 Hi, Lisa Martin here with theCUBE. We are covering Dell Technologies World, the digital event experience. I have two guests here with me today that are new to the program. So I would like to welcome David Lowe, the director of product management for Dell Technologies. David, welcome to the program. Hi, how are you? Doing well. And Catherine Ward is here as well, customer experience strategist at Dell Technologies. Catherine, it's great to have you join us. Thanks, happy to be here, Lisa. So we're talking about embracing as a service that was a big announcement at Dell Technologies World as we were talking before we went live just a few months ago in the end of 2020 where the new Dell Technologies Cloud Console was announced. David, start with our audience in terms of describing the Apex Console, what it is when it was launched and give us some color around that. Absolutely, back in October, we announced the Dell Technologies Cloud Console as part of unveiling the Apex vision. And this was really in response to what we heard from our customers about the need to be able to take advantage of cloud and as a service, operating models being able to take advantage of our products and services around infrastructure in a way that really met their needs in terms of the business results that they were trying to drive, the kind of flexibility that they needed about how to get those offerings in place and be able to run them, having simplicity in how they managed those offers while also having just a greater degree of control, of course, that's afforded by having infrastructure running on premises versus in the public cloud. So with the Apex Console today, again, we're just listening to what customers say about being able to double down on that vision and provide even more functionality and capabilities on top of additional services that we're making available in the Apex Console today. Catherine, let's get some point of view from the customers. David mentioned them a number of times. Obviously, this is why you're doing this, but how does Apex designed to help simplify operations? What are some of the things that you're hearing from through the customer experience about it being able to simplify ops? Yeah, absolutely. So we've talked to many customers. That's part of my team's job to ensure we're delivering a great experience. We've really heard that customers appreciate that they can now subscribe to services and that Dell offers. We've heard a lot from customers and sales folks that tells us that not every project they wanna do is funded in a capex way. And so one of the great benefits of Dell Cloud's offers and the Apex Console is being able to get things in an Apex way. So they can pay on a subscription, sorry, so they can play on a subscription basis to meet their business needs is one major positive that we've been hearing from customers. One of the things that I read when Apex launched a few months ago was this really as a way to demonstrate Cloud as an operating model rather than a destination. I'd love to get both of your opinions on that since launch, what you've thought. David, we'll start with you. Well, it's a great concept that customers really, that really resonates with customers. So I mean, Cloud as an operating model has been something that many companies have moved towards over the last 10, 15 years where there are fundamental characteristics of Cloud that are defined as being on demand, being self-service, providing easier access with elastic scale, and then also just paying for what you use. And these are the things that customers really care about. And so as part of the Apex vision and unveiling today in the Apex Console, we're offering services for example, like Apex data storage services where customers will have the ability to subscribe to that service on demand through the Apex Console in a self-service way. They'll be able to take advantage of it in a way they pay for what they use because on top of a committed storage capacity, it's an on-demand usage model. And they have the ability to come in at any time and increase as their business demands what storage is available to them. So we really are capitalizing on those Cloud characteristics that customers want to be able to take advantage of, but doing so on top of infrastructure, products from Dell that customers have trusted for decades. Right, so one of the things that we've talked about so many times in the last year is the acceleration that we've seen in every industry with respect to digital transformation and seeing so many businesses in every industry pivot multiple times here and that speed of like, here we are using SaaS applications to communicate and to reach customers. I'd love to know, Catherine, what some of the things are that you've learned since the initial launch, kind of given the interesting times that we're in, what are some of the things that you've learned from customer feedback that are going to be utilized to help kind of modify the product going forward? Yeah, absolutely. So one thing is customers echoing David really value self-serve. They want to be able to do things on their time when they want. And one of the great things that customers can do through the console is build solutions, choose services that best meet their needs. They don't have to involve sales. They obviously can if they want to, but they don't have to. And that is a big selling point, meets a key need that we've heard from customers. I'd say the second thing that we've heard from folks is that they really like how we have set up our role-based access and identity management capabilities. And I'll give you an example. So there are company, very large companies, let's say, who may have one finance department, and they are the only people who are empowered to sign off on orders, let's say. So maybe a more purchaser type role. You may have an entire separate set of folks who are your more technical folks who understand how to configure an offer, how to put it all together. And those, but those folks can't buy. And so we have built in some workflows to help support those processes that we've heard from customers that they have. And by doing that, they can ensure appropriate separation of duties, according to their internal policies, as well as help them get a handle on unexpected spend from IT services. And Catherine's really touching on an incredibly important point there that customers over the last 10 years, as they've used cloud services from other providers, we know that the democratization of cloud that said that anybody can come in off the street with a credit card and start using the services, that's a great way for people to get up and running. But that also leads to the problem of shadow IT. It also leads to unbounded expenses and difficulty in managing costs and an unpredictable expenditure. So we've seen over time how even other cloud providers have had to come back to laser and based on customer feedback, start adding governance, start adding policies, start adding budget management and spend controls, start ensuring that the kind of workflow that Catherine mentioned is in place around ordering. And we decided to put that in just from day one. So when customers come to the Apex console, they're going to be coming in the context of a company or an organization where there will be users that have specific roles. And as Catherine mentioned, they'll have specific permissions that might align with their particular job function. And there will be governance that an administrator can implement to ensure that only certain people can perform certain tasks, which we already know from customer feedback is incredibly important to give customers that kind of control that they might not get or that they might have been asking for from other cloud providers in order to ensure that this is truly like an enterprise grade level of service. Yeah, and just to play off that, David, I've talked to customers a lot. I also make sure I interact quite a bit with our sales team to get their views as well. And there's a university customer that we have who has this exact problem of shadow IT. And their goal was to unify and get all their main campuses on same system, following same policies, same procedures, same infrastructure. And one of the key challenges that they have is people, developers get excited. They wanna build stuff and they will go to the public cloud, use a credit card, for example, and just get up and running. And now this company realizes that those folks kind of going off and doing some of that on their own are actually spending more than their central IT spends. So again, I think it's a real world problem that we think we're well positioned to solve. Yeah, those guardrails seem really outstanding for customers to be able to get that. You both mentioned shadow IT and that's one of the things that we know. So easy to spin up services, but yet you then disconnect IT from different business units, which is always a challenge for organizations. So having the governance and the role-based access controls really provides your customers with more of a chance to, as you said, I think a minute ago, David, consume and only pay for what they're consuming, but also have that line of sight, that visibility across who's using these services, what are we paying? Are we getting what we need? And are we ensuring that we're getting more control over our environment? I can't even imagine how much more important that is these days with so many people still scattered and remote. Right, yeah, and it's just really part of the whole customer lifecycle as they work with our services. So after a customer is able to subscribe to something like Apex data storage services and after it has been deployed at their data center, they'll be able to come in to the Apex console. They'll be able to see information about that subscription and about the infrastructure that they're running, including having health monitoring and alerts and be able to see the capacity usage of that service. And with that telemetry and insight, then be able to take action, perhaps as you say to either put in place additional controls within their teams on spending or consumption or increase the available storage that they have to ensure that it meets their business needs. And as we build out this end-to-end lifecycle within the Apex console, customers will see more and more features coming to help with tagging of expenditure for showback purposes to simplify the way in which both IT teams and financial personnel within the company are able to ensure that they're being responsible and have that governance over what's being consumed and spent. Yep, absolutely critical. Catherine, talk to us about for existing Dell customers, how can they access the Apex console? What's the process there that you advise? Yeah, great, great question. So the good news is if you already have a Dell account, whether you're an existing Premier customer or perhaps you visit us through Dell.com, your credentials will work. All you need to do is talk to your sales team, your sales representative and ask them to be enabled. And the process typically goes that sales will help enable an administrator. And from there, the administrator at your company can start giving access and assigning those roles as you need. Just a little bit of a pivot on that. And what are we talking about in terms of timeframe? We think of cloud services being able to spin them up, knowing that there's still so much remote work going on. How quickly can a Dell customer follow that process that you just mentioned and activate these services? Yeah, that's a great question. So our goal is to be able to once we have your interests, we understand what you want to get you equipment and get you up and running within 14 days is our goal and our target. It a lot depends on what the customer needs and if they can get, if they can accept delivery that quickly and all that, but that is our goal is get you up and running in 14 days. Excellent. Time to dial these. David, go ahead. Oh yeah, the getting access to the console can be certainly a lot faster, but as Catherine said, once you get into the console and you want to be able to consume the services, especially for those infrastructure services that are going to show up and be deployed at your data center. We include features like an integrated site survey that customers are going to see shortly when they're able to go through the subscription process and enter information about their physical data center, maybe physical access characteristics or power or networking configurations that they have so that our deployment services team knows what to expect when they show up. We can get everything racked and stacked and ready to go, put it on the truck and have it to the customer as quickly as possible. As Catherine said, with a time to value promise of 14 days. Excellent and that fast access. Last question, David, before we wrap up, talk to us about what's next. This was only announced in the last six, seven months. So lots of development and progress, lots of customer feedback helping to tune the services. What can customers expect going out the rest of calendar year 2021? More, just, I mean, we'll have access for more customers in more countries to be able to consume more services and more capabilities within the console to provide that richer and to end experience. Today, we already have access for the console within 17 countries around the world with customers from both the US and UK and France and Germany already able to subscribe to certain services. We have access for Apex data storage services in other countries coming very soon. So we'll be adding more countries, more languages, we'll be adding more services in the coming months. And as we alluded to earlier, more capabilities to ensure that the end to end experience that customers have crosses all of the different boundaries within their organizations and supports all of the different roles who need to be able to come in and do everything from discover services, subscribe to them, provision resources, manage, operate, support and build solutions on top of what they have. So it really is all about ensuring that it's a single consistent end to end lifecycle within the Apex console. Well, that word more was perfect when I said, what's coming next? What can folks expect more? It's like that, but wait, there's more. So I'm sure folks will get a lot more information as the event unfolds in the weeks after. David and Catherine, thank you for joining me, talking to me about all of the progress that's happened in such a short amount of time with Apex console. We look forward to seeing what's next. Thanks, Lisa. Thanks for having us. My pleasure for David Lowe and Catherine Ward. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's coverage of Dell Technologies World, the virtual event experience.