloud? But I do want to call out that it's not just monitoring off your cloud endpoints, but also bringing in that on-prem aspect of it. And finally, the fifth tenant, which is data mobility, which we're super excited to bring to our customers, which is the seamless ability to move data, move workload between on-prem and the public cloud, depending on, you know, whether your business needs change or upgrade or your workloads change, right? So those are the key things that we're bringing to market. Yeah, I think it's huge to bring that together. Again, multi-cloud is, I think the standard. We have some research that says it's kind of hidden equilibrium between hyperscalers, meaning in cloud and on-prem. And they're really, I think this is critical for people to be able to, and especially that last point about the data mobility. And we'll kind of dig in on that in a little bit. But Allison, what are some of the outcomes that customers can expect, you know, with this and from these updates? Right. So with Apex Navigator for multi-cloud, we're essentially empowering our customers to be able to unlock a new standard of excellence with multi-cloud management and operations. Through this centralized SaaS-based intuitive experience, customers are going to be able to get up and running quickly through the self-service Apex console or through APIs. They're going to be able to optimize workload placement more easily with purposeful data and application mobility. You know, Maggie touched on security. You're going to be able to reduce risk with secure operations and zero trust adoption. You're going to be able to do all of this from that single centralized user interface. And so all of this value just builds upon the value of our storage emplaints in the cloud as well, which are essentially bringing enterprise-class storage capabilities into a public cloud environment. So things like thin provisioning, data reduction, encryption, you name it. These are, you know, enabling customers to power even the most demanding and mission-critical workloads in the public cloud that they weren't necessarily able to do before. Yeah. I think that's part of the key is really about how do you bring these workloads up there. Because there's still a lot of applications that are on-prem that people want to burst up or maybe modernize as they go along. But the data has weight, it has gravity, so being able to do that. Let's dive a little deeper because I think, you know, it is what it is this year and cost optimization is a big thing. So what type of cost optimizations and cost savings can organizations expect? So this is a huge value prop for these offerings. We actually completed a recent study where we benchmarked our Apex block storage for public cloud offering with navigator against native public cloud storage just on its own. And to see what the TCO is going to look like. And I'm telling you, the results were astounding. Like, you're not even going to believe these numbers. But essentially, through this study, our Dell solution was able to deliver up to 87% cost savings compared to just a standalone native public cloud storage offering. So, you know, what we're allowing to do here, and this highlights what's possible with these offers and what, you know, thinking big of what customers can actually realize here, is when you pair our offerings with their preferred public cloud provider, we're just elevating that overall public cloud experience for them. Yeah, and I think that's the key is that customers are looking to understand how does that impact themselves. So do you have a customer example that you could share with us around that that really how they saw or how they could see Apex storage for public cloud really help them bring in those savings? Yeah, absolutely. So obviously, this study is showing huge, huge numbers, really big savings. And, you know, even though this is a new family of offerings, we're already seeing real world examples of customers of, you know, what they can realize in specific scenarios. So, for example, a large financial institution recently completed a four month proof of concept with our Apex block storage for public cloud offering. And the results were incredibly compelling. It really checked the box from technical, operational as well as financial from a technical standpoint, they were able to see 44% peak latency reduction, 46% improvement in their data transfer speeds, 29% better data reduction from an operational standpoint, they were able to create a universal storage layer. This concept that Shannon talked about more in the previous segment where creating that consistent common storage between their on-premises and public cloud footprint, they were able to deliver this consistent experience which creates, you know, operational simplicity as well as, you know, not having to learn new skill sets. So their IT admins are able to leverage like knowledge they already have. And it really also helps them, you know, streamlining like maintenance costs and things like that. So finally we're talking TCO, so financial, that's the big one you're waiting for. They were able to see $14 million worth of savings over a five-year TCO and are going to be cash flow positive by year two. That's insane because I think when you start to look at it, I mean a two-year payback is just unheard of, especially with this. And I mean most people are still trying to get their applications up and running in the cloud at that point in time. But we'd be remiss if we didn't dive in a little bit deeper on the security aspect of it. And everything security is top of mind and organizations, particularly in cloud and public cloud for that matter, are super hyper aware of what's going on with their security and really picking it apart. So Maggie, could you help us understand how does Apex Navigator really help customers with that? Absolutely, and you're so right, Rob, right? It's not just cloud, public cloud, but multiple public clouds, right? So it's so important to kind of make sure that we build that confidence in our customers. So as we were building the product, we wanted to make sure that, you know, when we're building, there were two things that were absolutely important for us from a product standpoint. One was to keep security front and center. And second, making sure that we're not just bringing the product from a UX perspective to our end customers, but also have an API-first approach to it, right? So as we were building the security tenants, you know, we wanted to make sure that we give our end customers full control, but also confidence in the ability to use a SaaS portal, especially because we know they're looking to manage their storage assets and to, you know, data management capabilities using a SaaS portal. So keeping that, you know, data and security in mind was extremely critical to us. The way we did, if you break it down into the Zero Trust framework, you can see that how do you bring that? And the reality is to really give the end customers the full control over the operations that they are trying to do, right? So controls not just over there, the users, the roles, the permissions, the groups, certificates, and the keys. Bringing it all in the hands of users was very important. So if you are an IT ops user who's starting to use the multi-cloud navigator for your organization, you can then decide which users need to be added from your organization and what roles do they need to have when they're added to this, right? So really bringing that notion along with also how those companies and organizations can bring their own identity and access management and federate that with Dell's identity, right? Which is so important and I think this was one of the hardest things for us as we were bringing the product to life because, you know, you're looking at the functionality that I'm talking about. Doing that functionality may be, you know, simple enough or it might sound like, but doing it with that security-centric thing in mind is extremely important to us. Yeah, I like to say yet not another SSO, not another single sign-on that I have to go and configure. It's federated in, which is, I think, key when you start to look at. It probably also helps them from a perspective of getting it, you know, adopted inside that organization because they don't have to go and standardize on something else. Exactly, you're absolutely right. And then, you know, when we talk about operations like data mobility, for instance, once they're in there, you're not asking users to re-enter your credentials, you know, every single time. You want to probably automate those things using APIs and, you know, plugging it in with, you know, automation tools like Ansible or Terraform. And, you know, the users can just run those scripts for data mobility, for instance. And if it is federated, you know, it just, you know, signs on and kind of moves forward. Yeah, and I think that's a great, because, I mean, I think the integration with those, the Terraforms or Open Tofu or whatever comes next in there and Ansible and stuff like that is really, I think, key because I think that, you know, infrastructure as code integration is huge for anything that's going to be in public cloud or have a cloud operating model. And with that, kind of, let's take it down a level and kind of look at kind of the workflows, such as deployment management and monitoring and kind of give us a flavor for that as well. Absolutely. This is, it's so exciting, you know, on things that we're doing. So let's talk about deployment. Our deployment, we're extremely proud to kind of bring this. It's a very complex task of not just deploying enterprise storage in the public cloud. So you're not just deploying your storage, but also the provisioning, the underlining public cloud infrastructure that goes along with it. So our deployment is really a four-step, pretty easy four-step process. You know, you log into your Apex console, you find your way into the navigator. Please, once you're there, you pick your storage type. Today we're talking about block storage, but as Allison mentioned, file is coming pretty quick. So you pick your storage, you pick your cloud off your choice. In our first release at AWS, then you go about picking your region, entering your public cloud credentials into the system. And then you get into a place where you get to pick the options. What kind of storage are you looking for? A balanced profile or a performance optimized profile, adding the capacity that you'd like to do. And then the other excellent part about our product is that we give an option to do not just single availability zone, but also multiple availability zone. So you get to customize your storage endpoint that you want to deploy in the cloud. Once you select those things, you basically hit deploy. You know, and it's really as simple as that to kind of just do that. And then we take care of all the magic behind the scenes of, you know, provisioning the public cloud infrastructure and deploying our software in the cloud. So that's about deployment. Moving on to, once it's deployed, you are in, you know, you're ready to kind of manage and monitor your environment. And we talked about single sign-on capabilities. So once you have deployed and up and running, we actually have the ability to continue to manage your, using your existing storage management tools. And you have single sign-on into that capability. So, you know, we're not replacing our existing element managers if our storage admins, IT ops folks are used to the tools that have been available. We just make them available in a much more integrated and easy manner for them to kind of go in and do their day-to-day activities. And then for monitoring, we have our tool, Cloud IQ. So it's really powered by the same capabilities of Cloud IQ, but extending it to monitor the license inventory, the health, performance, capacity off your storage endpoints, not just off your Cloud endpoints, but also your on-prem systems that you may have in your environment from before, for instance, right? So you go about doing your day-to-day activities of managing as well as monitoring off your assets. Yeah, so you see the fullest state, which is, I think, critical in being able to understand, you know, where should applications live? Where does the data need to be? And I think that to me, and I said a circle back around on this because to me it's one of the biggest pieces to the puzzle for, you know, really enabling true Cloud operations is really data mobility. And I think what your core value prop that you're providing is, hey, it's all the same and it talks to each other and you have that data mobility. So why don't we kind of, you know, go another level down and kind of help us understand what's enabling that? Yeah, so, you know, one of, as we talk with our customers, we hear that when they're moving into the public Clouds, you know, there are two sets of, some are figuring out which workloads need to move to the public Cloud and others are, you know, they all started in the public Cloud and probably are realizing that not all workloads belong in there, right? And then now you deal with the egress charges of bringing workloads down. But one of the things, pain points that we hear is, how do you do that in a more seamless manner? And Shannon talked about our universal storage layer, which is so important in bringing a capability like data mobility that we're talking about, right? So it's really using the native replication technology that our products have, leveraging that to have the ability to move your workloads because we do know that, you know, there can be a shift in business strategy, for instance, you know, oh, we need to move certain workloads to the Cloud or there might be that certain workloads don't belong in the public Clouds and you probably need to bring it back to the on-print world and so it's really driven on those pain points of our customers that we're bringing to market. Yeah, I mean, even, I think some of them, you know, could have been, like you said, not, it had just lifted and shifted to the Cloud because somebody said this is where a Cloud-first strategy just put it up there and then, hey, you know what, we're going to actually bring it back down, re-engineer it properly, but you still need to move the data, which is, I think, one of the biggest pain points that when I talk to organizations that they have is really how do I do this in a way that my people can understand it, in the tooling that they can understand it as well. So why don't we also kind of delve in a little bit, Allison, with some of the use cases that you're seeing from customers and really looking at what they're trying to do to implement this type of solution. Right, so there's really, I would say, four high-level strategic use cases that we're seeing customers implement with this family of offerings, our APEC storage for public Cloud. So that's the combination of our endpoints across file block data protection as well as our management capabilities with Navigator. And so the first of those would be extending existing on-premises infrastructure to the public Cloud. So taking your on-prem footprint and being able to use that same, you know, consistent operating model and extend it into the public Cloud where it makes sense. We have an example of a customer who has an existing PowerFlex customer who had a significant on-premises data footprint, our storage footprint. And we're looking to move some of that out to the public Cloud. And we were able to do that with our APEX block storage for public Cloud offering, being able to, you know, streamline and make it really easy for them to implement a disaster recovery option in the public Cloud and, you know, free up some of that space on-prem and enable a true hybrid model. As Maggie mentioned, you know, it's not an either or. There's some workloads that make sense on-prem and some in the public Cloud and creating that hybrid model with the common storage, you know, is a nice seamless way to make that real. The second one is being able to run mission-critical workloads in the Cloud. So that's something that historically has been a challenge for some enterprises is, you know, really getting the performance, the latency that they need and just the lack of enterprise storage capabilities essentially in the Cloud to power those demanding workloads with our storage in the public Cloud, they can do that. You know, I touched on this earlier, but, you know, the unparalleled performance, our block storage offering, for example, delivers 100 times, up to 100 times, the performance of native block storage from the public Cloud providers by itself. So, again, elevating that experience by, you know, adding our storage on there. So then, you know, for example, we have a customer healthcare company who, when they saw these performance characteristics, you know, they were able to be confident in moving some of their clinical apps and database into the public Cloud and know that they can run that. So that's an important one. And then the third is being able to integrate with public Cloud services. So obviously one of the, you know, benefits or why customers like the public Cloud of many reasons is the plethora of data services and application services available. And, you know, we are able to make it easier for customers to get their data into the Cloud to leverage those and marry them. So that's the third. And then finally, it all comes back to optimizing costs. So I already talked a lot about the TCO. You know, again, I don't mind saying those numbers. Again, I love them, up to 87% cost savings they can realize from a TCO perspective. But it's not just that. It's also, you know, ways to optimize their costs. So if customers have pre-committed Cloud spend with their preferred public Cloud provider or they have an existing, their existing Dell customer who has the Dell CLA, you know, they can apply, they can apply those credits to these offers and help spend down that pre-committed Cloud spend. So there's streamlining and optimization from that standpoint as well. Yeah, I mean, AWS customers are always looking how did they, you know, optimize their EDP and it's the same in Azure with those programs as well. Knowing those programs very well, I think it's very, I think, critical for people to be able to understand how to optimize their Cloud bill. Because I mean, again, staying in that Cloud operating model have the same tooling, same navigation, same monitoring and management and optimization. I think that's really key to them. So what about, you know, what's next? What's, why don't we start with you? What's next on your to-do list here? Well, you know, really excited about today's announcement, but this is really just the first step, right? We're going to, you know, we have Block on AWS supported with Navigator today, as I mentioned, File coming early next year. And we're just going to continue to expand from there to more, you know, supporting more endpoints, more public Clouds. We're just going to continue to grow our ecosystem and as well as new flavors of our management capabilities. So for example, you know, today we're, we're talking about our Navigator for Multicloud, but coming on the heels of that, which we also talked about at Dell Tech World last year, will be our Navigator for Kubernetes. So essentially, that's going to be the next, the next flavor we're looking at there. Absolutely. But from your point, I mean, what do you have on the roadmap there that's coming next? What are you excited about? So there's a ton. I talked to my engineering team saying, there's no limit to our backlog. But in it, you know, in terms of what capabilities we're going to build, the capabilities, you know, expand those five that I talked about and add more capabilities to the functionality itself. But, you know, what I would really like to call out is that everything that we talked about, the Navigator plus the Apex Block Storage, is available today and users can go in and try it because we are bringing a free 90-day trial with all of our products. We want to know, we know this is new, right? And we do want to build that confidence with our customers. So the ability to go and try it out before having to really commit and buying the product is important. So, you know, my thing would be go check out what we're building. We're super excited about it to bring to market. And we think it's going to be a game changer. Yeah, and to that effect, I think, you know, for where they should go next, we'll put a link to that right in the description here so that they can go and find it very easily and, you know, don't have to go searching around. It'll be right there in the description. So I want to thank you both for coming on board today. You know, welcome to theCUBE and being on here. It's been fun. I mean, I know how huge this is and having been at a hyperscalar myself, that getting that layer stacked right and making it look the same for multi-cloud is huge. It's a lot of effort. So thank you for coming on board. Thanks for having us. Thank you. And thank you all for watching this episode of Apex Storage for Public Cloud on theCUBE, the leader in high-tech enterprise analysis and coverage. Thanks very much.