Take Control of your Cloud Strategy with a Data First Approach

The cloud can be a powerful tool for optimizing business outcomes, which is why our customers are actively mapping out their cloud strategies. When embarking on the journey to the cloud, you must carefully consider how your data is managed – as data is increasingly becoming the most valuable asset of your business today. A cloud strategy therefore requires a data first approach, where you can ensure your data is: secured, protected, available where and when you need it, delivered at the performance levels required by your applications, and within compliance of your company policies.

Dell Technologies is focused on being your trusted partner on your multi-cloud journey with cloud enabled infrastructure. Today, I am pleased to introduce a host of new and enhanced cloud capabilities, designed to help make the cloud work for your business and your data.

First, we are excited to announce Dell EMC Cloud Storage Services which delivers Dell EMC Storage as a public cloud service for Disaster Recovery as well as many multi-cloud use cases like analytics, test/dev and more. Cloud Storage Services frees you from system management, while getting the benefits of enterprise-grade data security, performance, capacity, replication, and availability in the public cloud. The flexibility of this offering allows you to optimize cost, while keeping you in control of your data.

Disaster Recovery in the Cloud

Secondary data centers have relatively high overhead. You’re paying for real estate, power, cooling, compute, network, storage gear, and people to manage it. The gear just sits there idling – waiting for an unforeseeable event. Which is why customers are looking to public cloud for disaster recovery, but to get it right you must cover management of applications and the data, for failover and failback.

Cloud Storage Services enable organizations running VMware environments to implement an enterprise-grade Disaster Recovery solution, using VMware Cloud on AWS as the secondary site. VMware Site Recovery Manager along with native replication of the Dell EMC storage arrays enable automation of DR operations. This makes it easier and more affordable to achieve lower RPOs and RTOs and provides complete operational consistency from on premises to the cloud. Nobody else has this level of integration!

We also have options for customers who want their DR solution to leverage AWS, GCP or Azure. With Cloud Storage Services, customers no longer need to maintain a secondary site. They gain the flexibility and economics of the public cloud, while maintaining control of their data with enterprise-grade Dell EMC Storage.

Multi-Cloud Data Services with Zero Gravity

Multi-Cloud Data Services give you the freedom to choose your cloud and just as importantly, change your mind. One constant we can all rely on is change, and your cloud strategy needs the flexibility to adapt:

• What if your business requirements change?
• What if the economics of running your applications change?

Are you locked in?

In addition, data sharing across clouds is becoming an area of interest for customers:

• What if different departments of your business want to operate on the same data sets, but are using different applications in different clouds?
• What if you want to share data sets with your customers with each using different clouds?

Are you copying data sets to multiple clouds?

Data has gravity, where it takes time, resources and money to move it. Dell EMC Cloud Storage Services offers multi-cloud access to data allowing you to leverage multiple clouds and switch between them without having to move the data. That’s zero data gravity!  You can avoid vendor lock-in by keeping data independent of the cloud, and you do not have to worry about high egress charges, migration risk, or time required to move data.

Infrastructure Insight in the Palm of Your Hand

Dell EMC CloudIQ is a cloud-based application that delivers insight, monitoring and analytics about your storage environment – empowering IT specialists to report, predict, and prevent problems. You can access it from anywhere on the planet, through any web browser or via the CloudIQ mobile app.

CloudIQ now supports our core primary storage portfolio – Dell EMC Unity, PowerMax, XtremIO and SC, and we’ve expanded it beyond the storage stack to include support for VMware and Dell EMC Connectrix.  We also plan to expand to Isilon and PowerVault by the end of the year. Users now have broader data center visibility through a single, cohesive portal with insights ranging from object level, to storage, to the network.

CloudIQ continues to grow smarter with new advanced analytics for capacity forecasting, performance impact analysis, noisy neighbor detection and storage reclaim. Plus, the re-designed interface provides users with a simpler, more streamlined experience. Customers love it! In fact, CloudIQ adoption has grown 3x over the past year alone.

Clarity Through the Clouds

As your data continues to grow and become more distributed, spanning clouds, it becomes important to have the right tools to manage it all.

Dell EMC ClarityNow enables organizations to tag, locate, access and manage data in seconds – across file and object storage, in the data center or in the cloud. It also offers self-service capabilities to find, use, and move files to the appropriate storage tier. ClarityNow is helping customers take control of massive amounts of unstructured data today, and I’m looking forward to where we’re heading with it.

A Data First Approach to Cloud

The cloud can be a powerful tool for optimizing your business, and with data increasingly becoming your most valuable asset, your cloud strategy must take a data first approach.

Today’s introduction of our new Cloud Storage Services and data management capabilities demonstrates how Dell Technologies is focused on being your trusted partner on your multi-cloud journey. By working with you to understand what you are trying to do with cloud, we can apply a data first approach, and deliver cloud enabled solutions designed to help make the cloud work for your business and your data.

Technology & Teamwork Come Together to Print 3D Prosthesis for Children

Autumn Egnatuk is a typical four-year old girl. She loves gymnastics, her beloved doll “Rainbow” and the Disney movie Frozen. She’s curious, full of energy and enjoys playing with friends and her younger sister. The fact that she was born without a left hand doesn’t seem to slow her down. She can do everything her preschool classmates can – and then some!

After she was born, Autumn’s parents Ronnie, an OEM Enterprise Product Specialist at Dell EMC, and his wife Sarah researched everything they could about limb differences and prosthetics. Most guidance recommended starting early. However, their initial attempts to get a prosthesis for Autumn were met with frustration and disappointment.

The Egnatuks secured an appointment at a world-renowned hospital that caters to people with amputations and limb differences, hoping for assistance and a long-term plan for Autumn. Unfortunately, they were told that because Autumn was meeting age-appropriate developmental milestones, she didn’t need a prosthesis. Insurance doesn’t typically cover them for children, despite research showing multiple benefits. A prosthesis not only increases functionality for children with limb differences, but it can help build self-confidence, which is critical for kids during this period of their lives.

Children like Autumn who have dysmelia (the term for all types of congenital limb differences) not only want to blend in with their classmates and friends, but they want – and deserve – the increased functionality that a prosthesis can bring. Determined, Ronnie and Sarah continued their quest and finally found a company in Houston, TX, that had experience in pediatrics and specialized in upper limb prosthetics. They began the tedious process of filing for medical necessity with their insurance company. After seven long months, Autumn was finally approved for a passive prosthesis device. It looks like a doll’s hand but does not function. It was a good start, but not a long-term solution for an energetic and growing little girl.

3D Printing Prosthesis

In September 2018, an article on Dell’s internal website caught Ronnie’s eye. Tara Sawyer’s story “Changing Lives Through 3D Printed Prosthetics,” described Dell employee Keith Dyer’s daughter Phoebe, and her journey to getting a 3D printed arm. The Dyers live in the UK, and like Autumn, 7-year-old Phoebe has dysmelia. The Dyer family worked closely with Deloitte Digital to get 3D printed hands for Phoebe. Phoebe loves her prosthesis, and even got to show off her custom Manchester United hand to the players at a home game!

Ronnie was intrigued and reached out to Phoebe’s dad Keith to learn more about their process. He wondered if this process might be something they could look in to for Autumn back home in Texas. Around the same time, Seamus Jones, who works in Technical Marketing for Dell EMC, was also inspired by the story and reached out to Keith to see how our team in Round Rock might be able to help locally. Seamus knew that we had 3D printers on site because our OEM team often develops custom solutions for customers. We have the design (CAD) and 3D printing expertise to accomplish a project like this. Keith put him in touch with Ronnie, and the “Autumn Project” in Texas was soon underway!

3D Printing

It takes approximately 14 hours to print a child’s size hand using 3D printer, and another four+ hours to assemble. But the time and cost are minimal compared to a traditional prosthetic.

For the Autumn Project here in Round Rock, Seamus coordinated with engineers Ric McKinney and Karl Hamand, who readily agreed to help. Normally, most of the 3D printing done onsite is industrial black. But they wanted to give Autumn the opportunity to customize hers, so the PowerEdge Product Marketing team agreed to sponsor the ABS and PLA material in additional colors. Autumn chose a yellow and orange version, and a light blue and white “Frozen” version.