 Welcome to the latest installment of our series where we're discussing Dell's multi-cloud strategy. Our research and conversations with customer shows the disparate nature of operations across multiple clouds creates significant challenges for organizations, securing and deploying apps, data portability, operational silos and other barriers create impediments to implementing a cohesive multi-cloud state. The complexity brought on by multi-cloud deployments creates frustrating and unproductive experiences for IT pros. And today we're here to talk about some new innovations in Dell's apex storage for public cloud family that help address these challenges and enable customers to achieve a more facile cross-cloud experience. Something Dell refers to as multi-cloud by design. Back with me in studio is Shannon Champion, Dell's VP of product marketing. Shannon, good to see you again, always a pleasure. Likewise. All right. So Shannon is what I just said, we're going to look at what's happening with customers. So what are you seeing with customers? Maybe you can start by recapping what customers are telling you with respect to their multi-cloud initiatives, maybe some of the main challenges that you see that they faced with multiple clouds. Yeah, well that was a really great intro and we're hearing a lot of the same. I think the reality is we know that we are in a multi-cloud world and the exponentially growing data and the dispersed nature of that. We know 92% of companies really identify as multi-cloud, meaning they're in two or more public clouds and they're also investing in private cloud infrastructure. And in talking with customers, we're seeing a consistent set of challenges sort of emerge, which is like keeping them from really innovating with multi-cloud and you hit on many of them, but one that kind of rises to the top is the unpredictable cost. We hear from customers that say, you know, it's really hard to forecast my budget requirements and plan when I'm faced with these sporadic unplanned cloud costs. A big one that you hit on is management complexity. So customers are really grappling with like how to get control of their management when you have data spread across so many locations on-prem and in the public cloud. And we're also hearing from them that the cloud inconsistencies are really creating some challenges for them because each different public cloud has different security models. They offer different enterprise class storage software feature sets and capabilities. And all of that really exacerbates this skills gap that customers are telling us they're still dealing with. Like how do I make sure that my IT staff has the right skill sets and familiarity with the tools and the public clouds that we want to be in. And the last thing I would say that we hear quite a bit is this concept of limited visibility. Customers are just really struggling with getting a holistic view of everywhere their data lives, which is kind of scary and leads to security and compliance challenges. Yeah, I mean, the initial allure of, hey, don't have to pay CapEx, great. But then at scale, the percentage that fluctuates creates problems. So what are you doing to help customers with these challenges? Well, that's where Dell Apex comes in. So Apex was created to deliver multi-cloud by design, a seamless modern cloud and consumption experiences in all locations that bring simplicity, agility, and control. And when you think about the Apex strategy, there's really three main elements, right? The first is how do we help our customers go from ground to cloud? And we're doing that by bringing our leading enterprise class storage software across block file and data protection to the leading public cloud providers. And we call that Apex storage for public cloud. The second part is how we take those cloud ecosystems that our customers are choosing and bring them on-prem with consistency and control. And we're doing that across the common cloud stacks on-prem with our new turnkey Apex cloud platforms. And then the third leg of the stool, if you will, is how we're simplifying those multi-cloud experiences for our customers in a broad set of dedicated IT landscapes across the board with subscription and as-a-service offers. And when you look at that from a storage perspective, all of this together really creates that universal storage layer, this common set of software-defined storage services everywhere. Yeah, so we've been kind of waiting for this day for a while, and so really appreciate that. And we're here to really dig into some of the specific announcements related to what Dell calls this, what Shannon just talked about, ground to cloud strategy. We want to know more. I mean, can you maybe provide a little bit more detail, Apex storage for public cloud, the family, the offering, and really, I'm really interested in how Dell differentiates from all the other noise that's out there. Yeah, so the ground to cloud is delivered through the Apex storage for public cloud family, as you mentioned. So the family really consists of two parts. You have your storage endpoints in the public cloud combined with consistent and centralized management, right? So it's a comprehensive set of storage services across block, file, and data protection, which does set us apart in the comprehensive nature of the broad set of storage supported in the public cloud. All of this creates part of that universal storage layer, which is so important. And then we give customers control, visibility, and management of that universal storage layer via the SAS control plane that gives them operational consistency from on-prem to public cloud. It gives them extreme performance and scalability so that they can confidently run those mission critical applications and workloads in the cloud that they might not have been able to do before. And all of that comes with improved TCO. We're seeing some major cost savings. With these offers. And part of that includes, you know, being able to optimize your costs by leveraging pre-committed cloud spend or Dell TLA's. Okay, so, and that's the other thing I mentioned. CapEx upfront, okay, yeah, it's alluring, but then you get all these other hidden costs. And that's what you're trying to address, but what specific cloud storage offerings are included? Yeah, so it's block, file, and protection storage. So let me just kind of unpack each of them. I'll start with Dell Apex protection storage because that's where Dell started with this game, right? Bringing our enterprise software to the public clouds. And today we are protecting over 18 exabytes of data in the public cloud and over 1,800 customers are, you know, really trusting Dell with their data and protecting that in the public cloud. Also Dell Apex block storage is really a game changer. This is a highly disruptive technology and we're really excited to see how it transforms our customer's environment. It's the most scalable cloud block storage, also the most resilient and flexible cloud storage offering. It can offer over a hundred times better performance and 87% cost savings versus the native public cloud block storage services. I think what people oftentimes don't appreciate is, you know, the cloud storage is pretty basic, right? When S3 came out it was like a nice, nice cheap and deep object storage, but companies like yours have had deep, deep stacks for years, experience on recovery, on, you know, whether it's the space efficiency of snapshots and the entire, the security pieces of it, so the capabilities that you're bringing to the cloud are just, they're more mature and they're more substantive from a feature standpoint. Earlier you talked about the universal storage layer. So can you elaborate on that and give us sort of a double click on really what's in there? Yeah, for sure. So earlier I talked about the Dell Apex multi-cloud strategy and the universal storage layer is really how we deliver multi-cloud by design. So to have true multi-cloud capabilities, you need to start with the same storage architecture deployed everywhere and that is universal. So that's where that word comes from. And that universal storage needs to be modern, it needs to be software defined, it needs to support VMs and containers and it needs to be architected with standardized open APIs to support that management automation and flexibility. But it's not enough just to have that universal storage everywhere. You also need a consistent cloud ecosystem, right? You need to have the same runtime application environments in the public cloud as you do on-prem. So it's really taking that concept of common software defined storage services combined with that consistent and common cloud ecosystem environment together that we call the universal storage layer. Got it, okay. And then it sounds like Apex Navigator is like a linchpin of your multi-cloud strategy. What specifically is that all about? What's the offering there? So how do you take the universal storage layer and bring the management control and visibility to it? That's exactly what we're doing with Dell Apex Navigator. It's a SaaS control plane that delivers intelligent, automated management that really orchestrates the seamless workload mobility and improved service levels for our multi-cloud assets. Okay, so what you're building here is you're hiding all the complexity of the underlying clouds. You're making a consistent experience across those clouds, including on-prem. Like I said, this is a day we've been looking forward to for a number of years. We're hearing this more and more from customers that it's problematic, the hidden cost, different skills required. Really appreciate your time here. Any final thoughts you want to leave the audience with? Yeah, I mean, there's lots of good reasons that customers are choosing multi-cloud. Some of them are looking for the best tool for the job in the various public clouds that are offered. Some of them have stringent regulatory guidance that around where their data can be for certain times, periods of time, and some are just looking for more options and flexibility. So regardless of what the reason is, we know multi-cloud is here, and with Apex Storage for Public Cloud, including the introduction of Apex Navigator, we're really helping elevate our customers' multi-cloud experience and delivering improved TCO. I talked about some of those really compelling numbers. We are bringing them centralized and intuitive management, seamless data mobility, which we're hearing is really important to our customers' operational consistency across on-prem and the public cloud, and then that unparalleled performance that I talked about. So solving, hopefully, many of those challenges that you set us up with here. The one exciting thing that I did want to announce is that we are really excited to get our customers trying out this technology, and so we're offering a no-cost risk-free 90-day evaluation. So there's really no reason that they shouldn't go try it. Yeah, nice freebie, check that out. And this is a great example. As Matt Baker from Dell likes to say, it's not a zero-sum game. The meaning of the cloud is you're building on top of all this wonderful CapEx that the cloud players have built, you're adding value on top of it, and that's just a win-win, particularly for customers. Thank you, Shannon, really appreciate your time. All right, stick around to hear from Maggie Kapoor, who's the Director of Product Management and Allison Langan, who directs product marketing from Dell Technologies. We're gonna dive deeper into these offerings with our Rob Streche, but first take a look at this cool video.