What a week. Now that I have had a day to recover, let’s discuss Dell Technologies World. What happened, what was interesting, and what does this mean for the future?
Now, let’s start by discussing the new product announcements, which were both numerous and impressive. For example:
- There is a new Dell EMC Unity XT midrange all flash array, which is NVMe-ready and faster than its predecessor, 2X faster according to Dell EMC, more efficient, and just better. A win for midrange storage customers.
- Dell EMC increased the scale of its Isilon scale out file storage platform by 75% and with the ability to scale performance with capacity, performance increases by 75% as well. These capabilities are essential for the modern file workloads, which demand high performance access to massive file stores. File data isn’t just big anymore, it’s bigger and fast.
- On the PowerEdge Side, Dell EMC announced the new Dell EMC DSS 8440 Server for Machine Learning, a 4U 2-socket server with room for up to 10 NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPUs and a ton of local storage for compute-intensive, analytics/machine learning workloads; a next gen platform tailored for next gen workloads.
But the star of the show was the Dell Technologies Cloud. Dell is combining Dell EMC infrastructure with VMWare Cloud foundation to deliver a hybrid cloud solution that can be deployed as an integrated system in a rack with the option to be consumed as a managed service if desired, while leveraging VMWare Cloud Foundation to extend seamlessly into public cloud on AWS and Azure (announced this week). The net result is a simple to use, simple to deploy hybrid cloud infrastructure that extends the management paradigm of data center easing IT’s journey to the hybrid cloud.
But, there is more to this solution than just the immediate benefits. Before the show, I posted that the biggest question that Dell had to answer is who is Dell Technologies? Since the acquisition, Dell Technologies has seemed like a holding company or maybe a conglomerate. Multiple divisions that may collaborate in the field, but limited integration in the engineering offices. This year that changes.
By branding its cloud solution the “Dell Technologies Cloud” and not Dell EMC, Dell is making a statement that this is a combined solution, and the family is working together. In a similar fashion, Dell announced the Dell Technologies Unified Workspace that integrates technology from VMware, SecureWorks, and Dell.
Therefore, I consider this year’s Dell Technology World the most important one in years. This year we got to see where Dell want to take its family of products, a future of collaboration, more combined innovation, and more value for its customers.
I did, however, hear some naysayers at the conference solely focused on technical integration work, while ignoring the benefits of the management, logistics, and services integration. I like to think of Dell Technologies as a fleet of ships. In previous years, they each had their own objectives and trajectories and were pointed in different directions. This year they are all aligned and driving full speed ahead with a single purpose. The naysayers are focused solely on the distance traveled while ignoring the work put in to point them in the same direction. Now that the fleet is running together, the real fun begins. I expect big things for Dell in the coming years. Let’s see what happens.
