Dell: APEX platform will provide more opportunity for partners
Project APEX launched at Dell Technologies World today to take on HPE's GreenLake
Dell has announced the launch of its new as-a-service platform APEX, bringing together all of the vendor's cloud and as-a-service offerings under one banner.
The company will use Dell Technologies World, which takes place today and tomorrow, to launch the service which it says will "simplify" customer experience by "providing self-service capabilities through a single unified console".
APEX was originally introduced as a project at last year's Technologies World but is set to be fully launched today.
"APEX is all about simplicity," Sam Grocott, Dell's senior vice president of marketing said.
"By taking an outcome-based approach, customers simply specify the outcomes they desire, and we at Dell take care of the rest. We package the right technology and services to meet these requirements, all in one subscription.
"APEX delivers more agility. Customers really want a transparent experience while paying for what exactly they use, which will provide them with that predictability and greater financial flexibility that they're seeking.
"It will put IT leaders back into the driver's seat and deliver the control that they're looking for over their business."
APEX will be made up of several different services, including data storage which provides "scalable and elastic storage resources on premises", Dell says.
This includes a partnership with data service provider Equinix, which Dell says provides an "ideal option for customers who may no longer want to manage their own datacentre but don't want to be forced into traditional public cloud model".
Cloud services, which are already available in the UK, will help customers "bridge the gap between resources on premises and those in the public cloud" with subscriptions to private and hybrid clouds both available dependent on need, according to Dell.
APEX will also include custom solutions which are made up of two offerings - Flex On Demand, a pay-per-use experience that allows customers to select services for a monthly payment package, and Datacentre Utility.
The services will all be available through the new APEX console, providing customers with "self-service access to the catalogue of APEX services".
Akanksha Mehrotra, VP of marketing for APEX, says its introduction will benefit Dell partners by providing "additional opportunity, partnership and profitability".
"We believe that it will become an important way for us and our partners to interact with our customers over time," she said.
"A joint mission of APEX for us and our partners is to reduce IT service complexity so partners can focus on higher value opportunities. We expect partners to develop and deliver new solutions on top of APEX and because of the velocity with which we deliver APEX.
"Along with the ability to scale on demand, our partners will be able to benefit from this increased agility, enabling us to together jointly capture new markets and realise new revenue streams.
"We are targeting offering our channel partners an up to 30 percent incentive on our APEX turnkey outcome-based offers which is the highest in the industry and we already offer a 20 percent incentive on our custom offers, which is also one of the highest in the industry."
Dell is also announcing changes to its Edge computing, including the introduction of a new EMC streaming data platform as well as new manufacturing solutions.
The Apex launch comes as Dell's competitors launch new as-a-service options for their products and services. HPE only this week added storage-as-a-service to its GreenLake portfolio, while Pure Storage launched Pure as-a-service.