 In 2020 at the dawn of the new decade, Dell introduced Apex, its pay-per-use offering that gives customers the option to consume infrastructure as a service. Shannon Champion is Dell's VP of Product Marketing and we're here to talk about the future of multi-cloud and what's new in Dell's Apex portfolio. Shannon, great to see you. Nice to see you. So before we get into it, how would you describe Apex multi-cloud? So our Apex multi-cloud strategy as you mentioned has evolved, right? We started from a subscription as a service perspective and over the past several years have been doing a lot of listening to our customers and what we know is that customers are telling us that they're in various stages of their spectrum. Some customers are in the public cloud, often multiple public cloud, some customers are on-prem with a hybrid cloud but increasingly looking for that bridge between the public cloud experience to come on-prem and other customers are looking to define or redefine what their multi-cloud strategy is. So that's where Apex comes in. Apex is really designed to solve for both modern consumption and modern cloud experiences and to meet customers where they are. So whether they are in the public clouds, we're looking for options to enrich that public cloud experience. If they need a bridge from the public cloud to on-prem, we have options there and if they're looking for cloud experiences, regardless of where their IT landscape is, with subscription or as a service offers, we have that too. So our Apex strategy is very comprehensive and intended to respond to what we're hearing from our customers. And there's no question the rush to cloud has caused and multi-cloud has caused complexities. We're definitely seeing sort of an equilibrium now in terms of customers trying to balance out sort of where they place workloads. So how can Dell technologies help? Where does Apex fit in in addressing some of these challenges? Yeah, so we hear from our customers a range of challenges with implementing a multi-cloud strategy. So security is an imperative, but when you have disparate landscape of multi-cloud, limited visibility results and not having confidence that you have that secure posture that you're looking for. Unpredictable cost is something we've been talking about for years as it relates to multi-cloud and cost management is super important. People need to know where their spend is going to go. Also lack of the right skill sets, making sure that you're able to attract and retain the right talent to meet your business needs and also workload mobility. As your business needs change, our customers are telling us they need the flexibility to put those applications and data wherever they need them and in order to do that, they need data mobility. So of course, we were at Dell Tech World in May and you announced the Apex Cloud platforms as part of your overall Apex strategy. Can you just for the audience summarize what was announced and what's new, any updates? Sure, yeah, so like I said, customers are looking for kind of a range of spectrum as it relates to multi-cloud and Dell Technologies World was a whirlwind. We delivered the broadest payload of Apex portfolio options across that full spectrum of the Apex strategy that I laid out. We unveiled our Apex storage for public cloud offers which really solves the challenge of helping customers enrich their public cloud experience and go from ground to cloud. We unveiled new subscription and as a service options for customers and we also unveiled our Apex Cloud platform, a brand new category, a new family in the Apex portfolio specifically to solve for that cloud to ground experience and helping extend the cloud operating environment that our customers choose and that experience and bring that on-prem. So what are Apex Cloud platforms and what exactly do you mean by cloud to ground? So Apex Cloud platforms are turnkey on-prem infrastructure platforms that are designed to deliver that multi-cloud by design approach, right? To extend the cloud ecosystem of our customers choice to the data center or their edge locations and they're designed with simplicity in mind. They're built collaboratively with our ecosystem partners and currently that's Microsoft, Red Hat and VMware. And importantly, these platforms are leveraging Dell's unique proven IP in a range of areas. One is from our HCI portfolio, we built a best in class integration software and we're leveraging the IP from that combined with our proven enterprise class software to find storage together with our PowerEdge next generation infrastructure platform all together in what we're referring to as a new generation of infrastructure to solve for multi-cloud on-prem. Okay, new generation. Can you maybe double click on that? What do you mean by new generation? A lot of times people talk about next generation, you're calling it new generation. Add some color to that if you could. Sure, and I think an easy place to start is to think about something that people know, right? People know HCI, HCI is known for simplicity. Dell has been a leader in this space for years. We have delivered a differentiated experience with our software-driven innovation in that space. So higher levels of integration, automation, life cycle management, that's what people love about VxRail but that was designed specifically with one partner stock in mind, VMware's. And what the Apex Cloud platforms are about are designing for those same differentiated outcomes but with more consistency and control regardless of the partner stack that our customers are choosing. So we're giving them that commonality and consistency which gives them the flexibility, has a range of benefits in terms of operational savings and really drives consistency. To what extent are you working, Shannon, with in conjunction with partners? Is this product work? Does it include engineering? What does it entail? Yeah, so I mentioned Microsoft, Red Hat and VMware are current partnerships for Apex Cloud platforms. These are not new partners to Dell. We've been working with these partners for decades to deliver value for our customers but what's different here is the level of partnership required to pack in as much value as we are in these Apex Cloud platforms with those partners not just from a product and engineering perspective but all parts of go-to-market. So we're working with these partners to align in the field and how we show up together for our joint customers. We are working together with our channel partners to help them understand the value of our partnership and enable them to be a route to market for these. So it's across the board. But one example specifically on the product and engineering side, I mentioned the HCI integration software and for the Apex Cloud platforms, we're calling that automated M&O software, the Apex Cloud Platform Foundation software, right? The software that connects the foundation of the infrastructure into the cloud operating stacks and based upon the continuous development and testing that we're doing specifically on that vertically integrated software stack, we're able to deliver new patches, updates, new releases of software versions that come directly from our partner in as quick as four hours. So I don't know if customers even gonna be ready for it that quickly. You know, like these are, when we talk about time to value and how quickly we're going to enable you to be ready with the latest capabilities and feature sets, it's pretty unprecedented. Yeah, so you're creating this sort of cloud-like, just cloud native, if I can call it, that experience with Apex customers or using frameworks and different ways of thinking about which workloads go where. What are some of the use cases that you're seeing with Apex? Is it sort of the more mission critical stuff that we've always known on-prem? Is it actually seeping into some new innovation? What are the use cases that you're seeing? We're seeing customers really think about how they might use the Apex Cloud platforms in three different kind of bigger buckets. One is just simplifying multi-cloud operations. I say just, but like that's a big task, right? So we've been talking about that, you know, customers want to utilize multiple public clouds. They want their clouds to be on-prem, but they want those experiences to be common and simple and with data mobility and work everywhere. So that's one use case for customers. The second is really accelerating application delivery, right? So more and more organizations are looking to adopt that modern containerized application approach using Kubernetes. It's complex. So when you have something like the Apex Cloud platform that can bring together VMs and containers in a single platform, support a range of Kubernetes distributions, whether it's Azure Kubernetes stack or it's Red Hat OpenShift and provide commonality that I talked about across these, there's a lot of value and helps our customers go faster to deliver the application. So that's the second kind of use case. And the third would be really generally optimizing workload placement, right? Like having a tool that's at their disposal when their business needs change and evolve based upon cost or performance or security or compliance requirements. As those ebb and flow, they have the ability to put their workloads in the right place. Well, you know we're big on the common experience across clouds, especially, you know, given the mandate for greater business resilience, people certainly during the pandemic, you know, we're forced to rethink the way that they're able to respond to different market conditions. Well, thank you, Shannon, any sort of last words or thoughts you want to leave the audience with? Yeah, one of the things I didn't go into a ton of detail with that I just want to hit on is really the value of that common storage layer and really that software defined storage architecture that is the basis of these cloud platforms, highly scalable, resilient, high performance software defined storage. And that being a common element across these platforms makes it easier for migrations and all of that. But it's also the same storage architecture that we're putting in the public cloud. So that's helping to enable that mobility. So it's a key element of this. I just wanted to emphasize that. But overall for the Apex Cloud Platform family, we're ready. We are excited and starting today, we will be offering these to customers. So we're just really excited to see how this revolutionizes and multi-cloud for them in a new way. Well, it's exciting to see it come together. I remember, you know, Project Alpine and turns into the common storage layer, CSL. Actually, Project turns into product. So congratulations on that execution and thanks for your time. Thank you very much. Okay, now it's time to hear more about the first offer to market the Apex Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure. So stay with us. Dean Perone, who's partner director from Microsoft joins our Caitlin Gordon. She's the VP of Product Management at Dell. Dig in to all the new features and explain why this is the first offer in the new premier solutions from Microsoft Azure Stack HCI. My colleague, analyst Rob Stretche, hosts this next segment. Over to you, Rob.