 Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Dell Tech World. Virtual, I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE. We got a great two guests here talking about the new Apex brand and products. Allison Langon, Senior Manager, Product Marketing at Dell and Devin Reed, Senior Director of Product Management at Dell all around the Apex, two CUBE alumni. Great to see you remotely, soon to be in person. It's right around the corner, but great to see you. Hey, thanks for having me and us. So I wish we were in person. We missed the Dell Tech World's amazing event. We're virtual this year, but all great goodness is here. But great big announcement, still go on. The Apex brand and portfolio is coming together, the cloud and as a service, everything's happening. You got the new Apex data storage service. Take us through what it, what is the new service? Why? Sure, so I can start, you know, we've been seeing this shift towards and as a service model, you know, IT has always struggled with complexities associated with under and over provisioning, capital budgets constraints, lengthy and complex to refresh cycles. So, you know, the events over this past year and our new normals really, you know, accelerated these, you know, challenges and made them even more manageable, you know, organizations need to become really agile and they don't want to invest, make big upfront investments in infrastructure when they're having such a hard time forecast in their needs. You know, there's new levels of unpredictability that's been accelerating this, you know, adoption of as a service. So this is why we're introducing Apex data storage services. Essentially, we're radically simplifying how customers can acquire and manage their storage resources. So data storage services is going to be the first as a service offering in our Apex portfolio. So it's going to provide an on-prem portfolio of scalable and elastic storage resources that are designed for Apex treatment. It's all going to be anchored in our Apex console. So it's going to be a seamless self-service experience where you just have a few key inputs, your data service, your performance tier you're looking for, your commitment term, your base capacity, for example, and then all the infrastructure is owned and maintained by us built on our industry-leading technology. So really delivering a super simple self-service as a service experience. You know, when Jeff Clark was first talking about this as a service, as it should be, you know, introducing the project Apex Dev, and I was kind of like, okay, this is kind of what we heard when we were last in person in 2019, the end-to-end Dell cloud, hybrid cloud operating model. This is kind of what we're talking about here. What's some of the covers? What is this data service? How does that vector into that? Because, you know, data control planes are being talked about a lot. The use of data in AI and AI operations, impacts IT and cloud scale. So hybrid is now the operating model for the enterprise. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And this is really only where we're starting. And we're going to be starting on a set of Apex data storage services. So if I step back a little bit and talk a little bit about what Apex data storage services are, I'd like to draw up a little bit of a contrast to how our customers procure their equipment today. So customer typically today says, I need some storage. I need some mid-range storage. I need, for example, a power store of 5,000. And then they work with the sales representative and says, I need 24 1.92 terabyte drives. I need certain connectivity. And then we present a quote to them with a whole bunch of line items with a lot of different prices. And then the customer needs to purchase that gear, purchase that upfront. And then they only asset and then they manage the asset. So they're taking the risk. They need to plan for that capacity. And what we're doing is we're radically flipping that model. And what we're doing here is we're just driving to an outcome. So customers, they don't want to take that risk. They just want to drive to their business outcomes and they want to manage their applications. So what they have to do in this model is just pick, hey, I want storage services. I want some block services. I want a certain performance level. And I want a certain capacity and I want a commitment level. And what we do is we basically create a rate for them and we optimize a lot of our processes on the back end to be able to, once that order has booked, we target a very rapid time of 14 days from the time the orders dropped until the customer can actually start operating that year from the time it's dropped to the time that they can provision their first volume is 14 days. And really all they have to do is operate the year and we manage everything for them that from capacity management to change management to software life cycles, patching, and do you and things like that. And now, John, I want to address your question about the hybrid world. It's absolutely designed for a hybrid world. So in our first release we'll be offering this on customer premises and we're also introducing or announcing a relationship we have with a data center provider Equinix which is the largest co-location provider in the world. And what we'll be able to do is provide the subscription service or this as a service not only on customer premises but in near cloud environments in a co-location facility. And we also have software assets that will extend into this environment all driven by a simple being of unified experience. That's awesome, the hybrid cloud it's got to have that table stakes now. So good plug there, thanks call out. Allison, I got to ask you on the customer side what's the drivers for the Apex data storage service? What was the key things that you're hearing? Why this is important to them? And what is the value proposition? Right, great question. So I touched on a little bit of that up front but it's essentially what we do with this offering is take IT out of the infrastructure business so that they can focus on more value added activities focusing on customer satisfaction because we're managing and maintaining all the infrastructure for them. Some of the key pain points are just the overhead associated with maintaining and managing that infrastructure but there's also the financial aspect as well. These services are designed for Apex treatment so you're not having to make that big initial Apex expense. You're really able to align your expenses with actual usage versus anticipated usage. So it eliminates that cycle of over and under provisioning which either results in over provisioned waste or under provisioned risk. We essentially streamline all of those processes so the customer just has to worry about operating their storage and it takes a lot of that worry off of them and they're able to just pay for what they use elastically scale the resources up and down. So it's essentially really simplified and more predictable. Yeah, I mean, Paige was always been one of those things where hey, I'll pay when I need it. I got to ask you on the differentiation side this comes up all the time. How are you guys different from alternatives? How do you differentiate going forward? How do you guys be successful? What's the strategy? What's the focus? Yeah, so I'll take a couple points and then I'll pass it over to you Allison if you don't mind. So first and foremost, I've asked this a lot. So what does Dell bring to the table in this whole Apex and as a service? First and foremost, Dell is the leading infrastructure provider for all of IT on-premise. We have the enterprise infrastructure leading across just about every major category of infrastructure. So first and foremost, we have that. We also have the scale, the reach, not only in our enterprise relationships through our partner community. So that is one huge advantage that we have. One thing that we're, and we talked about this model the level of management that we provide for our customers is second to none with this solution. So we provide all of the difficult management tasks from end to end that the customer that we repeatedly hear from our customers that they don't wanna be dealing with anymore. And we're gonna be able to do that at scale for our customers. And I know there's a couple more points. So I'd like to, I'll pass it on to Allison and she can address a couple more points there. Yeah, sure. I mean, obviously, Devon makes a great point as being an industry leader and just the breadth of our portfolio in general beyond just storage that we can essentially deliver as a service, but with our initial flagship storage as a service offering. So with Apex data storage services, I talked a little bit about the pay as you go, pay for what you use. Essentially the way this works is, there's an initial base commitment of capacity that the customer commits to and then they're able to elastically scale up and down above that base and only pay for what they use. One of the differentiators we're bringing to the table is that, in addition to that base and that the on-demand space, if you will that goes above that, we're charging a single rate. So it's really a simplified and transparent billing process. So you're not getting any overage penalties or fees for going into that on-demand. It's essentially a single rate based on your commitment and as much as you scale up and down, you're gonna stay within one single rate. So no surprise overage penalties. So that's definitely something that differentiates us and the customers also have the ability to raise that base commitment at any point, coterminously in their contract. So if they're seeing a strong growth trajectory or anticipating a more, a big burst in usage or for some data intensive type workloads, we can add, they can raise that floor commitment resulting in a lower rate but still a single rate for both base and on-demand. Well certainly data storage and moving data around and having it in the edge, to the core, to whatever is critical and I think that's a great service. The question I wanna ask you guys next to address is give us an update on the Apex brand and portfolio overall. How does this fit in? How is it shaping out? Can you just take a minute to explain kind of where it is right now and what's available, what's the strategy and what's coming? Sure, so I can talk a little bit about what's available and what we're talking about today and then maybe Devin, if you can touch a little bit on the strategy then going forward. But what we've announced today at Dell Tech World is the Apex brand, the Apex portfolio which as I mentioned is our strategy for as a service in cloud. So in addition to our data storage services offering that we've been focused on today which is part of our infrastructure services, we're also introducing our cloud services as well as some more customizable services. So from a cloud services perspective, we're also gonna be talking about our Apex private cloud and Apex hybrid cloud offerings. And then of course, the Apex console is really what brings all of these pieces together. It's that single self-service experience to manage all of your as-a-service resources from a single place. Devin. So Devin, I don't know if you wanna take it. Take it. So what I would like to add is a little bit more color on the customized services. So if you look at Apex at a high level it's really how we're transforming the way we do business with our partners and customers and the way we deliver products and offers to our partners and customers. And within the Apex umbrella, there's really two segments of customers that we see. One, there's still a segment of customers that wants some technology control. They wanna build their, they wanna build their clouds. They wanna build their infrastructure. And that's where really the Apex custom comes into it. And we have a very large business in our custom business today with Dell Technologies on demand, with FlexOnDemand and DataCenter Utility. And those will be rebranded to be Apex FlexOnDemand and Apex DataCenter Utility. That's what we're announcing here. And then the second portion is really this Apex turnkey offer where customers don't care to manage it. They wanna just consume. They wanna operate their gear. And that's where a lot of the innovation, a lot of the strategy that we're talking about here with the Hybrid Cloud Service, the Product Cloud Service, Apex Data Store Services. So we're building out a set of world-class infrastructure services that will then be able to wrap our leading infrastructure utilities around data protection, security, migration, compliance, et cetera, and then build a set of horizontal and vertical solutions on top of this infrastructure to provide unparamounted value to our customers. Awesome. Allison, I gotta ask you, because this is always the case, right? There's always one or two features that jump out on a product. Everything as a service clearly aligns with the market macro conditions in the marketplace and the evolution of the architecture in all businesses. That's clear. There's no debate on that. You guys got that nailed. What's the key thing? If you had to kind of boil out the one thing that people are gravitating towards on the data storage service because everyone kind of is going here, right? So what's, if you get, for people that are watching and are learning, what's popping out as the key product feature here or a few things that jump out? Sure. So I mean, really at the core, it's all about simplicity. It's in terms of like the console itself, which we've talked about. It's, you know, you have your infrastructure resources, your storage, your cloud services, and it's all, it's just so simple. It's just, it's a matter of a few simple clicks and inputs that are pretty intuitive to meet your needs. It's the fact that it's outcome-based. You know, we're not focused on delivering a product. It's really truly delivering an outcome and a service to meet the customer's needs. So it's a whole new way of, you know, approaching the market and talking to our customers and making it intuitive and simple and seamless and really, you know, taking so much of the complexity off of the table for them. So it's the simplicity of the console. It's the, being able to, you know, transition to a more OPEX model from a financial aspect is huge. And then, you know, aligning your expenses, you know, with your actual versus, you know, anticipated usage. So being able to manage that unpredictability. So it's not necessarily talking about a specific feature, but really, you know, how we're driving towards really focusing on the customer needs. Yeah, the business value is right there. And it's all about the outcome. And, you know, we're about getting charged on this variable, you know, overage on some service. David, how about under the hood? If I look at the engine of this, how it fits into the kind of product architecture, you look at the product management, you're building the product and the engineers are cranking away. What's the gear, what gears look like? What's the machinery look like under the hood? What's the cool tech, if any, you would share, if you can share. Yeah, it's interesting that you asked that, John, and it's really interesting that we got probably, what, 12 minutes into this interview and we didn't even talk about a product. Not one single product. And that is really by design here. We're really selling a service. We're selling an offer. The product is the service, the service is the product. And it's really about selling those outcomes. But at the end of the day, since we're talking shop here, we are introducing block services and that's powered by our new award-winning power store mid-range product. And our file services are going to be powered by our award-winning power scale and isolation systems as well. So we'll be interested, introducing block and file services and we'll be extending that to object services and data storage services shortly. Awesome, you know, Allison and Devin, I was talking to a friend, we're on camera, I wish the camera was turned on, but we were just riffing about all the coolness around dev ops, dev sec ops, how ITs go into large-scale cloud ops. And we were talking about all that and we were both kind of coming to the same conclusion that the next generation on top of all this automation is the X as a service, everything is a service. Because if you go that next level, that's where it is. Because the outcome is the services and that's underpinned by automation, AI ops, all the other stuff that's kind of hardened underneath still enables it and you guys are already there. So congratulations, that's really cool. Reaction to that concept of automation, powers X as a service. Yeah, I'll take that one, John. So while I talked only about main storage technologies that power this, there is a phenomenal amount of investment and work and thought going into building out the underlying infrastructure and operations to be mindless because we need to provide the operations and management of this infrastructure services, not only for storage, but for compute and solutions and dev ops environments at scale. And it's crucial that we build out that infrastructure, that automation, that machine learning AI ops to really support this. So yeah, you're absolutely right. It's fundamental to getting this model nailed. Allison, you're feeling pretty good about the product and the service now. Everything is a service, that's your wheelhouse. It's happening. Yeah, here we are. We've got Apex portfolio has arrived. So yeah, feeling good, definitely excited. You're just right, congratulations. Allison, Devin, thanks for coming on theCUBE and sharing the updates on the Apex's new data storage services, the new portfolio, the directionally correct action of everything as a service and all the automation that goes on there that's really kind of a game changer. Thanks so much for sharing on theCUBE. We really appreciate it. Thanks for coming on. Thanks a lot, John. Thank you. Okay, Dell Tech World Cube coverage continues. I'm John Furrier, the host. Thanks for watching.