To stay agile and competitive in the fast-changing tech landscape, organizations are increasingly adopting hybrid and multicloud architectures that combine on-premises and cloud environments into a distributed hybrid infrastructure.
The blend offers the flexibility of cloud resources with the reliability and control of local infrastructure. Gartner predicts that by 2027, over 50% of critical enterprise applications will reside outside centralized cloud locations, underscoring the necessity of hybrid strategies to meet business needs wherever they arise[1].
Hypervisors have a key role in seamlessly extending on-premises workloads to cloud environments. Organizations often use multi-hypervisor and dual strategies, combining on-premises and cloud systems under a single, manageable interface, optimizing resource allocation, and enhancing workload flexibility.
In recent years, the hypervisor market has increasingly converged with Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) platforms that combine compute, storage, and networking into a unified system.
Dell Technologies, with 37.2% of the HCI market[2], is the undisputed leader in the hypervisor landscape. Dell’s hypervisor-agnostic strategy allows businesses to integrate the best platforms for their needs, fostering adaptability and growth without locking into a specific technology stack. Through our strategic alliances with industry partners, we support customers regardless of platform choice, ensuring that their infrastructure aligns with their business goals.
Dell VxRail
Dell VxRail is designed to power all kinds of VMware workloads across various environments. It offers flexibility and scalability to support traditional and modern apps in a true hybrid cloud setup, proven as an industry-standard solution over the past 7 years.
Co-engineered with VMware, VxRail is the only HCI platform that provides complete integration and end-to-end lifecycle management, backed by AI-driven predictive analytics for proactive support. This is also inclusive of VMware Cloud Foundation, for a fully engineered software defined data center.
VxRail provides IT teams with the flexibility to address extreme workload requirements and deliver consolidation efficiencies otherwise out of reach for VMware solutions.
VxRail dynamic nodes are compute only nodes that deliver unparalleled storage flexibility by integrating with Dell Technologies’ external storage arrays, such as PowerStore, Unity, PowerMax, and PowerFlex, to serve as primary storage. This innovative approach allows compute and storage resources to scale independently as opposed to linear scaling which we typically see with HCI. As businesses deal with increasing data volumes and embrace AI applications to drive better business outcomes, this asymmetric scalability becomes a critical enabler.
By offloading storage-intensive operations to external systems, VxRail frees up valuable node resources, ensuring they are fully optimized for compute workloads. The result is unmatched scalability, enhanced performance, increased workload density, and more efficient resource utilization, all while enabling you enterprise-class storage array features.
Pairing VxRail dynamic nodes with Dell PowerStore, IT teams can extend life cycle management to simplify operations and significantly decrease management efforts.
An IDC study[3] among customers of VxRail HCI highlights the business value of our hyperconverged solution:
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- $54,000 average annual benefit per VxRail node
- Over $4.5 million per year in business benefits
- 11 months payback period
- 23% reduction in power costs
Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Azure
Dell Technologies’ Azure Stack brings the Azure capabilities directly to on-premises and edge locations, creating a unified ecosystem that enhances workload placement control and operational consistency. Built on Dell’s innovation in automated infrastructure management and software-defined storage. According to recent ESG white paper[4], 48% of organizations are expanding their on-premises deployments, highlighting the need for cloud capabilities close to home.
Dell’s APEX Cloud Platform for Azure is the best way for customers to bring a subset of Azure capabilities to their own data centers and edge locations, enabled through native Azure Arc integration.
Our turnkey infrastructure platform accelerates application delivery by optimizing Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) for hybrid environments, enforcing consistent security, and maintaining compliance across both local and cloud environments.
Customers benefit from lower costs and increased performance[5]:
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- 85% lower costs of testing
- 40% lower support costs
- 50% reduction in availability issues
- 50% improvement in administration productivity
- $36 million total savings per year
Support for Dell PowerFlex to the APEX Cloud Platform for Azure connects on-premises and cloud storage into an efficient, unified storage layer. Businesses achieve scalable, high-performance storage for Azure’s hybrid ecosystem while ensuring that data remains readily accessible, regardless of location.
Together with Microsoft, we’re helping customers bring AI to where their data is, by pairing our APEX Platform with Azure AI services. Businesses can leverage the value of the Azure public cloud but on-premises for greater control, higher throughput and lower latency.
Moreover, Dell ProSupport Infrastructure Suite offers comprehensive support across Dell hardware, software, and Azure HCI environments, delivering a single source of solution-level support.
We also offer flexible consumption options, from traditional CapEx purchases to APEX subscriptions, ensuring cost-effectiveness while supporting future scalability. With an Azure Stack HCI OEM License, Dell’s HCI offerings include a one-time cost advantage, simplifying access to Azure Stack HCI 23H2, Windows Server Data Center 2022, and Azure Kubernetes Service.
Dell APEX Cloud Platform for OpenShift
Jointly engineered with Red Hat, Dell APEX Cloud Platform for OpenShift transforms how you deploy, manage and run containers, alongside VMs, on-premises. It delivers a fully integrated compute stack, including OpenShift and automation software on bare metal infrastructure.
Our solution not only eliminates virtualization costs but also improves performance and scalability, providing a unified application delivery platform that optimizes resource utilization and simplifies operations. Organizations can bridge the application and data planes, ensuring that storage bottlenecks are minimized and resources are maximized across containers.
Having invested thousands of hours in development and testing, our solution is optimized for cost efficiency, workload performance, and security.
Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Red Hat OpenShift is also optimized for AI, helping organizations to implement AI rapidly and easily. They can focus on driving their business forward without infrastructure constraints.
Dell PowerFlex
PowerFlex addresses the challenges of modern IT with a highly agile, high-performance software-defined storage solution.
It is flexible enough to be deployed as an HCI architecture, a disaggregated 2-tier architecture (compute and storage layers are separate, and managed in a unified environment), or a mixture of the two.
By enabling flexible infrastructure expansion multi-hypervisor support and multi-tenancy, PowerFlex is ideal for evolving business needs. Its intelligent resiliency features minimize downtime, while its support for Kubernetes and cloud-native apps simplifies hybrid and multicloud deployments.
Our software-defined storage is validated for traditional and modern enterprise workloads and is ideal for demanding applications such as AI, ML, and data analytics.
With support for AWS and Azure, PowerFlex is adaptable to any cloud environment, making it the ultimate software-defined solution for businesses aiming to modernize and future-proof their IT infrastructure.
Dell XC Family
Built on Dell’s PowerEdge hardware and powered by Nutanix software, the Dell XC offers powerful hyperconverged infrastructure solutions.
They deliver a simplified path to hybrid cloud, with optimized performance, rapid deployment, effortless management, and unparalleled security. Dell XC is ideal for organizations that want to embrace hybrid cloud without compromising reliability, enabling businesses to integrate cloud capabilities directly into their workflows with minimal setup time.
No matter your business architecture, we have you covered
Dell’s diverse HCI solutions offer a powerful blend of flexibility, scalability, and performance. As more organizations pivot to hybrid and multicloud setups, our commitment to providing customizable, open solutions enables businesses to adapt, and remain competitive.
Dell empowers organizations to leverage a distributed hybrid infrastructure that meets their unique business needs—today and well into the future.
[1] October 2023, Gartner Press Release
[2] IDC WW Quarterly Converged Systems Tracker, CY24Q1
[3] May 2023, Business Value Snapshot, sponsored by Dell Technologies, VMware, and Intel.
[4] May 2023, ESG “Multi-cloud Application Deployment and Decision Making”
[5] May 2024, Enterprise Strategy Group Economic Validation, sponsored by Dell Technologies and Microsoft “Analyzing the Economic Advantages of APEX Cloud Platform for Azure”.
