Dell Technologies World: Cheryl Cook Discusses Multicloud Opportunities
The channel marketing VP on Project Alpine, Dell's Snowflake partnership and more.
May 5, 2022
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Channel Futures: How do you see partners using Project Alpine to deliver managed storage services?
CC: That’s the sweet spot for partners because what we’re going to bring through Project Alpine are automation and a consistent operational experience that they can leverage when they’re building their hosted services around it. And they will be able to add on to their industry or vertical expertise for those workloads. It’s going to be something that helps them deploy faster. And it’s going to be an easy, repeatable way for them to deploy revenue-generating services because of this automated, consistent way that they can go offer multiple customer engagements.
CF: When will you begin training for partners and other enablement for Project Alpine?
CC: We’re still working on that. We just announced Project Alpine here at the show.
CF: How do you see Project Alpine changing how partners deliver storage services?
CC: Project Alpine is our new platform to allow consistent management and experience across multi cloud, and with this week’s announcement, we are extending it to the hyperscalers. What that means is we are putting the same software that you could run on premises, and providing the intelligence and the automation, to be able to move data and replicate data to those hyperscaler clouds.
CF: What are the implications of this to partners in terms of billing and cost management, given that a key emphasis of this is letting organizations use their Azure or AWS commitments or credits?
CC: I think it gives them flexibility, because we’ve got a lot of customers and partners right now that say, “I have these credits I can’t use.” So, we can give them the means with which we’re simplifying the complexity that they now have on having to manage and orchestrate multiple environments by giving them a consistent platform. And it enables them to draw down against some of those credits inside one of those — that’s a win-win for them. And that’s a part of the business relationship between us and the hyperscalers. And it’s a win-win for Dell because we can deploy our software there. It’s ultimately what the customers want.
CF: Do you think more customers are going to want to use it in a managed environment? Or are they going to want to continue doing it themselves?
CC: I think yes and yes. What we’re seeing and kind of what we’ve acknowledged is one size doesn’t fit everybody, even large customers. We’re calling it multicloud by design rather than by default. For various reasons, not all workloads are created equal. Some are better on premises, some are better in the public cloud — that’s just the way it’s going to continue. And I think small and large customers alike are going to have multicloud.
CF: What’s your message regarding the new PowerStore, PowerMax and PowerFlex storage software updates?
CC: The powerful part of all those is the fact that we’re really beginning to see the accelerated development of this agile development methodology that we brought with the launch of PowerStore and have taken to PowerMax and PowerFlex. That’s because it’s like a DevOps environment where you’re just releasing new software features and software capabilities that don’t require any change to the hardware and don’t require any kind of upgrade or replacement. If you look at the new replication services and some of these new features, it’s just a great expression of where that new agile development is starting to bear fruit, on the timeliness with which we can get new features.
CF: Based on your experience and interactions with partners, where are they regarding that DevOps mindset and the shift to more agile operations?
CC: Mileage varies depending on the partner. But it’s a great example of what we did in the design and the development of the platform. Partners would be leveraging that same kind of practice, maybe on an infrastructure deployment. But if you look at our PowerStore product, it’s one of the fastest growing storage offerings we’ve ever brought to market as a company. It’s in the sweet spot of the high-growth part of the market, because it’s in the mid-range. Whether it’s performance characteristics, or density on replication and deduplication and all the other services, it’s differentiating the competitiveness of the platform. And that agile development is what’s enabling us to get those features to market faster.
CF: And as those features come out faster, do you think your storage partners are ready to get a handle on those more continuous cycles?
CC: I Absolutely do. We listen to our partners, and we have customer advisory panels who provide input and requirements on what they need most and what they value most. Much of what was announced here is the result of feedback from our partner community that said this is what they needed because it helps them deploy faster.
CF: What’s your view of how Dell has navigated the global supply chain issues?
CC: Personally I have a tremendous amount of respect for [Dell vice chairman and COO] Jeff [Clarke] and Kevin Brown [Dell’s executive VP for global operations and chief supply chain officer] and the Dell team that manages that. I think we’re the best in the business. If I’m humble enough, I think we showed up in ways that even exceeded our own expectations. Personally, with the most challenging, dynamic, fluid environment, our advantage is the scale of the company, the buying power and leverage and the relationships that we have with our suppliers. We just try and be as transparent and as honest with our customers and partners on realistic lead times as we can. Sometimes it’s not the news we want to give them. But we will be honest, and we will try and improve on those. But I think we showed up better than our competition. I honestly think that’s what’s helped us achieve some of the results that we did, in both unit shipments share gains, revenue gains — nobody would have envisioned that in one of the most difficult pandemic work experiences that we would be as busy as we were, and we’d be achieving historic results for the company. It’s pretty remarkable.
CF: And yet, despite your relationship and purchasing power with your suppliers, if they’re having issues, there’s only so much you can do in many cases.
CC: We’re struggling with some of the same global constraints that everybody is. We’re not immune. But I just think we have the ability through all those other things I referenced to be more responsive, more transparent and more flexible. I think it has served us well. And I think it has served our customers well.
CF: Regarding the Snowflake partnership, it sounded like that got the loudest applause from the audience. Were you surprised by that response?
CC: My reaction is Snowflake has a great following. They’ve got some amazing innovation and technology. And it’s all 100% cloud-based. If you look at Dell’s strengths, Dell is in more data centers in more countries and deployed around the world on premises than anyone. Now we will support data and data exportation to the Snowflake cloud for analytics and analysis. Bringing the Snowflake analytics capability on premises is important because some customers don’t want to send their data to their cloud. I think that’s why the room responded to it. They liked the capabilities that the analytics insight that Snowflake offers, but don’t want to have their data leave their data center. And the only way you could do it until now, was within their cloud.
CF: What is the go-to-market plan with Snowflake?
CC: Some of our biggest storage partners have an existing relationship with both Snowflake and Dell, and they can take their expertise, and now go into a customer and say, “We can give you the best of both.” They can actually now deploy and extend some of those Snowflake services.
CF: Regarding the Snowflake partnership, it sounded like that got the loudest applause from the audience. Were you surprised by that response?
CC: My reaction is Snowflake has a great following. They’ve got some amazing innovation and technology. And it’s all 100% cloud-based. If you look at Dell’s strengths, Dell is in more data centers in more countries and deployed around the world on premises than anyone. Now we will support data and data exportation to the Snowflake cloud for analytics and analysis. Bringing the Snowflake analytics capability on premises is important because some customers don’t want to send their data to their cloud. I think that’s why the room responded to it. They liked the capabilities that the analytics insight that Snowflake offers, but don’t want to have their data leave their data center. And the only way you could do it until now, was within their cloud.
CF: What is the go-to-market plan with Snowflake?
CC: Some of our biggest storage partners have an existing relationship with both Snowflake and Dell, and they can take their expertise, and now go into a customer and say, “We can give you the best of both.” They can actually now deploy and extend some of those Snowflake services.
DELL TECHNOLOGIES WORLD — The common takeaway from this week’s Dell Technologies World was the company’s focus on delivering offerings designed with multicloud support. That starts with the three major hyperscale clouds — AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. But it all also includes on-premises infrastructure in the data center, the edge and colocation facilities.
Dell previewed Project Alpine, a forthcoming management tool that will enable mobility of data and applications across those multicloud environments. Initially, Dell will offer it either as a software subscription or as a native public cloud service. Project Alpine will let Dell’s core on-premises file, block and object storage run in public clouds, initially AWS and Azure. It will include a unified tool to deploy, manage and protect data both on premises and in the public cloud.
Dell’s Cheryl Cook
VP of channel marketing Cheryl Cook told Channel Futures what partners should expect from Project Alpine. Cook also shared her thoughts on the new storage releases, Dell’s partnership with Snowflake and discussed the company’s supply chain.
Channel Futures: Could you shed some light on Project Alpine? What does it mean to your partners and when they will get access to the preview?
Cheryl Cook: We’ll get a group of early access partners or pilot partners, who will give their feedback on both business models as well as features. The exciting part about Project Alpine is many of our partners today are already engaged with the hyperscalers — AWS, Microsoft and Google. And they’re working with us. So they’re going to be uniquely well positioned to give us the insights and the feedback on deployment management and ease of use.
See our slideshow above for the rest of the Q&A with Cook at Dell’s big event in Las Vegas.
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