Five short years ago, Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) was a disruptive technology, and today it’s become a mainstream IT solution for all virtualized workloads. Customer adoption and year-over-year demand growth – estimated at 60% in 2018 – are evidence this trend is undeniably real and will continue.

As the leading HCI system sales vendor, according to IDC, Dell EMC has played a primary role in enabling and supporting this transition, and our goal is to offer a broad set of approaches that deliver the best fit for customers’ unique needs. One example of this is our XC Series, the best platform for those customers who have committed to Nutanix software.

We are continuing to expand the XC Family, and today we are announcing XC Core, a new offering that provides customers with an additional way to acquire Nutanix software licensing while leveraging the benefits of the Dell EMC XC platform. XC Core, available today, uses the same Dell EMC hardware and software as the XC Series appliances while the software is licensed and supported directly by Nutanix. This alternative lets customers buy Nutanix software licenses directly from authorized partners, and then add the licenses to pre-validated XC Core systems that are configured, built and tested by Dell EMC. It also enables license portability across infrastructure components and separate management and support of hardware and software lifecycles.

The XC Family – comprising XC Series appliances, XC Xpress appliances and now XC Core – is arguably the most complete and robust platform for customers deploying HCI with Nutanix software. Here’s why:

1. The XC platform is based on industry-leading and proven Dell EMC PowerEdge servers that are configured and optimized for HCI and Nutanix software. These latest 14^th generation PowerEdge servers were built with more than 150 custom requirements specifically for software-defined storage (SDS).
2. PowerEdge server BIOS and firmware for the XC Family are tuned and optimized for performance to run Nutanix software.
3. The XC platform includes Dell EMC IP that enables streamlined deployment, rapid restore to factory settings and bare metal recovery, rich in-band hardware monitoring and management, 1-click firmware and software upgrades, and workflow orchestration across a cluster.
4. Customers can choose the Nutanix licensing and support model that is best for their needs while still leveraging the benefits of the XC platform.
5. The XC Family comes with an ecosystem that includes reference architectures, network validation tools and integration with other Dell EMC and Microsoft technologies, including Pivotal, Avamar, Data Domain and Azure.
6. Customers can rely on global service and support that includes support centers and teams in 167 countries, over a thousand spare parts depots around the world, and technical experts fluent in 55 languages.

Dell EMC’s HCI leadership is based on building a world class portfolio of industry-leading technologies and solutions to address essentially any adoption model for consuming HCI. Working with customers around the world, we know there’s no single way—no silver bullet—to address every opportunity or challenge. Customers know they can turn to Dell EMC to find the solution that makes the most sense for their own unique requirements.

Based on our industry leading portfolio, we’re excited to offer yet another onramp to Dell EMC and our proven technologies and support. As customers increasingly turn to HCI, we look forward to continuing to offer them the industry’s best options to simplify and transform their IT.

Several years ago the industry coined the phrase “big data” and we discussed what this new term meant for Dell EMC. We framed our thought process using the three Vs: velocity, volume, and variety. Taming the three Vs meant significant business insights and dramatically improved financial results for our customers.

But looking back, it hasn’t worked out quite that way. We are now living in a post-big data era where we are dealing with an increased compute capacity and massive data sets.

Over the years data took the steering wheel while compute sat in the back seat. What has been missing over the last few years (as John Roese points out in his 2018 predictions blog) is the reality of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Our massive data sets are being processed by new systems that not only need to learn and reason with huge data sets, but also need to do that in a quick and reliable way at the speed of business.

Extracting the expected insights and business value from all of that data is a challenge – and an opportunity – for organizations. John Roese mentions that Big Data will become Big Intelligence; we need to embrace “Data Valuation with Big Intelligence”. We’ve moved beyond simply Big Data.

Why Data Valuation?

• “Data”: the Dell EMC journey continues to feature the handling of mission-critical data in all its forms, from mission-critical databases to unstructured data stores.
• “Valuation”: the process of calculating or reasoning about data’s value is a matter of computing intensity.

To process this critical business information in the age of data valuation we are going to need to process data differently. This requires the combination of storage and compute innovation. It’s a good thing we’ve already been at this for a few years!

In 2014, Dell EMC launched a data valuation research partnership with Dr. Jim Short of the San Diego Supercomputer Center. Our research findings, published last year in MIT’s Sloan Management Review, highlight billion-dollar data valuation examples:

• The most valuable asset in Caesar’s Palace bankruptcy filing is the Total Rewards Customer Loyalty database. It has been valued at one billion dollars by creditors.
• LinkedIn’s acquisition of Lynda.com was mainly a data valuation exercise that also exceeded one billion dollars.
• Tesco placed an internal valuation of over one billion dollars on their Dunnhumby data asset, which contained the shopping habits of some 770 million shoppers (Kroger purchased the data for less than one billion).

The key to performing this type of data valuation will be to continually reason and value data at speed.

The “brains” of the IT infrastructure will evolve to quickly and efficiently recognize, analyze and label data, know what data goes where, identify how it needs to be stored and accessed in the future, and decide where it needs to live specifically. – John Roese

Data valuation will require the combination of multiple forms of data: legacy mission-critical data, recently-collected Big Data, and emerging forms of IoT data. Combining all three types of data together is crucial: they each represent evolving patterns of business activity over time. John Roese explains the transition from mission critical to Big Data (second wave) to IoT:

All three types of data must exist in a way that enables compute-intensive valuation. This valuation must extend from the cloud to the edge, and in future years to gateway devices.

The “Age of Data Valuation” will also require additional innovations in the areas of data trust (e.g., blockchain) and data visualization (e.g., AR/VR).

In future posts, I will expand on these technologies and their relation to data valuation.

Is your business going through a digital transformation? Are you tasked with breaking down data walls, reviewing data quality and moving data to a platform that can support quick analysis, all while continuing to provide value back to your business stakeholders?

When you hear the phrase digital transformation, customer support probably isn’t the first thing to come to mind. You may think of cars, thermostats, refrigerators or agriculture. But where in an organization could digital transformation have more impact than support? After all, it is a company’s service that often sets it apart from the competition.

At Dell EMC, we’ve been going through our own digital transformation to lessen the burden on our customers, and the support engineers and technicians who serve them. This hasn’t happened overnight. We’ve been delivering support services for 30+ years so changing the way we engage with our customers isn’t a light switch, it’s an ongoing journey.

Today I want to share the first in a three-part podcast series called A Conversation with Two Data Geeks, which provides insight into our transformation and how we’re leveraging big data to make it real. This series features two of the experts responsible for leading the transformation – Michael Shepherd and Dr. Rex Martin. You will hear how they did it, what they learned and where they want to go next. I encourage you to share your own digital transformation stories. We can all learn from one another as we keep innovating –knowledge positions us to better serve our customers.

A Conversation with Two Data Geeks, Part 1 of 3: How Dell EMC is Transforming Customer Support with Big Data

Leveraging big data intelligence to enhance customer support experiences starts with connectivity. As customers stay connected to Dell EMC through our connectivity technologies Secure Remote Services and SupportAssist, we are able to harness the power of big data intelligence to better serve them because we have more current, high-value information about their systems’ health. We pair this information with other data including manufacturing, repair, part supply and call log. The result is issue prevention, faster resolution and a better overall support experience.

Speakers:

Rex Martin, Ph.D. | Director, Advanced Proactive Services

Dr. Martin holds 8 U.S. patents in cognitive computing and artificial intelligence (AI). His current focus is leveraging Deep Learning methods to enable a competitively differentiated customer service experience. In 2016, his team won the Technology Services Industry Association award for Innovation in the Transformation of Support Services for MyService360. He has also received Presidential awards for innovation from EMC, Oracle and Sun Microsystems.

Michael Shepherd | AI Research Technologist

Michael holds U.S. patents in both hardware and software and is a Technical Evangelist who provides vision through transformational AI data science. With experience in supply chain, manufacturing and services, he enjoys demonstrating real scenarios with the SupportAssist Intelligence Engine showing how predictive and proactive AI platforms running at the “speed of thought” are feasible in every industry.

The post [Data Geeks Podcast]: How Big Data Intelligence and Connectivity Enhance Your Support Experiences appeared first on InFocus Blog | Dell EMC Services.

Technology changes, it’s a fact of life, and sometimes making a multi-year commitment can be a difficult decision.  The Dell EMC Future-Proof Storage Loyalty Program gives you additional peace of mind with guaranteed satisfaction and investment protection for those future technology changes.

The program covers the Dell EMC Storage Portfolio including; VMAX All-Flash, XtremIO X2, SC Series, Dell EMC Unity, Data Domain, Integrated Data Protection Appliance (IDPA), Isilon and Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS) appliance.

Dell EMC Storage and Data Protection offers unbeatable value with a modern, efficient and feature rich product portfolio at no additional cost to you with purchase of a support agreement.

Brian Henderson (@BHendu), Storage Portfolio Marketing Director, gives us the details on the 3-Year Satisfaction Guarantee, Hardware Investment Protection and Predictable Support Pricing along with 4:1 All-Flash Storage Efficiency Guarantee, Never-Worry Migratio, All-inclusive Software and Built-In Virtustream Storage Cloud.  www.dellemc.com/futureproof

Get Dell EMC The Source app in the Apple App Store or Google Play, and Subscribe to the podcast: iTunes, Stitcher Radio or Google Play.

Dell EMC The Source Podcast is hosted by Sam Marraccini (@SamMarraccini)

The current draft of the coalition agreement for the new German government does not include keywords such as the Internet of Things or IoT; however, there are a number of references to Industry 4.0 that could be pointing to IoT. The passage talking about the “central goals are…the creation of open and interoperable standards” garnered much attention. It succinctly explains the actual, miserable situation of IoT; every service provider is following their own design for developing software for IoT solutions, machines, and robots. They could hardly be considered compatible with one another, which only catapults us back to the fragmented IT landscape of the 1980’s. Haven’t we learned anything? It is costly to implement these proprietary systems and operating them is ineffective. And it also enables hackers to flourish because it’s difficult to protect so many different devices and equipment.

However, the various manufacturers are not to blame. The problem is the lack of standardization, but of course, the question is how we can develop this if our sights are set on creating a new and dynamic market. There are many attempts being made by many players (manufacturers, for the most part) who are mixing up their own batch of standards in the meantime. Yet none has pushed to the forefront. Individual countries like France are even trying to develop their own standards. The next German government has also finally announced that it would start to tackle the issue (see above). It doesn’t really matter if these individual entities serve up specific results because it will only end up in a patchwork of standards at best, which defeats the purpose of standardization in IT. Cooperation with global standardization bodies and other countries will play a major role in the process. The current coalition agreement rightly states that “the development of common global standards and norms needs to be pushed forward.” 
But it’s one thing when politicians state their intent, and it can take a while before things are implemented.

Nevertheless, the delayed development hasn’t stopped market researchers from churning out forecasts using nothing but superlatives and publicizing their very optimistic forecasts. For example, BI Intelligence speaks of a five-year market volume of $6 trillion. Other analysts foresee very similar things.

It’s no wonder that we are seeing rapid growth. IoT offers many advantages: streamlined processes, more rapid response times on the market, predictive maintenance, improved capacities for machines/equipment, traceability of products, new and innovative markets, more satisfied customers, and lower costs overall for IT, product R&D, and companies.

However, these advantages exact their price: gigantic quantities of data. New analysis procedures based on machine learning and artificial intelligence are necessary in order to manage this amount of data and to extract high-quality (business) insights from it. Both technologies are being implemented more and more in IoT, and I am willing to bet that AI and IoT will soon be inseparable. I will even double down and predict that, in a few years, we will look back to a time when IoT and AI changed the very essence of how we live and how our economy works.

Automated driving provides a wonderful example. It will not only replace conventional vehicles and demonstrate the purest form of innovation, but it will also change the lives of millions of businesspeople who will no longer consider the time spent behind the wheel of their personal vehicles as wasted time. It will mean that they can finally combine their time spent at work with their commute more effectively. At the same time, millions of people with an aversion to driving or those unable to drive will experience tremendous gains in unlimited mobility again. Automated driving will shake the very foundations of our lifestyles.

Dell Technologies is also in the vanguard of IoT. Michael Dell confirmed this fact at a presentation of new IoT strategies last fall: “IoT is fundamentally changing how we live, how organizations operate and how the world works.” And these words have been heeded: A new business division for IoT has been created, and we will invest $1 billion in the Internet of Things over the next three years.

The recent news of side-channel analysis vulnerabilities affecting many modern microprocessors has, as you can imagine, generated more than a few inquiries from our customers about updating their PowerEdge servers. If you’re in the same boat, asking yourself “What comes next? How do I apply these BIOS updates?”, then this post should help.

First things first, applying a BIOS update to a PowerEdge server is easy. Dell supplies different tools so you can choose the method best suited to your particular IT environment and needs.

Updating One or Two Servers?

If you’re just updating one or two servers in a small shop, a BIOS update packages can be obtained from support.dell.com manually by keying in your server’s system tag and then looking for a BIOS update such as that shown in figure 1.

Fig 1 – support.dell.com showing a BIOS update for PowerEdge server

NOTE: Dell EMC downloads and driver updates are free. That’s always been the case and there are no plans to change that.

Downloading this file and then applying it manually to a local server is straightforward, but if you have hundreds or more servers in a remote data center you’ll want to keep reading because we have better options for you.

Updating Lots of Servers, Even Automatically

Intelligent Automation is a Dell EMC hallmark, and Dell EMC offers a range of OpenManage solutions that can simplify mass server updates. With Dell EMC Repository Manager, new updates from Dell EMC online catalogs can be automatically downloaded, as shown in figure 2.

Fig 2 – Dell EMC Repository Manager interface

You can tell Repository Manager when to download updates, which servers you own, and what kind of updates you want. You can also command Repository Manager to download different sets of updates for different logical or physical groups of servers, and then to separate them into repositories in different locations. This gives you the flexibility to support different deployment methods.

So now you have a BIOS update. You’ve tested it and you want to deploy it to the production servers in your datacenter. Now what? Dell EMC recommends one of the following approaches to automate updates:

• Use OpenManage Essentials or OpenManage Enterprise
• Use an OpenManage integration for either Microsoft System Center or VMware vCenter
• Create a custom automation script that operates with standard management APIs provided by the iDRAC with Lifecycle Controller embedded in every PowerEdge server.

As an example, OpenManage Enterprise, the next-generation Dell EMC management console, provides a simple click-and-go process to schedule and perform BIOS updates for thousands of servers (see figure 3).

Fig 3 – OpenManage Enterprise screen showing target servers to update

Those systems will process the update as scheduled and with no further intervention. If you’re new to managing PowerEdge servers, this is an easy way to efficiently update thousands of servers without a lot of effort.

If you already manage your IT environment with an existing management platform such as System Center or vSphere, our integrations and connections make short work of incorporating PowerEdge servers.

And you use scripts to perform IT operations, we offer resources on Dell TechCenter as well as open source PowerShell and Python Scripting repositories http://github.com/dell. These assets provide a good starting point for automation, and can be adapted to the specifics of your IT environment.

Dell EMC Advantage: Dell EMC provides the tools to deploy updates in a manner that best suits your needs. We realize that one method does not fit all situations.

Final Thoughts

Dell EMC makes a variety of tools so you can perform server updates quickly and securely, particularly as part of an automated one-to-many update workflow. And because Dell EMC provides easy-to-use tools that integrate well with each other and with third-party tools, they are readily adapted to a variety of IT environments.

If you want to download a slightly longer version of this post, you can find it online at http://dell.to/2CpiSEg. For detailed, technical information on performing updates on Dell EMC PowerEdge servers, please visit this Dell TechCenter archive: http://dell.to/2o04cSn or for more on OpenManage systems management tools and technologies, please reference the Dell TechCenter wiki at http://dell.to/2w4myYE.

The coming together of the Dell EMC Partner Program, including the Cloud Service Provider and Strategic Outsourcer and System Integrator tracks, a little over a year ago was truly legendary. How legendary? Well, as I just shared on the Dell EMC Global Alliances Partner Program Broadcast, your partnership has been nothing short of phenomenal. Thank you. Over the past year YOU made the following possible:

• We launched a brand new partner program based on your feedback and support
• Increased attendance and mindshare at Global Partner Summit (GPS) at Dell EMC World 2017. And GPS is shaping up to be the best ever in 2018
• We added over 100 new, talented men and women to the Global Alliances team to support you, our partners
• Partner Growth Plans continue to grow, proving that we’re here to build businesses, not just do business
• We grew the Global Alliances business because we’re simple, relevant and incremental

What does all of this mean for 2018 and beyond? It means we’re accelerating our success together. We’re going to continue to develop personnel resources to ensure we have the right folks in the right place to allow you to access and support Global Alliances. We must work together to deliver more industry-specific offers, marrying the depth and breadth of the industry skills of our partners and Dell EMC’s technologies. Most importantly, we must keep doing three things:

1. Ensure your business plan is in place and effective. If it’s not relevant and effective, modify and work the plan
2. Create and drive more industry-specific offers to enable differentiation in the market and deliver value for both Dell EMC and you, our partners
3. Think BIG, across Dell Technologies capabilities and solutions, to bring the full thrust of Dell Technologies to life and add value to our joint customers

I wholeheartedly want to thank each and every one of our Global Alliance partners for a legendary year. Together we can accelerate success into the future and do extraordinary things.

We hope to see many of you at GPS at Dell Technologies World in Las Vegas on April 30-May 3. Learn more about the event and register at www.delltechnologiesworld.com/global-partner-summit.htm

The Dell EMC Heroes Program was launched at Dell EMC World 2017.  The program is designed to create a technical community between Dell EMC Systems Engineers and our Partners Systems Engineers globally.  The Heroes Program is all about you, our partners and connecting you with the latest information on our products, solutions and technologies.  Attend Quarterly Heroes Exchange events featuring the latest details on product features, roadmaps, and a solution showcase in your area.  Other offerings include a Semi-annual Partner Technology Advisory Board and Annual Partner CTO Summit, the Heroes Program is designed to enable you our partners to fully understand the scope of Dell Technologies and Dell EMC solutions.

I sat down with Patti Moy, Director Dell EMC Heroes Program, to get a mid-year update on the program and what to expect leading into Dell Technologies World and the Global Partner Conference.  Patti talked about a holistic approach to Data Center Design, not just storage, not just servers but everything in the Data Center.

If you’re a Dell EMC Partner, you can learn more about the Heroes Program on the Partner Portal, from your local Partner SE or by dropping a note to DellEMCHeroesProgram@dell.com; there is also a LinkedIn community here

Get Dell EMC The Source app in the Apple App Store or Google Play, and Subscribe to the podcast: iTunes, Stitcher Radio or Google Play.

Dell EMC The Source Podcast is hosted by Sam Marraccini (@SamMarraccini)

Today’s business world demands continuous operations across the data center, including mission-critical data protection procedures. As some admins have learned the hard way, any amount of downtime can mean a loss in revenue and productivity for an organization. This is why business continuity has become a top IT priority for global enterprises – and why Dell EMC has implemented support for high availability configurations in our latest generation of Data Domain systems for midsized and large enterprises.

High availability empowers organizations with greater resiliency through a second line of defense via Data Domain, ensuring continuous operations in the event of a failure. This month, Dell EMC has introduced a new promotion around high availability configurations for Data Domain systems, enabling customers to purchase their second controller at a 50% discount.

By adding a second Data Domain controller to your protection storage investment, you create the active/standby configuration need to achieve high availability. During any unplanned system downtime, a simple failover between the two controllers is activated.

Since the two controllers are attached to a shared storage pool, with one handling data ingestion and the other on standby, the backup jobs can resume in just minutes on the standby controller. Plus, this whole process can be easily monitored and managed via Data Domain System Manager. In addition to minimizing unexpected downtime, high availability configurations can also complete Data Domain Operating System upgrades without taking the system offline.

Gain this feature with a new Data Domain DD9800, DD9300 or DD6800 that is preconfigured for high availability. Customers can purchase a second Data Domain controller at a 50% discount from Dell EMC and our partners now. The promotion will run through Friday, August 3, 2018. To learn more about Dell EMC Data Domain, please visit the Dell EMC Store to compare products and follow @DellEMCProtect on Twitter for the latest announcements, customer case studies and topical content.

Are you leaving money on the table by not recommending comprehensive, must-have data protection in every proposal for servers, storage or VxRail hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) that you make to your prospects and customers? You could be. Watch this video, also hosted at channel campaign playbook, explaining why Data Protection is a critical criteria when selecting a converged infrastructure solution.

In 2016, Dell EMC commissioned the Global Data Protection Index report about the maturity of data protection strategies of 2,200 IT leaders across the 18 most developed nations worldwide. The results of this landmark survey showed vast opportunities for Dell EMC partners to cross-sell comprehensive data protection to their prospects and customers.

You may recall reading this report, and it’s worth money in sales to revisit it now because of a key finding: While true IT transformation requires sound data protection, the vast majority of enterprises are still way behind the curve in their ability to provide that.

Data Protection Opportunities Are as Big as Ever

According to the survey, 36 percent of organizations had suffered unplanned systems downtime or data loss due to hardware/ software failure or loss of power. The average cost of those losses? $914,000.

Of course, since 2016, many respondents may well have deployed data protection solutions. Or they may have just gotten around to upgrading their data protection as part their 2017 plans and budget cycles.

Contrary to the above, many IT leaders and their teams are still too busy fighting their day-to-day fires and juggling multiple priorities to have time and resources to get comprehensive, mature data protection in place. That’s where you, as a Dell EMC reseller, can help by adding Dell EMC data protection into every proposal you make for Dell EMC solutions.

Fact is, with the explosion of enterprise data, organizations of all sizes simply must have data protection. And it’s absolutely essential for software-defined data centers.

Better Together: Dell EMC Data Domain and Dell EMC Data Protection Suite

To serve your customers as their data protection expert and consultant, you couldn’t have a better partner than Dell EMC. Dell EMC is #1 in the Data Protection¹ market. By combining Dell EMC Data Domain with the Dell EMC Data Protection software, your customers can cover the entire data protection continuum, including replication, snapshots, backups and archive and achieve up to 81% lower cost of capacity to protect² over 3 years vs. the competition.

With three core value propositions, it’s:

1. SIMPLE, providing scalable protection with single-pane-of-glass management to reduce administrative burdens
2. FAST, with optimized data deduping and throughputs to meet strict SLA backup windows
3. EFFICIENT, with highly integrated hardware and software to help reduce costs and better manage risks

What’s more, Dell EMC data protection portfolio provides specific suites, so you can tailor solutions to your customers’ specific needs: backup, applications, VMware, archive, and cloud-based, long-term retention. The Dell EMC Data Protection Suite Enterprise Edition meets all these requirements. In addition, when combined with Dell EMC Data Domain, your customers can achieve up to 20x faster backup and up to 10x faster recovery for mission-critical apps while eliminating back up impact on servers³.

To help you fully capitalize on this must-have, data-protection solution opportunity, we have an array of sales & marketing resources you can take advantage of. They include highly effective sales call scripts and FAQs that you or your sales teams can use to qualify prospects. Customer presentations, infographics and many more assets can help you and your teams highlight core Dell EMC data protection advantages.

To find out more about how our Dell EMC Data Domain and Data Protection Suite software can help ensure you’re not leaving money on the table in all your customer deals, visit Dell EMC Data Protection Sales Plays.

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¹Data Protection defined by Dell EMC as the combination of IDC’s Purpose-Built Backup Appliance Hardware and Data Protection & Recovery Software market segments, IDC 12/17.

²Based on ESG whitepaper commissioned by Dell EMC, “The Economic Value of Data Domain,” May 2017. Data Domain deduplication capacity savings based on ESG analysis of call-home support data from over 15,000 Data Domain systems deployed worldwide.

³Based on Dell EMC internal testing, July 2016 compared to traditional backup.

People Make Digital Transformation Real

The pace of digital change is rapid, and recent research by Dell Technologies and Vanson Bourne reveals this can be overwhelming. No industry is immune. The pressure to transform to stay competitive in the digital economy is immense. But organizations struggle with how to build a digital vision – and they realize that their most important asset, their people, need the skills to “go digital” as well. In fact, the research, Realizing 2030: A Divided Vision of the Future, shows that lack of workforce readiness is one of the top two barriers to digital progress.

Consider one of our customers, a local U.S. government authority, was evaluating a data center modernization. As plans began to take shape, skills gaps became a major concern, causing the customer to hesitate in committing to the transformational project.  The tipping point in giving the customer confidence to move forward was the creation of an ongoing education strategy that would help develop and retain a skilled and certified team to drive the project.

Skills gaps can often be seen in IT, where organizations are rapidly moving from silo’d legacy infrastructure to dynamic, multi-cloud environments.  The days of having a single role such as storage or server admin are being eclipsed by new roles that span multiple technologies such as networking, server, storage, cloud and virtualization, with a security-first mindset.

A recent IT Transformation study conducted by IDC for Dell EMC found that a key differentiator between organizations that are the most agile and ready for transformation, and those that are the least ready, is that they view IT employee development as a strategic differentiator. 98% of the most advanced organizations incorporate training into IT’s overall strategic planning and all key initiatives, compared to only 38% of the least advanced.

Empowering Customers with the Skills to Gain the Edge in the New Digital Economy

The transformation journey begins with mapping the organization’s skills readiness to its ability to meet the challenges of rapidly evolving processes and technologies. In fact, the Vanson Bourne study found that 85% of business leaders advise aligning training to digital goals and strategy.

Transformation success increases when organizations begin their journey by building from three fundamental tenets:

1. The skills needed to build and manage digital enterprises differ from the skills businesses possess today.
2. Individuals need to learn and evolve, taking advantage of both formal and informal opportunities to do so.
3. Companies need a development strategy that incorporates training and certification as an essential component for retaining and growing future-ready talent.

Dell EMC Education Services is launching a set of new transformational certifications that helps develop the highly-skilled talent who can help companies make transformation real, achieve business goals and lead the competition.

These new certifications bridge skills gaps at every stage of transformational maturity. They establish and validate skills required for digital, IT, workforce, and security transformation, including:

• Understanding how to manage converged/hyper-converged platforms
• Developing expertise to enable automation and service delivery with multi cloud-solutions
• Incorporating critical security controls for Dell EMC enterprise infrastructure
• Translating emerging business trends into the technology solutions and new operating models of the future-ready organization

The new highest level certification, Master Enterprise Architect, is an experience-based board review certification that identifies and validates those unique individuals who possess the technical acumen to architect modern and secure IT as a Service solutions, coupled with a holistic understanding of the business drivers that fuel digital transformation.

In addition to the Proven Professional certification, learners also have the opportunity to earn co-branded badges that demonstrate proficiency across Dell EMC and VMware solutions.

These new certifications establish a new industry standard to validate the skills required for digital, IT, security and workforce transformation. The organization benefits by being able to establish teams of trusted advisors who, while having the skills to maximize the performance of today’s data center, also have proven capabilities to build and manage the digital enterprise of the future. At an individual level, these Proven Professional certifications validate expertise and the IT professional’s ability to be a critical influencer in charting the path of an organization’s transformation.

Making Skills Transformation Real

My story about the customer who required skills transformation to make their IT transformation real should resonate with everyone. Do you have confidence that you and your team are ready to compete in the digital economy? The race is on. Those who succeed will transform not only their processes and technologies, but most importantly, their people.

Are you ready to transform? Learn more by visiting the Dell EMC Education Services website.

As we covered in our previous post ScaleIO can easily be configured to deliver 6-9’s of availability or higher using only 2 replicas that saves 33% of the cost compared to other solutions while providing very high performance. In this blog we will discuss the facts of availability using math and demystify the myth behinds ScaleIO’s high availability.

For data loss or data unavailability to occur in a system with two replicas of data (such as ScaleIO) there must be two concurrent failures or a second failure must occur before the system recovers from a first failure. Therefore one of the following four scenarios must occur:

1. Two drive failures in a storage pool OR
2. Two nodes failures in a storage pool OR
3. A node failed followed by a drive failure OR
4. A drive failed followed by a node failure

Let us choose two popular ScaleIO configurations and derive the availability of each.

1. 20 x ScaleIO servers deployed on Dell EMC’s PowerEdge Servers R740xd with 24 SSD drives each, 1.92TB SSD drive size using 4 x 10GbE Network. In this configuration we will assume that the rebuild time is network bound.
2. 20 x ScaleIO servers deployed on Dell EMC’s PowerEdge Servers R640 with 10 SSD drives each, 1.92TB SSD drives using 2 x 25GbE Network. In this configuration we will assume that the rebuild time is SSD bound.

Note: ScaleIO best practices recommend a maximum of 300 drives in a storage pool, therefore for the first configuration we will configure two storage pools with 240 drives in each pool.

To calculate the availability of a ScaleIO system we will leverage a couple of well know academic publications:

1. RAID: High Performance Reliable secondary Storage (from UC Berkeley) and
2. A Case for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (RAID).

We will adjust the formulas in the paper to the ScaleIO architecture and model the different failures.

Two Drive Failures

We will use the following formula to calculate the MTBF of ScaleIO system for a two drive failure scenario:

Where:

• N = Number of drives in a system
• G = Number of drives in a storage pool
• M = Number of drives per server
• K = 8,760 hours
( 1 Year)
• = MTBF of a single drive
• = Mean Time to Repair – repair/rebuild time of a failed drive

Note: This formula assumes that two drives that fail in the same ScaleIO SDS (server) will not cause DU/DL as the ScaleIO architecture guarantees that replicas of the same data will NEVER reside on the same physical node.

Let’s assume two scenarios – in the first scenario the rebuild process is constrained by network bandwidth – in the second scenario the rebuild process is constrained by drive performance bandwidth.

Network Bound

In this case we assume that the rebuild time/performance is limited by the availability of network bandwidth. This will be the case if you deploy a dense configuration such as the DELL 740xd servers with a large number of SSDs in a single server. In this case, the MTTR function is:

Where:

• S – Number of servers in a ScaleIO cluster
• Network Speed – Bandwidth in GB/s available for rebuild traffic (excluding application traffic)
• Conservative_Factor = factor additional time to complete the rebuild (to be conservative).

Plugging in the relevant values in the formula above, we get a MTTR of ~1.5 minutes for the 20 x R740, 24 SSDS @ 1.92TB w/ 4 X 10GbE network connections configuration (two storage pools w/ 240 drives per pool). The 20 x R640, 10SSDs @ 1.92TB w/ 2 X 25GbE network connections config provides MTTR of ~2 minutes. These MTTR values reflect the superiority of ScaleIO’s declustered RAID architecture that result in a very fast rebuild time. In a later post we will show how those MTTR values are critical and how they impact system availability and operational efficiency.

SSD Drive Bound

In this case, the rebuild time/performance is bound by the number of SSD drives and the rebuild time is a function of the number of drives available in the system. This will be the case if you deploy less dense configurations such as the 1U Dell EMC PowerEdge R640 servers. In this case, the MTTR function is:

Where:

• G – Number of drives in a storage pool
• Drive_Speed – Drive speed available for rebuild
• Conservative_Factor = factor additional time to complete the rebuild (to be conservative).

System availability is calculated by dividing the time that the system is available and running, by the total time the system was running added to the restore time. For availability we will use the following formula:

Where:

• RTO – Recovery Time Objective or the amount of time it takes to recover a system after a data loss event (For example: if two drives fail in a single pool), where data needs to be recovered from a backup system. We will be highly conservative and will consider Data Unavailability (DU) scenarios as bad as Data Loss (DL) scenarios therefore we will use RTO in the availability formula.

Note: the only purpose of RTO is to translate MTBF to availability.

Node and Device Failure

Next, let’s discuss the system’s MTBF when a node fails and followed by a drive failure, for this scenario we will be using the followed model:

Where:

• M = Number of drives per node
• G = Number of drives in the pool
• S = Number of servers in the system
• K = Number of hours in 1 year i.e. 8,760 hours
• MTBFdrive = MTBF of a single drive
• MTBFserver = MTBF of a single node
• MTTRserver = repair/rebuild time of failed server

In a similar way, one can develop the formulas for other failure sequences such as a drive failure after a node failure and a second node failure after a first node failure.

Network Bound Rebuild Process

In this case we assume that rebuild time/performance is constrained by network bandwidth. We will make similar assumptions as for drive failure. In this case, the MTTR function is:

Where:

• M – Number of drives per server
• S – Number of servers in a ScaleIO cluster
• Network Speed – Bandwidth in GB/s available for rebuild traffic (excluding application traffic)
• Conservative_Factor = factor additional time to complete the rebuild to be conservative

Plugging the relevant values in the formula above, we get a MTTR of ~30 minutes for the 20 x R740, 24 SSDS @ 1.92TB w/ 4 X 10GbE network connections configuration (two storage pools w/ 240 drives per pool). The 20 x R640, 10SSDs @ 1.92TB w/ 2 x 25GbE Network config provides MTRR of ~20 minutes. During system recovery ScaleIO rebuilt about 48TB of data for the first configuration and about 21TB for the second configuration.

SSD Drive Bound

In this case we assume that the Rebuild time/performance is SSD drive bound and the rebuild time is a function of the number of drives available in the system. Using the same assumptions as for drive failures, the MTTR function is:

Where:

• G – Number of drives in a storage pool
• M – Number of drives per server
• Drive_Speed – Drive speed available for rebuild
• Conservative_Factor = factor additional time to complete the rebuild to be conservative

Based on the provided formulas let’s calculate the availability of ScaleIO system based on the two different configurations:

20 x R740, 24 SSDS @ 1.92TB w/ 4 X 10GbE Network

(Deploying 2 storage pools w/ 240 drives per pool)

20 x R640, 10SSDs @ 1.92TB w/ 2 x 25GbE:

Since these calculations are complex, ScaleIO provides its customers with FREE online tools to build HW configurations and obtain availability numbers that includes all possible failure scenarios. We advise customers to use this tool, rather than crunch complex mathematics, to build system configurations based on desired system availability targets.

As you can see, yet again, we prove that the ScaleIO system easily exceeds 6-9’s of availability with just 2 replicas of the data. Unlike other vendors, neither extra additional data replicas nor erasure coding is required!  So do you have to deploy three replica copies to achieve enterprise availability? No you do not! The myth is BUSTED.

Top-end PowerEdge solutions cap strong 2017 performance with ‘Server of the Year’ awards

The latest Dell EMC PowerEdge servers were specifically designed for the modernization required to drive IT transformation – and there’s a product to suit almost every business need.

Regardless of your customers’ industry, size or workload demands, you’re able to offer them an innovative PowerEdge server solution that will help enable transformation in the most efficient and effective way for their business.

Award-Winning Enterprise-Class Solutions

Two Dell EMC PowerEdge solutions at the enterprise end of our comprehensive portfolio of cutting-edge servers have recently been named as Server Products of the Year 2017 by industry publication IT Pro*.

The Dell EMC PowerEdge R640 was awarded Best 1U Server, while the Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd also received the top-tier accolade for Best 2U Server. The awards were judged by IT Pro’s editorial team.

Particularly recommended for their “mightily impressive storage options” and “sheer processing power that’s tough to beat” respectively, the R640 and R740xd sit at the mission-critical end of a diverse portfolio of PowerEdge servers that’s proving incredibly popular with organizations of all sizes.

They are joined by our top-performing PowerEdge R740 server, which offers exceptional application performance and storage scalability.

Advanced Servers, Accelerated Business

For customers looking for dense software-defined storage capabilities and faster processing performance for cloud applications, virtualization environments and web tech, these high-end solutions present three great propositions:

• PowerEdge R640 – Dense, general-purpose scale-out compute node

The Dell EMC PowerEdge R640 server offers an ideal mix of density, performance and storage capacity in a 1U/2S platform. With up to 8 NVMe drives, 1.5TB of memory, Intel Xeon Scalable processors and the ability to choose 2.5” or 3.5” drives, R640 can easily adapt to application demands, making it an excellent choice for high-performance computing (HPC) requirements.

• PowerEdge R740 – General-purpose workhorse, optimized for workload acceleration

The PowerEdge R740 is the perfect workhorse for demanding environments, providing the ideal balance between storage, I/O and application acceleration in a 2U/2S platform. Are your customers running up against processing limits of older generation servers and finding that they need more memory and CPU performance? If they’re looking for an ideal VDI solution or artificial intelligence/machine learning server, steer them towards the R740.

• PowerEdge R740xd – Optimized for workloads, with incredible local storage flexibility and capacity

With its ability to mix NVMe, SSD and HDD, the PowerEdge R740xd is a superb choice for customers with software-defined storage requirements. An outstanding database server, delivering high IOPS with up to 24 NVMe drives, it delivers the perfect balance of storage scalability, capacity and performance. This is an ideal platform for uncompromising storage performance and data set processing in a 2U/2S form factor.

Promote These Award-Winning Products to Your Customers

We’ve created a whole host of product-focused marketing assets that are specifically designed to help you promote these top-performing Dell EMC PowerEdge products to your customers.

Within your Partner Playbook, you can find everything you need to build the business case and drive demand with co-branded emails and 3^rd party white papers.  All supported by Battlecards and Quick Reference Guides available on SalesEdge for Channel, to give you all the essential technical specifications information you need.

 Go to the Partner Playbook now.

Access SalesEdge for Channel.

* http://www.itpro.co.uk/hardware/30187/the-it-pro-product-of-the-year-awards

As I travel around the region, it is incredibly valuable to meet with CEOs and CIOs where they live and do business, and hear directly from them what keeps them up at night. Whether in London or Bucharest, all share concerns about ‘the future’ and the role emerging technologies will play in transforming their business for the better – without throwing out what is working today with the bath water. Another common discussion point for both groups is the changing role of the CIO – how they are now seen as not only the person who is keeping the technology running, but as a key player in deciphering emerging technologies and identifying which innovation projects will help propel them forward – so they can disrupt before being disrupted.

The impact of emerging technologies on the way we run our businesses and the evolving relationship between humans and machines is something Dell Technologies has been exploring over the past year, with our latest ‘Realizing 2030’ global research project with Vanson Bourne surveying 3,800 business leaders forecasting the next era of human-machine partnerships and how they intend to prepare. The results were pretty unanimous with leaders agreeing we’re on the cusp of immense change, with 82% of those surveyed expecting humans and machines to work as integrated teams within their organization inside of 5 years. However, they’re divided over what this shift will mean for them, their business and even the world at large. To share just a few of these divided opinions:

• 50% of business leaders think automated systems will free-up their time – meaning the other half don’t not share this belief
• 42% believe they’ll have more job satisfaction in the future by offloading the tasks they don’t want to do to machines
• 58% don’t share this prediction. If they don’t change their opinion, they will keep doing tasks that could easily be automated and will continue to lack time for higher order pursuits that focus on creativity, education and strategy

Charting a course for the future given the rapidly changing environment is hard enough as it is. If business leaders have to deal with the polarizing viewpoints described above, then confidently making the right decisions to transform their business is going to be even more challenging. Fortunately, this is where the CIO can really come into his or her own. The ‘Realizing 2030’ research also revealed that business leaders do agree on the need to change and that emerging technologies like AI, AR and VR can be leveraged to speed up digital transformation.

So how can the CIO take these insights and demonstrate their strategic role in mapping out the direction the organisation needs to take?

• Lead with the technology. No one in the organisation knows as much about technology as the CIO. It is through innovative use of technology, namely software, that start-ups are disrupting established companies. A technologist to the bone, the CIO not only knows which technologies can be used to attack the company’s position, but can also play a leadership role in identifying how the company can use technology to pre-empt disruption or move the goalposts to their advantage. However, as I discussed in my previous blog on the seven habits of the effective hybrid CIO, the future forward CIO needs to have more than technology know how, but a deep understanding of the strategic business and financial goals of the company to turn that technology insight into a roadmap to the future that the board will buy into.
• Follow the data. If there is one thing leadership teams understand, it’s numbers and the CIO is the master of all data. It’s key to understanding customer behavior, to analyzing operational efficiency and improving customer service. The CIO can use this data to look backwards and forward, combining the advanced analytics of historical data with real-time data collection to tell a company where to go next. This also positions the CIO to be the best choice to set the metrics and KPIs which will better direct digital business transformation.
• Be human. There is a tendency when talking technology to be totally binary or metrics focused, but a key success factor in any organisation’s transformation is their people. So the CIO needs to balance driving change at the right speed, without going too fast and losing valuable resources along the way. The CIO needs to set the tone and clearly explain why change is necessary and what it will mean to the organisation – in fact, our research found the number one top tip to accelerate digital transformation from business leaders was to secure employee buy-in on a company’s digital transformation vision and values. Together with the CEO, the CIO will convince people of the vision for the future, showing the immense possibilities on the horizon

This is a great moment for CIOs to shine, both in translating emerging technologies into reality, and showing the strategic value that they can create. The role of the CIO is multifaceted and needs to look at every challenge and opportunity through different lenses. Every new technology begs a thorough investigation, both from a technological point of view and a business one. Does this emerging technology have staying power or is it just a passing fad? Can it be easily integrated into the overall architecture of the organisation? Will it drive forward our IT, security and workforce transformation? Can it help to differentiate our service offering in order to catapult the company to become a contender in the next era? These are the questions that need to be answered to make the right technology decisions for all organisations as they navigate this new era of emerging technologies, and the CIO is uniquely positioned to separate the hype along the way to hyper-growth.

We live in a world of seemingly endless choices when it comes to which brand of t-shirt to buy, what to eat for dinner, or which route to take as you commute to work. According to psychologists, adults make an average of 70 conscious decisions each day, with unconscious decisions numbering in the thousands. It can quickly become overwhelming. And those everyday decisions are commonplace, even mundane! For IT decision-makers tasked with keeping the modern data center operational and secure, what may at first seem like a simple decision quickly takes on monumental significance.

Consider the decision of which hardware vendor to buy from when implementing a server refresh or adding server capacity to the data center. Business leaders push for increasing service levels from IT, but often without a proportional increase in resources.[1] The contradiction leads to pressure on IT decision-makers, forcing them to make tough purchasing choices. The decision to choose a hardware provider versus a hardware partner has vast implications when it comes to building a secure data center. It cannot be taken lightly.

Taking a cheap approach to hardware may significantly increase the total cost of ownership. Cheap hardware often requires earlier replacement and lacks scalability. Most importantly, white box hardware providers don’t take responsibility for firmware and hardware security on the server, leaving the business more vulnerable to malicious attacks. Dell EMC and Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) provide guidance to discerning between a hardware partner (i.e. security leader) and a hardware provider (i.e. security laggard) in two recent white papers on hardware/firmware security. Here’s your quick guide – via infographic – on how to tell the difference.

Dell EMC is a leader when it comes to hardware and firmware security. PowerEdge servers are embedded with integrated firmware and hardware security features like the dual silicon root of trust, BIOS protection and recovery, and hardware intrusion detection. If you go with a server provider who doesn’t offer hardware and firmware security, you may be left incurring unforeseen costs to integrate those protections after the fact. According to EMA, “It is much more difficult to address server security after deployment and implementation. Sever security should be carefully considered from the initial planning phase.”

If you’re unsure how to figure out which server vendors are leading when it comes to security, Dell EMC’s white paper “End-to-end Server Security: The IT Leader’s Guide” is an excellent resource. The paper provides a short list of four questions you can ask each server vendor when making the crucial decision of whom to buy from. EMA also provides perspective in their white paper, going as far as listing examples of companies they consider “hardware providers.”

The server purchase decision is business-critical, but it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Using hardware and firmware security as a driving factor can make your decision simpler and save money and hassle over the long term. Guidance from trusted industry leaders should inform your decision. Even if you don’t choose PowerEdge servers, you can choose to be an informed consumer. The white papers linked below are an excellent starting point.

Server Security Resources:

• End-to-end Server Security: The IT Leader’s Guide, Dell EMC Business White Paper
• Cyber Resilient Security in 14th generation of Dell EMC PowerEdge servers, Dell EMC Technical White Paper
• Dell EMC PowerEdge Servers: Investing in a Cyber-Resilient Architecture, Enterprise Management Associates White Paper

[1] EMA Security WP

Good news for vSAN users: Dell EMC’s industry-leading, 14th generation PowerEdge servers, the bedrock of the modern data center, now include models with AMD EPYC processors available as vSAN Ready Nodes.

This incredible pairing takes storage optimization and cost cutting to a whole new level—critical factors for companies eager to deploy emerging workloads:

• Software-defined storage deployments
  The highly configurable, 1U single-socket Dell EMC PowerEdge R6415, with up to 32 cores, offers ultra-dense, scale-out computing capabilities. Storage flexibility is enabled with up to 10 PCIe NVMe drives.
  Edge computing deployments
  The 2U single-socket Dell EMC PowerEdge R7415 offers up to 20 percent better TCO per four-node cluster for vSAN deployments at the edge. With 128 PCIe lanes, it offers accelerated east/west bandwidth for cloud computing and virtualization. And with up to 2TB memory capacity and 12 NVMe drives it improves storage efficiency.
  High performance computing
  The dual-socket Dell EMC PowerEdge R7425 delivers up to 25 percent absolute performance improvement for HPC workloads like computational fluid dynamics (CFD). With up to 64 cores, it offers high bandwidth with dense GPU/FPGA capability.

Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes reduce your risk.

New applications and exponential increases in data require the most simple, streamlined, and cost-effective storage approach possible. This is why many enterprises are drawn to VMware® vSAN, a software-defined storage (SDS) solution for hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI).

The performance of this software—and your return on investment (ROI)—depends on the hardware you choose. Dell EMC’s long-term partnership with VMware ensures you get the most reliable infrastructure in easily purchased and deployed building blocks.

Dell EMC’s new AMD EPYC-based PowerEdge servers—like all of our PowerEdge servers—have been pre-configured, tested and certified to reduce deployment risks, improve storage efficiency, and let you quickly and easily scale storage as needed. And each vSAN Ready Node includes the right amount of CPU, memory, network I/O controllers, HDDs and SSDs that are best suited for VMware vSAN.

Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes are the easiest way to optimize your servers for vSAN. And Dell EMC is the first and only server provider to offer vSAN Ready Nodes in AMD EPYC-equipped servers.

To learn more, contact your Dell EMC representative at 1-866-438-3622.

In the UK right now, there is a huge spotlight on the crisis being created in our seas by plastic waste. The reality of the situation is scary – and hard to ignore. Every single year, 8 million metric tons of plastic enter our seas, endangering marine life and polluting our waters. And it’s not just marine life being affected. With the vast majority of plastic pieces in the ocean less than 5mm in size, these are often eaten by fish, meaning anyone who consumes an “average amount” of seafood ingests approximately 11,000 plastic particles a year – a scary thought when you consider that over exposure to plastic chemicals can lead to certain forms of cancer, immune disorders and obesity.

Thanks to programs like the BBC’s Blue Planet II and campaigns like Sky Ocean Rescue, we are all now aware of the scale of the problem, but awareness is only part of the equation. We also need to take action. At Dell, we were first made aware of this issue in 2016 through our relationship with actor and activist Adrian Grenier and his work with the Lonely Whale Foundation. This led to us looking for ways to address the ocean plastics challenges within our business, and packaging was a natural place to start. So, following an initial feasibility study, we launched a pilot project in early 2017 working with groups from coastal areas around the world to collect plastics from waterways, beaches, shorelines and areas near the coasts. We now use this plastic waste to create packaging trays for our XPS 13 2-in-1 and more recently, our XPS 15 2-in-1 laptops. We anticipate that this pilot will keep 16,000 pounds of plastics out of oceans initially, and in support of UN SDG Goal 14, we are committed to increase annual usage of ocean-bound plastic 10x by 2025.

And while we were proud of this meaningful contribution to tackle the issue, we quickly identified a critical barrier to successfully scaling their efforts: absence of an operational and commercially viable ocean-bound plastic supply chain. So, along with the Lonely Whale Foundation, with support from UN Environment, we set out to convene a group of companies to join forces to create an open-source initiative to develop the first-ever commercial-scale ocean-bound plastics and nylon supply chain. Called NextWave, founding members including Dell, General Motors, Trek Bicycle, Herman Miller, Interface, Van de Sant, Humanscale and Bureo, will share responsibility in development of a sustainable model that reduces ocean-bound plastic pollution at scale, while creating an economic and social benefit for multiple stakeholders. We think the work of this group will divert more than 3 million pounds of plastics from entering the ocean within five years, the equivalent to keeping 66 million water bottles from washing out to sea.

We believe collaboration is really the only way we’ll address many of the challenges facing our world today, which is why I was truly honoured to be asked to participate in a recent high-level meeting with The Prince of Wales’s International Sustainability Unit (ISU) on ‘Keeping Plastics and Their Value in the Economy and Out of the Ocean.’ Attended by His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales, C.E.Os and senior executives from a range of organisations including Government, private sector and N.G.Os working to apply principles of circular economy to the current plastic value chain, it was a privilege to represent Dell and the work we are doing, and have an opportunity to discuss best practices with others pursuing the same goals.

LONDON – UK – 31st Jan 2018.
HRH The Prince of Wales, as Patron, hosts a reception and meeting of the ISU plastics forum at 11 Carlton House Terrace in London
Photograph by Ian Jones

Reflecting on this meeting, what really struck me was the realisation that even three years ago, sustainability was typically limited to a subject matter expert within an organisation, whereas now, it is a critical part of business strategy and every single CEO and senior executive at the table was able to speak with authority on the role their company wants to play in finding solutions to environmental issues. I know in my role as general manager for Dell EMC in the UK and Ireland, I have conversations with customers every single day about how we are creating a more sustainable business for our company and the world around us, and how important it is for them to not only work with companies who are acting responsible, but also learn from us how they can adopt similar practices. It really does demonstrate the huge opportunities that collaboration presents for the corporate world to play a meaningful and measurable positive impact for the future – and I’m very proud to be a part of it.

If your company is interested in getting involved, you can apply or find out more at https://www.nextwaveplastics.org/apply/

From the Point of Care to the Data Center to the Cloud

Experience your choice of SAP Health – as off-premises managed cloud or on-premises in your data center (described below) LIVE at HIMSS18 in the Dell EMC booth #3613 or SAP booth #4821

Driven by current and future value from business processes and enterprise software, organizations across all industries are realizing the need for flexible IT consumption models. Here cloud computing is becoming more and more important. Cloud computing adds higher flexibility and agility and can help to lower cost in terms of hardware, people and maintenance. This gives a wider array of business model options to the customer. At the same time, not all business processes can be transferred into a cloud system at equal speed. Some processes are more complex than others e.g. a full-blown SCM vs. a simple leave request, and some customers may have concerns about data security, as is the case with e.g. personal or health data.

At the same time, healthcare is undergoing a great revolution, due to several factors. This includes the emergence of AI/IoT-based analytics platforms, and the growth of data, especially in medical imaging and genomics. Evidence resides in areas like whole genome or population DNA sequencing, which used to take months at high costs, and which now can be done in a matter of days, if not hours. Our children will look at us in disbelief when we tell them that genetic screening for major risk factors was not available in our time. So, on the one hand, there is a great pull for making the most out of health data, yet on the other hand data handling and security constraints must be resolved.

The solutions provided by SAP Health rely on the SAP Cloud Platform to deliver on these promises. In that light, SAP works with the best partners in the cloud area, one of which is Virtustream, a Dell Technologies business. Virtustream and SAP are partners for a long time, both for cloud services and for technical innovations. The Virtustream Enterprise Cloud is built on a Dell EMC infrastructure foundation. In 2016, Virtustream announced the first S/4HANA customer running in the cloud. SAP and Virtustream work closely on new innovations, and this also encompasses partnering on SAP Health. The Virtustream Enterprise Cloud is purpose-built for mission-critical applications, with managed services that deliver the highest standards in availability, security, and compliance, addressing many of the data concerns that exist especially in the healthcare space. The Virtustream Enterprise Cloud applies to healthcare systems of record, such as SAP S/4HANA and EMRs, and systems of insight, such as SAP Health services, that require application performance and availability service level agreements for running 24×7 operations. This also encompasses compliance with regulatory frameworks such as HIPAA and HiTECH to protect patient data, and strong business continuity design – all with a cost-effective utility-based infrastructure service. Virtustream also meets data residency requirements, by region and even by country. Virtustream has hosting locations in the US, UK, France, Germany, and the Netherlands, all of which are equipped to support such data residency requirements. In addition, Dell EMC, which is also a Dell Technologies business, is one of the leading providers of infrastructure services for healthcare globally. Dell EMC supports both providers and payers, using the same architectures available in the Virtustream cloud. In partnering with SAP Health, Virtustream adds its compliance, scale, and cloud efficiencies to the already existing Health partnership between Dell EMC and SAP. Customers can quickly enhance their on-premise infrastructure with pay-for-use as-they-grow environment, and be confident that their patient data is fully protected. Thus, this joint approach can fully support the cloud-based solutions of SAP’s Health offer. These posts from our Direct2DellEMC blog provide some additional context and background on our existing engagement with SAP:

• 21st Century Computing: Dell EMC, Intel and SAP power better patient outcomes
• Partners in Personalized Medicine: Dell, SAP and Intel team up to provide optimized patient results
• Enabling Precision Medicine in the Era of the Genome with SAP Health and Dell EMC Isilon Data Lake in a Hadoop environment

The combination of Virtustream, Dell EMC and SAP Health supports next-generation precision medicine to provide personalized, best-in-class patient care. As healthcare customers look to launch new systems of actionable insight, like delivered by the SAP Health solutions, they need a trusted partner that can support on the intersection of data analysis and large-yet-secure data lakes, nourished from disparate data sources. It is crucial to deliver a robust infrastructure solution that addresses any concerns.

Want to learn more? Just visit us LIVE at HIMSS18 in the Dell EMC booth #3613. Dr. Marten Neubauer, our SAP Healthcare & Lifesciences expert with Dell EMC’s Global SAP Center of Excellence, will be there for you.

Six months ago I started working as a trainee at Dell EMC, the World’s Largest Privately-Controlled Technology Company. Even though it is a global and huge corporation I perceive Dell EMC as a genuine and authentic employer, supplier and innovator, and in the following post I will describe why.

Given my interest in technology, my willingness to support customers in a digital world and my passion for innovation, Dell EMC was for me an obvious workplace to apply for. I wanted to work with innovation and at the same time learn more about the tech- industry and market trends. After a couple months of insight in the company it has appeared to me that my idea of Dell EMC being innovative and a developing workplace, is correct. Not only has Dell committed 4.5 billion dollars to research and development of the company itself, but we support customers in innovating as well. We offer our customers the solutions they need in order to build their digital future and to free up time and resources for innovation.

As a trainee at Dell EMC I have the privilege to travel and experience a couple of our sites across Europe. During a stay in Amsterdam I got to meet graduates from 17 nationalities and some of the local staff in the Netherlands. This was when I first was introduced to the initiative Dell for entrepreneurs .

Dell for entrepreneurs (also referred to as DFE) was created 5 years ago in the US as a way for Dell to support entrepreneurs to gain the resources, expertise and solutions they need to succeed. The purpose is to network and get inspired by each other. DFE has, since it was first initiated, grown worldwide. It is now present in the US, Canada, Germany, Singapore, Netherlands, Spain etc. However, at the end of 2017, when I started my trainee position at Dell, DFE had not yet entered the Swedish market. Therefore I was determined to bringing Dell for entrepreneurs to Stockholm, Sweden. Together with a fellow colleague, we did some research on the Swedish market in order to find the best way of adapting DFE locally in Sweden. We attended startup-events in Stockholm and met with people that are engaged in the entrepreneurial ecosystem of our capital. Furthermore we interviewed representatives of DFE from other countries in order to understand their way of approaching the project. Eventually we anchored the project with the Swedish management team and together with an excellent team we are now starting the Dell for entrepreneurs journey in Sweden! This is an awesome opportunity, not only for myself, who gets to work with what I am passionate about; innovation, developing talents and connecting with others, but it is also a great way for the startups in Sweden and Dell EMC to network and get inspired by each other. The Dell environment has truly encouraged me to take own initiatives and to pursue what I am passionate about. At this present stage we are identifying ways to adapt DFE to the Swedish ecosystem in order to best support the local startups.

Finally, some thoughts around innovation and entrepreneurship. I believe diversity is crucial in order to succeed with innovation and entrepreneurship. Bringing people together from different backgrounds, industries and with different experiences is opening up for new learnings and insights. Furthermore, I believe that openness is important to innovation and successful cooperation. If you are open to other people’s thoughts and perspectives, you can connect different parties and understand different ideas. I believe the best innovations are created when we come together to work for a common goal. Winning together is one of the core values of DellEMC, and I see no better way than connecting with the startup world and its ecosystem in order to win together!

So, I’m at a business and technology conference where I just ate crickets for the first time. It’s not really what I was expecting at this event. But, I do know what to expect at Dell Technologies World, April 30-May 3.

Along with the awesome general session and guru speakers I wrote about yesterday, there will be a great opportunity for technology professionals to hone their skills and gain new certifications.

“You get to meet the people behind the technology we use every day, learn about strategy and products for the future and also be able to meet peers from around the globe. Different horizons with the same passion for greatness,” one of last year’s attendees, Aloys, noted.

Dell EMC Education Services recently launched a set of new certifications that help develop the highly-skilled talent who can help companies make transformation real, achieve business goals and lead the competition.

“These new certifications bridge skills gaps at every stage of transformational maturity. They establish and validate skills required for digital, IT, workforce, and security transformation,” Christine Fraser wrote here on Direct2DellEMC last week.

Education offerings and certification exams for converged systems and hybrid cloud platforms are available now. Multi-Cloud Expert certification will be available in conjunction with Dell Technologies World in Las Vegas.

Starting now, IT professionals interested in earning the Dell EMC Certified Master – Enterprise Architect credential can apply to be considered to appear before the Review Board; the first review session will occur at Dell Technologies World. Visit the Dell EMC Education Services website to learn more.

But don’t wait too long to register for Dell Technologies World, or you might miss out on some great prizes!

Yes, if you register before February 28 (TOMORROW!), you can select one of these great prizes: Ring video doorbell, Bose wireless headphones, Alienware gaming keyboard, YETI cooler or guest pass to the evening event.