Dell Technologies is committed to minimise cloud complexity overall

​​​As the cloud has expanded over the last decade, many businesses have adopted a variety of cloud solutions to improve their performance and lower costs for certain workloads. However, due to the mixing of several platforms, organisations are facing a level of complexity and chaos in the management of cloud resources. Ramesh Jampula, vice president (IT) India and APJC Regional CIO, Dell Technologies explains to Express Computer how the enterprise IT giant is committed to meet its customers evolving needs as well as their broader digital transformation ambitions. Read the full interview..

How is Dell helping organizations tackle the challenges related to modernising their infrastructure for a hybrid cloud environment?

Industries are strategically shifting from multicloud strategies to hybrid cloud environments for driving optimum results in their businesses and extracting maximum benefits from their cloud investments. As the cloud has expanded over the last decade, many businesses have adopted a variety of cloud solutions to improve their performance and lower costs for certain workloads. However, due to the mixing of several platforms, organisations are facing a level of complexity and chaos in the management of cloud resources which is further hindering the kind of innovation that brought them to the cloud originally.

On the other hand, hybrid cloud environments with a common management plane promise to bring cohesion, integration and simplicity to cloud operations. Dell Technologies Cloud simplifies management of hybrid cloud infrastructure by providing a single operational hub with a consistent management experience.​​ It is built on VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) and is a set of infrastructure solutions with flexible and tightly integrated IT and management options, enabling enterprises to take control of their cloud needs. Through Dell cloud solutions, organizations can build and manage clusters and workloads across hybrid infrastructure using a single web interface to manage hybrid cloud deployments. They can also safeguard data at every layer of the stack, ensuring that uniform security and networking policies are followed throughout the organization. Dell Technologies is committed to support its customers to modernize their data centers, scale their businesses on-demand, leverage multiple clouds, migrate to the cloud with ease and accelerate use of modern applications.

Gone are the days when organizations were comfortable with heavy capital expenditure in on-premises IT infrastructure. Since cloud began showing promising advances in issues concerning scalability, elasticity and faster provisioning, its usage has only increased. What are the top concerns of CIOs in the current scenarios?

Business increasingly views IT as an agent of change rather than just a service entity. Driven by mega trends of mobility, big data, and the cloud, IT is often asked to help transform and automate business processes while reducing overall expenditures.

Every CIO is aware that their IT infrastructure now underpins the success of the business. Scalable, integrated compute, network, and data platforms are the prerequisites to delivering exceptional experiences for customers and team members. As more organizations pivot toward a cloud-first strategy the two most challenges they tend to face is legacy technology and IT workforce with the required skillsets.

Technology is more and more becoming operating expenditure (OpEx) driven than capital expenditure (CapEx). Is this shift happening now and what are your views regarding the same?

Gone are the days when there used to only be one way an organisation could pay for its IT infrastructure, i.e, as an upfront, capital expense (CapEx). To support the business, CIOs had to procure physical servers, racks, network pipes, hardware, along with infrastructure, including storage space and facilities, cooling systems, and the associated software, thus causing businesses to incur increased costing in CapEx. However, over the years IT has evolved and Cloud computing is shifting IT spending to a pay-as-you-go financing model.

Further, the delivery of cloud-based technology solutions ‘as-a-service’ has with time turned IT operations into an operational expense (OpEx), as opposed to a capital expense (CapEx), thus removing the need for any hefty upfront investments and replacing them with predictable monthly fees. In fact, CIOs across organisations are realising that these smaller ongoing costs versus cyclic infrastructure builds are bringing more value to the business and changing perceptions of IT, being considered as a cost heavy industry.

Dell Technologies has also launched Project APEX, enabling businesses to acquire hardware, storage, software, security, and cloud services in a single offering with complete end-to-end maintenance and management, further making it scalable and affordable with no overage charges under its hybrid subscription and consumption model.

How do you wrap the year 2022 for Dell? Going forward, what could be the key factors for Dell in supporting organizations and partners with new technology led opportunities?

The year 2022 has demonstrated that digital transformation and innovation are extremely crucial. In 2022 industries across the globe have transitioned and embraced genuine multicloud architectures and delved into service models. Dell Technologies is committed to meet its customers evolving needs as well as their broader digital transformation ambitions. Dell has provided expert technological solutions and empowered modern businesses to implement a multi-cloud strategy that gives them complete control over their data and applications. Dell has also worked on providing strategic solutions that are cost-effective and minimize cloud complexity overall.

Dell Technologies recently shared potential New Year’s resolutions that organizations should commit to so as to make the most of emerging technologies in 2023.

Managing the long-term costs of cloud and deciding nature of multicloud edge architecture should be amongst top CIO priorities for 2023

Empower customers and partners to align their cybersecurity strategy across the data center, clouds and at the edge

Determine quantum safe cryptography risks for the organization and establish early skill sets to take advantage of quantum computing​​