Revolutionizing IT: Introducing Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure
In today’s complex IT landscape, businesses grapple with unpredictable costs, inconsistent operations, and limited visibility across cloud environments. To address these challenges, we unveiled the Dell APEX Cloud Platform family at Dell Technologies World, sparking excitement among our customers eager to simplify their hybrid cloud experience.
Today, we are thrilled to announce the availability of Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure.
This is the inaugural offering in the Dell APEX Cloud Platform family and the first Premier Solution for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI. This new Azure Stack HCI category only includes platforms that deliver the fastest time to value for Azure hybrid cloud through the deepest levels of integration with Microsoft.
Dell APEX Cloud Platforms represent next-generation infrastructure, providing consistent operations and greater control over workload placement by extending cloud ecosystems on-premises.
Strengthening Our Partnership to Simplify Azure On-Premises
The opportunity to extend Azure cloud services to on-premises environments is significant. According to an ESG study on multicloud application deployment trends, 48% of customers are expanding on-premises deployments. Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Azure offers an optimal solution for bringing Azure to data centers and edge locations.
“More customers are asking us to bring Azure’s power to their real-world locations, whether in factories, retail stores, or distributed sites. Through our partnership with Dell, we can deliver tailored Azure solutions to these edge locations,”
said Douglas Phillips, Corporate Vice President, Azure Edge + Platform.
“This new solution provides a seamless cloud-to-edge experience, allowing customers to focus on business transformation rather than infrastructure management.”
Enhancing the Azure Hybrid Cloud Experience
The Dell APEX Cloud Platform is designed to address key IT priorities. It simplifies management by ensuring consistent Azure operations across on-premises and public cloud environments via native integration with Azure Arc.
This deep integration and extensive automation, enabled by Dell’s APEX Cloud Platform Foundation Software, significantly reduce deployment steps—by 88%—compared to existing integrated systems, saving customers valuable time.
To ensure customers achieve the fastest time to value and receive comprehensive support, Dell ProSupport Infrastructure Suite offers solution-level support for Dell hardware, system software, and Azure HCI.
This includes onsite diagnosis, residency, data migration, data disposition, and education services, allowing internal staff to focus on other priorities.
“Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure marks another milestone in our mission to simplify the hybrid cloud experience,”
said Jeremy Rader, General Manager, Xeon Market Readiness, Intel.
“Based on PowerEdge and Intel’s latest 4th Generation Xeon Scalable processors, the platform delivers a 2x performance improvement for demanding workloads over the previous generation. We’re excited to continue our longstanding collaboration, focusing on innovation and meeting enterprise customer needs.”
Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure: Going Above and Beyond
While the new Premier Solutions for Azure Stack HCI category requires high levels of automation, integration, and collaboration with Microsoft, Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure surpasses these requirements with additional capabilities.
- Lifecycle Management: Offers near-instantaneous availability of new releases and patches within four hours of a Microsoft release. Single-pane, full-stack lifecycle management ensures the complete infrastructure stack remains compliant.
- Unique Automation: Provides automated cluster expansion, enabling rapid addition of on-premises infrastructure to meet workload demands.
- Edge Offerings: Soon, specialized nodes based on the Dell PowerEdge XR4000 edge-optimized server platform will be available, extending Azure to the edge with minimized cost, footprint, and complexity.
- Ultimate Flexibility: Future support for additional storage configurations with Dell software-defined storage will allow linear scaling of storage resources independently from compute resources, addressing diverse performance and scaling needs.
Meeting Customer and Partner Needs
The response from customers and partners has been overwhelmingly positive. Kyndryl, a strategic partner of Dell and Microsoft, is expanding its solutions with managed services for this platform.
“Kyndryl is helping customers modernize their mission-critical environments to a hybrid cloud model. As a strategic alliance partner with Dell and Microsoft, we’re excited about the Dell APEX Cloud Platform’s availability, providing consistent Azure operation across on-premises and Azure public cloud,”
said Kevin Powell, Vice President, Private Cloud Services, Kyndryl.
“We’re committed to leveraging the latest industry technology innovations from our ecosystem partners to deliver leading-edge hybrid cloud solutions.”
Existing customers, familiar with the benefits of our automated software, are eager to adopt the APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure to extend their on-premises Azure deployments.
“Over 5,000 organizations rely on LoopUp to bring global communications to the cloud, supporting flexible work, increasing productivity, simplifying complexity, and reducing costs,”
said Chris Stanley, VP of Network Operations, LoopUp.
“The deep software integration and lifecycle management of Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure will help us scale, deliver cloud telephony innovations faster, and maximize the value of our Azure hybrid deployment.”
“As organizations adopt hybrid cloud strategies to power digital experiences, they need efficient solutions to manage it all from edge to core data centers to public cloud,”
said Olivier Ménez, Marketing Director of Digital Services, Orange Business.
“Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure, with its deep integrations and automation, will help us build and manage our customers’ data and applications in hybrid environments easily.”
Explore more about APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure:
Dell.com/Azure
Link/Azure Stack HCI Solutions
