Open Networking Turns 5 - Dell EMC Certifications

Five years ago, Dell EMC embraced a radical notion — the disaggregation of networking hardware and software to give customers more flexibility, better investment protection and a clear path to future innovation. This new networking paradigm gave customers the ability to break free from proprietary, monolithic and costly networking appliances. Open Networking was born.

This disaggregated approach, which started in the data center with top-of-rack (ToR) switches, quickly led to a profusion of innovation and efficiency, allowing hardware and software vendors alike to focus on the aspects of the stack they know best.

On the software side, Open Networking has created big opportunities for companies such as BigSwitch, Cumulus, Pluribus Networks and even Microsoft with its open source Software for Open Networking in the Cloud (SONiC). Pure software players have enjoyed a bigger role in driving network efficiency, functionality and capability, and startups can focus on creating innovative networking functions without having to manage investments in hardware development and manufacturing.

For hardware vendors, Open Networking has led to a more standards-based, collaborative design approach, using off-the-shelf silicon and enabling manufacturers to deliver better-than-ever performance and quality, at lower costs.

And all of that gets us to the heart of what Open Networking is about: Giving customers unprecedented flexibility and choice, cost savings, ease of management, time to value, time to innovation and a network that creates measurable business value.

Over the last five years we’ve brought Open Networking to a range of Dell EMC solutions, such as the modular and massively innovative PowerEdge MX platform, and to hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) with the introduction of Dell EMC Smart Fabric Services, an “easy button” to radically simplify and automate network configuration—the hardest aspect of HCI implementation. SmartFabric Services reduces up to 98% of the network configuration steps and administration through integration with VxRail Manager and VMware vSphere.

Next Evolution: Software-Defined Wide Area Networks (SD-WAN) & Campus

The next evolution takes the same premise of allowing software to play a greater role and applies it to other places in the network beyond the data center, such as SD-WAN.

Enterprises have long faced the challenge of enabling their remote sites to connect with each other and communicate. Traditionally, they accomplished this by using function-specific appliances, but today, innovative software like VMware SD-WAN by VeloCloud is making it possible to address this challenge running on x86-based infrastructure, or as a virtual machine as part of a larger network function virtualization deployment.

In the near future, we can expect the Open Networking model to expand beyond its roots in the data center to campus networks. Dell’s hardware roadmap contemplates this shift, with major updates to our campus portfolio planned in 2019.

And of course, there is 5G. As service providers roll out 5G, geographic distribution will be a challenge if they choose to use function-specific appliances. That would mean putting single-use equipment in certain un-serviced locations simply to prepare for the possibility that services will be needed there someday.

Instead, they could deploy multi-purpose resources close to the edge and use software to deploy specific services as the need arises. If that is the chosen approach, we can expect to see another wave of innovation and progress, as hyperscale organizations like service providers often drive most of the initial growth for open technologies.

It’s been five years of steady improvements in Open Networking, and there is a great deal of opportunity remaining. As always, Dell EMC will continue to be a leader in pushing for and providing standards-based, open technology. The abundance of innovation and unquestionable success of Open Networking is a shining example of why we champion this approach.

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Digital Transformation with Healthcare Solutions Take You to the Next Level

Next week, the Dell EMC Healthcare-Life Sciences team will join over 40,000+ health IT professionals, clinicians and executives from around the world at the HIMSS19 Annual Conference & Exhibition, the largest health IT event in the industry. This year’s conference theme is “Champions of Health Unite,” and Dell EMC is helping our customers and partners rise to the challenge of tackling complex issues like next-generation infrastructure, multi-cloud, IoT, high performance computing / artificial intelligence for clinical genomics and pathology, virtual / augmented reality, and cybersecurity. We will also highlight how our technology solutions can, and are, taking healthcare organizations to the next level – from the point of care to the data center to the cloud.

The explosion of healthcare data coming from EMR systems, connected devices, high-performance computing for precision medicine (i.e. clinical genomics, pathology), and IoT is forcing organizations to rethink their data strategies and next-generation infrastructure to future-proof their IT environments. To fully leverage the data capital residing across the healthcare ecosystem, we will also be emphasizing two important trends to unleash data: the rise of multi-cloud frameworks, and the need for an IoT strategy to support data analytics at the edge.

To optimize the use of data with timely access and a unified view of available data sets for safer patient care collaboration, healthcare organizations must advance their adoption of multi-cloud operating models for standardizing and automating common provisioning, deployment, monitoring, data protection and security services. A multi-cloud operating framework enables IT to become a broker of IT services as it provides the blueprint with the appropriate architectural approach and governance/standards to bring together private, hybrid, public and specialty cloud services into a single comprehensive, multi-cloud operating approach, while reducing risk and complexity.

Healthcare providers can also reduce their risk as they build out their healthcare IoT strategy to speed up ROI – from patient to provider to cloud. To take advantage of the IoT opportunity, organizations need to connect the physical world with the digital, starting with real-time monitoring for visibility, then adding analytics and eventually, automation.  Each step builds confidence in the next. The IoT continuum spans the edge, distributed core and cloud, with zones of intelligence that perform analytics while it matters, where it matters and how it matters – optimizing value for the health system. In addition to IoT use cases for video monitoring and patient sitters, we will highlight an open, scalable platform that includes the ability to simplify data collection, manage devices on the network, centralize data storage, provide on-demand analytics, and integrate networking.

Leveraging our robust healthcare partner ecosystem and strategically aligned businesses, Dell EMC is helping healthcare organizations across the globe power their Heath IT, Precision Medicine, Connected Health, and Security transformations. The drivers of industry change continue to propel innovation across the patient care continuum: clinicians are looking to unlock the value of patient data with actionable analytic insights to make measurable impacts on patient care delivery, researchers require the latest genomic technologies to push the boundaries of individualized treatment plans, patients expect more involvement in their personal care, and care teams demand improved interoperability to enable timely access to the right information to make the accurate decisions at the point of care.

At the Dell EMC booth #3159, please join us to hear directly from our customers on how they are making their digital transformation real every day with essential infrastructure solutions at the center of their services and operations, leading to improved workflows and patient engagement. For speaker schedule times, please click here.

No matter where you are in your digital transformation strategy, we look forward to seeing you at HIMSS19 to discuss how we can help your organization modernize, automate and transform your data center using industry-leading converged infrastructure, servers, storage, devices, and data protection technologies.

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The Power & Possibilities of a New Year - Dell EMC Certification

As we near the finish line of the 2018 partner program, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on what a phenomenal year it has been. When I stepped in to lead Global Channel, OEM & IoT just over a year ago, I spent my very first day in role at a Partner Advisory Board. I can vividly remember the enthusiasm that was in the room that day, for our collective futures and the opportunity in front of us. This was an opportunity to learn from dozens of strategic partners and get a true assessment of what was going well, and where I would need to place my efforts in the coming months. It was exciting, invigorating, energizing on that day, and remains just as much so today.

In all the conversations I’ve had with partners this year, I’ve continued to be amazed by their commitment and active participation. We treat your feedback as a gift and it helps inform our priorities, raise the bar and leap beyond the status quo. Thanks to you, today we are better delivering on our promise to be Simple. Predictable. Profitable.™

Simple.

Your feedback shaped our #1 priority for the year: make it easier to do more business with Dell Technologies. Earlier this year we appointed Darren Sullivan to lead a team focused on transforming our partner tools and processes. We’ve made some big improvements: accelerating accurate quoting, getting you the best price faster, reducing exceptions and fast-tracking rebate and MDF payment. But we’re not done. This remains one of my top priorities and you’ll continue to see more improvements and results through 2019.

We are also focused on making it easier for you to do more business across the full Dell Technologies’ family of brands. We recently kicked off a pilot of the Dell Technologies Partner Framework, helping us test and expand the program in the coming years. The goal is to offer you a fully operational Dell Technologies’ status and benefits, business execution, and centralized resourcing. This is the framework of the future – supporting your transformative selling motion.

Predictable.

You asked for more predictable engagement with the Dell core sales team, and we took that feedback to heart. This year we launched the Partner Preferred Program, designed to help you drive new business with more competitive discounts, a revenue true-up for our sales teams to mitigate friction, and most importantly, partner of record protection. Plus, we’ve updated our processes around Rules of Engagement, so Dell’s regional sales leaders and the channel leadership team have full visibility to enforce consistent guidelines. Going forward, we’re looking at new, predictable forms of account protection. Stay tuned for that in the new fiscal year.

Profitable.

Our storage portfolio was a key focus area and we’ve listened attentively to your feedback. We’ve concentrated efforts on making you more profitable with programs such as Partner Preferred, Competitive Swap and Tech Refresh.  We’ve simplified our portfolio positioning, launched proof of concept and Demo unit programs and introduced new products, like PowerMax, to address competitive threats. Thanks to your guidance and these new programs, the Dell Technologies channel is on fire. In Q3, storage order revenue was up 12% Y/Y, server revenue was up 38%, client revenue was up 13% Y/Y. Partners were rewarded lucratively for their successes, especially when they sold the full portfolio. In fact, partners who sold all three lines of business earned 8x the revenue as compared to partners selling two lines of business, and 21x the revenue as compared to partners who sold only one line of business.

These highlights only scratch the surface of what partners have helped us accomplish this year. Your feedback also helped us win awards, create new Partner Technical Advisory Boards and become a more trusted partner. Not to mention, over the past year the Dell Technologies Global Channel has delivered $49 billion in orders.* We have you to thank for this incredible success.

Looking towards Program Year 2019:

All new beginnings hold infinite possibilities, and 2019 is no different. It’s the year of the data-driven digital ecosystem, when we’ll continue to unlock the power of data to deliver value to businesses in ways never imagined a few short years ago. 5G will come to life, edge computing will kick into high gear and Gen Z will enter the workforce with higher technical expectations and sophistication than any generation before. Through all this change, Dell Technologies will be by your side, helping you deliver transformational solutions and navigate unchartered territories. Together, we’ll help our customers reach new heights.

In 2019, we will continue to work tirelessly to be seen as the best in your eyes. With your guidance and partnership, we’re raising the bar on what it means to be Simple. Predictable. Profitable.™

As we close out the 2018 Program year, I have a few asks of you:

• Finish Q4 strong. Stay focused on new business, storage and services.
• View the Program Tracker to ensure you’ve met your desired tier’s revenue and training requirements.
• Register for the February 6th Dell EMC Partner Program broadcast, where we’ll announce the details of the 2019 program and initiatives
• Register for Global Partner Summit, our biggest Dell EMC Partner event of the year.

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Wyse ThinOS 8.6 Extends Smooth Real-Time Communication on Dell’s Clients - Dell EMC Certifications

Companies all over the world are recognizing virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) with thin clients as a prime solution for some of their most pressing endpoint security and client management challenges. But until recently, it wasn’t the ideal solution for users that conduct real-time audio and video conferences using popular services like Microsoft Skype and Cisco Jabber.

With the launch of the latest version of our flagship thin client firmware platform, ThinOS 8.6, Wyse thin clients now offer additional exciting options for these enterprises, thanks to expanded support for high-quality unified communications products.

How ThinOS 8.6 Enables Better Communication

The challenge that typically comes with using unified communications products on VDI has to do with where the signal is processed. For example, if an employee Skypes with a vendor in another country over your VDI connection, the audio-video stream of their conversation must be processed and unpacked by an intermediary — a virtual machine on your server — before being sent to the employee’s device.

This puts a big load on your server’s CPU and causes latency issues, particularly if you’re part of a large organization where 500-plus users may be Skyping or Jabbering at the same time. If both parties are using VDI — say they work for the same company but are based in different offices — this so-called “hairpin effect” is only magnified, as the communications traffic must go through two virtual machines on the way to a target device.

Now if the clients can shoulder some of the load by handling the audio/video processing on the endpoint and communicating directly with the other party – you can deliver a better call experience while also reducing the overhead on the servers.  A win-win scenario!  Prior to this release, ThinOS could support Skype offload under Citrix environments using RTME. With 8.6, we’ve now extended our capabilities to include Jabber offload for Citrix environments with Cisco’s jVDI offload module and Skype offload with the VMware Horizon client. This gives ThinOS the ability to offload this workload for the lion’s share of the unified communications products now leading the market using a highly secure and easy to manage client.

Not only will end users appreciate the enhanced user experience and excellent voice and audio performance, but IT administrators can lighten the load on their VDI servers in the process and thus make more efficient use of those expensive resources.

The Power of Dell Thin Clients for Today’s Challenging User Demands

By adding these capabilities to our ThinOS clients, customers no longer have to trade off security and manageability benefits against the need to give their end users an excellent unified communications experience.

Our customers now have a range of powerful systems that offer ThinOS, including the sleek and compact Wyse 3040 that sports dual 2K monitor support and fits in the palm of your hand or you may choose a newly-introduced Wyse 5070 series platform, sporting the latest generation Intel quad-core CPU’s, true 4K displays, USB 3.1 type C and configurations with up to six monitors!

With this release, ThinOS continues to deliver the benefits of a robust and flexible firmware that can adapt to the ever-changing virtualization landscape. Moreover, it offers this support on a secure and manageable endpoint while delivering the best possible user experience for the workforce’s increasingly demanding and complex compute scenarios.

Choosing your workplace devices is about achieving the right balance among functionality, security, manageability and cost factors. With the launch of ThinOS 8.6 and its support for high-quality, real-time communications, you now have one more check in the “pro” column for Wyse thin clients and VDI.

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Cloud Training for Business Transformation - Dell EMC Certification

Discover how implementing automated IT service delivery can help organizations to realize significant business benefits as they work towards transforming their IT infrastructure. 

Of all the ways an organization can modernize and automate its IT infrastructure, opting to adopt an IT as a Service cloud operating model is one of the most effective in terms of making progress towards full IT Transformation.

With IT as a Service (ITaaS), much of the infrastructure provisioning, configuration and change management is automated. This means that line of business end-users and developers are largely able to self-serve and manage on-premises IT resources as and when their needs and workload demands change.

In an organization that’s successfully running ITaaS, management and orchestration software and API workflows combine to automate the delivery of services through hybrid and multi-cloud architectures ­– delivering a user experience that’s timely, responsive, cost transparent and sufficiently agile to fuel innovation.

The advantages of automated IT service delivery

While successfully leveraging automated IT service delivery is a key measurement of broader IT Transformation, it also offers major operational benefits on its own.

New research by industry analyst ESG1 has shown that there’s a positive correlation between running an ITaaS cloud operating model and increased IT and business agility, more streamlined operations, improved end-user satisfaction and – perhaps most importantly – greater business success.

One of the core functions of a cloud operations model is to reduce IT operational ‘friction’ – in everything from defining workload requirements and procuring infrastructure, all the way through to integrating and deploying systems. At organizations running ITaaS, requirements come straight from end-users; they select what they need from an IT-vetted service catalog. The infrastructure to fulfill their ‘orders’ is allocated from the organization’s highly virtualized and automated data center resources. It’s an approach that eliminates meetings, wait times and deployment times – leading to both greater IT agility and improved business agility.

Running ITaaS also removes manual IT-related bottlenecks to service delivery, which yields significant efficiency benefits across an organization. These include IT projects being completed under budget and IT staff being freed up from routine tasks such as deploying, managing, and monitoring infrastructure to focus on higher-value activities such as IT architecting, planning, and application development.

But that’s not all. To top it off, organizations running ITaaS also report higher levels of business success and being more optimistic about their competitive positions compared with companies that are yet to explore the advantages of automated IT service delivery.

How does implementing ITaaS affect IT maturity?

The new research study demonstrates that making the move to automated IT service delivery can play a key role in increasing an organization’s operational agility as well as its ability to achieve full IT Transformation.

Earlier this year, ESG conducted a survey of 4,000 IT executives from private- and public-sector organizations across 16 countries to evaluate their progress in embracing IT Transformation2 – and rank them as ‘Legacy’, ‘Emerging’, ‘Evolving’ or ‘Transformed’.

It discovered that ‘Transformed’ companies were nearly 10X more likely to be running ITaaS than ‘Evolving’ organizations (58% versus 6%). Of particular note was the fact that not one of the ‘Emerging’ and ‘Legacy’ organizations surveyed by ESG reported using ITaaS.

These statistics are now detailed in ESG’s Research Insights Brief on the fundamental role that automated IT service delivery plays in IT Transformation1.

ITaaS delivers clear benefits and supports IT Transformation

Overall, the ESG research found that moving to automated IT service delivery delivers significant operational and wider business benefits.

Compared with ‘Legacy’ organizations, the ‘Transformed’ organizations in the study – those companies that are leveraging ITaaS – are typically:

• 5X more likely to be ahead of their competitors in time to market (76% versus 14%).
• Nearly 15X more likely to report completing application deployments ahead of schedule (44% versus 3%).
• 5X more likely to operate an on-site infrastructure that’s as cost-effective (or more so) than the public cloud (71% versus 27%).
• 5X more likely to exceed their revenue goals by more than 10%.
• Completing 13% more projects ahead of schedule.

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Making Large Data Sets Easy with the New PowerEdge R740xd2 - Dell EMC Certifications

When we think of large data sets, Monday morning spilled coffee, traffic congestion and unpredictable delays come to mind. Cars and trains represent data traveling over the network at a rate that creates budgetary, space and performance constraints in the data center. Now for a sharp contrast, let’s visit Sunday mornings and think of foamy lattes, croissants and an easy-going pace. Enter the calming agent: The Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd2 can turn chaos into order in your data center.

Designed for data-heavy workloads

The PowerEdge R740xd2 is an enterprise content server that was built for data-intensive workloads like video surveillance, content delivery network, Microsoft® Storage Spaces, and messaging. The R740xd2 helps you deliver fast response times with up to two Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors. Large internal storage lets you abandon the maze of cords attached to multiple devices in your data center. With up to 364TB and 26 3.5” drives, the R740xd2 offers the highest raw storage capacity within the PowerEdge rack portfolio.[1] Fast networking and flash options let you fine-tune performance based on your changing requirements. Here is what Maurizio Davini, Chief Technology Officer, IT Center at the University of Pisa said about how the R740xd2 will help transform their data center:

“At the University of Pisa, we have research centres that are continually accessing large data volumes. The PowerEdge R740xd2 delivers fast performance by bringing compute closer to storage and lets us address new data with large internal storage. Supporting a large Exchange database, hyperconverged applications and HPC storage in a 2U rack server is amazing! With just two servers, we can address most of our on-premise cloud and core services storage requirements — with ample space to grow. OpenManage Enterprise is the base of our central management system and PowerEdge R740xd2 integrates seamlessly, immediately becoming a part of our production infrastructure.”

Simple to scale, easy to manage

More data does not equal more management time. Respond effectively to data growth by scaling out to 7.2PB in a 42U rack. OpenManage Enterprise and iDRAC automate administration and help rapidly deploy new server configurations. The R740xd2 also offers front-serviceable, enterprise-class drives so swapping them out is a breeze. You can view status and set alerts for all attached physical and virtual disks through an intuitive interface. Minimize worry with a hardware warranty for Dell EMC drives and an option to choose the ProSupport extended warranty offering.

Safe, on-premise storage

Keep your data securely onsite and avoid rising cloud fees with high-capacity, cost-efficient internal storage. The R740xd2 provides layers of security to help you protect, detect and recover quickly from cyber attacks. Secure passwords and event logging protect your large data sets from theft. Authenticated, signed firmware runs on the server and components like drives and RAID controllers to help prevent mishap or mischief.

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Dell EMC Cyber Recovery Software Delivers Data Protection Defense Against Cyber Attacks

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• New Dell EMC Cyber Recovery software manages and automates isolation and recovery of critical data backups to protect against ransomware and destructive cyber attacks
• Helps ensure copies of most critical data are protected and available so business processes can be resumed as quickly as possible in the event of a cyber attack
• Enables and integrates with security analytics tools that leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to deliver extensive analytics of protected data
• Dell EMC Services available to advise, design, deploy and implement a tailored Cyber Recovery solution

DELL EMC CYBER RECOVERY SERVICES

Dell EMC also offers Cyber Recovery Services focused on providing a solution which is tailored to the customer’s exact data protection and cyber security requirements. This is accomplished through an expanded set of services including:

Workshop: During this one-day workshop, consultants share Dell EMC best practices for business resiliency with a strong focus on cyber recovery.

Advisory: The advisory service builds on the Workshop by adding development of a high level cyber recovery strategy. The customer’s current and desired state is analyzed to create a tailored strategy for cyber recovery preparedness.

Advisory & Roadmap: The advisory & roadmap builds on the advisory service with a deeper dive into customer’s cyber recovery strategy to recommend an optimized implementation roadmap. This includes developing a cyber recovery maturity model report, which benchmarks the customer’s current state against industry best practices. Also included is a critical materials workshop and information session to collect data on the customer’s applications to understand criticality to the business. These considerations will help drive recommendations of data and applications which should be protected by the Cyber Recovery Vault.

Deployment: New deployment services help maximize the capabilities of Dell EMC Cyber Recovery Solutions. They can be added to the ProDeploy Enterprise Suite or purchased separately and are available in two variations to fit customer needs.

Implementation: Dell EMC Services can also customize the implementation of the Cyber Recovery Solution to account for a variety of additional use cases. This can include hardening of additional Dell EMC technology, developing detailed operational procedures and implementing custom dashboards and reporting.