Dell APEX – a Catalyst for Multicloud Innovation

Dell APEX delivers multicloud by design—a strategy to simplify multicloud complexity and accelerate innovation.

It’s no secret that innovation is more important than ever in today’s IT landscape—and that growing data, AI and security threats are top of mind for IT leaders.

In this year’s Innovation Catalyst study, we looked at what’s preventing organizations from innovating, and 40% said simplifying IT is one of the most important things to improving their multicloud environment.1

To achieve this, IT must embrace a model that brings siloed ecosystems together while supporting legacy and emerging workloads.

How Multicloud by Design Can Spark Innovation

Anchored on simplicity, agility and control, Dell APEX multicloud by design delivers a modern cloud and consumption experience that accelerates IT innovation. This approach is especially valuable for piloting AI workloads and then running them in production across private, hybrid and public clouds.

We are rapidly evolving the APEX multicloud portfolio to meet customer needs in emerging areas, including AI. Over the past year, Dell delivered eight new APEX multicloud offers and more than 500 software advancements.2 And with APEX now available in 134 countries,2 we’re giving more customers around the world access to multicloud by design.

Multicloud Use Cases to Simplify IT

We know getting started with public cloud, specifically to run performance-intensive workloads, is a growing requirement. In fact, APEX Storage for Public Cloud is often adopted as part of larger on-premises modernization.

That’s why we’ve given block and file storage customers a jump-start with our Dell software-defined storage in public cloud.

New APEX Storage for Public Cloud advancements make it possible for organizations to not only move workloads to the cloud but run them with better performance while optimizing costs. For example, recently announced APEX File Storage for Microsoft Azure delivers 6x greater cluster performance.3

To manage that storage simply and securely across multiple storage types deployed in public clouds and on-premises, we’re expanding APEX Navigator SaaS capabilities:

    • APEX Navigator for Multicloud Storage adds support for APEX File Storage for AWS now, and Azure planned later this year.
    • APEX Navigator for Kubernetes delivers new Kubernetes persistent storage management for Dell PowerFlex and soon, Dell PowerScale and Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Red Hat OpenShift.

We also see more organizations rolling out AI apps using Azure AI and Red Hat OpenShift AI. Dell AI solutions on our jointly engineered APEX Cloud Platforms provide a trusted roadmap to quickly achieve AI-driven business outcomes. Customers can get started with their AI initiatives sooner, thanks to APEX Cloud Platform automated deployment capabilities that give IT 90% faster deployment times.4

    • Dell APEX Cloud Platforms now provide validated designs for AI solutions—for faster deployment of AI apps.
    • Red Hat OpenShift. Speeding digital assistant deployment using Red Hat OpenShift AI and AI-based speech recognition with NVIDIA RIVA software
    • Microsoft Azure. Transcription and translation app with Azure AI services
    • APEX Cloud Platforms are also adding more powerful GPU options to tailor infrastructure to AI needs, including NVIDIA L40S GPUs.

How AI Insights Can Supercharge IT Operations

For nearly a decade, our customers have benefited from Dell’s AI-powered infrastructure health, cybersecurity and sustainability monitoring. Responding to their need for broader observability and more AI-driven insights, we’re announcing a significant expansion to our capabilities with APEX AIOps.

This AI-driven SaaS solution simplifies IT Ops across the entire digital infrastructure through three integrated capabilities: Infrastructure Observability, Application Observability and Incident Management.

    • IT can reduce noise from thousands of alerts down to single actionable incidents, resulting in 93% fewer customer-reported issues.5
    • And with our new Dell APEX AIOps Assistant, you can “talk” to your infrastructure to get quick, reliable and simple answers about your appliance—for all Dell infrastructure.

As the race for AI is on, we are committed to evolving our APEX portfolio to spark new possibilities for innovation, ensuring our customers stay at the forefront of technological advancement.

1 Innovation Catalysts study, Dell Technologies, February 2024
2 Dell Internal Analysis, May 2024
3 When comparing APEX File Storage for Azure with Azure NetApp Files. Based on Dell analysis, March 2024. Performance comparing read throughput per cluster.
4 Based on internal testing, August 2023
5 Customer research, Moogsoft, 2023. Actual results may vary.

About the Author: David Singer

David Singer is Senior Vice President for Dell Technologies Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG), responsible for delivering Dell's vast portfolio as-a-Service via Dell APEX. A 20-year Dell veteran, David also has held a variety of leadership positions across ISG, ranging from sales and channel development to operations and engineering, including ISG Integrated Strategy, ISG Center of Competence (CoC) and Strategy, Planning and Operations for ISG Storage. David is a strategist and change agent, who successfully executes across complex businesses and organizational structures to optimize businesses and positively impact short- and long-term outcomes. ​​​​​​​David holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from Tufts University and a Master’s in Business Administration from New York University Stern School of Business.