Transformative Innovation is a Trendsetter in IT - Dell EMC Certification

Over the last year, I’ve shared my thoughts on what I believe is part of a winning strategy.  Staying focused, committed, determined and working as a team to deliver on your plan – these attributes and a bias to action set up any organization for the win. How you jump and clear hurdles running full speed ahead — that makes all the difference.   It’s what keeps your strategy on track.

We at Dell Technologies play an important role in ensuring our customers have what they need to be resilient through the dramatic technology shifts under way – and take on Digital Transformation notably as their biggest asset, data, holds the keys to their ability to derive a competitive advantage through unlocking the power of that data.

Today, I reflect once again on the power of a winning strategy and the power of a team that works with speed, resilience and determination to deliver nothing less than the best.  Our Storage business has yet again, delivered its third consecutive quarter of revenue gains as reported for Q3 FY19.  And now, as reported by IDC’s latest 2018 Worldwide Enterprise Storage Systems Tracker, our Storage business has delivered its third consecutive quarter of year-over-year share growth. IDC reported a 31.3% revenue share in external storage for Dell, Inc. – representing +23% year-over-year revenue growth and +2.6 points of year-over-year share gain.

I have a favorite saying…two dots make a line – three dots make a trend.  The trending growth in our Storage business demonstrates that Dell EMC is delivering innovation that best meets our customers’ needs in a world awash in vast amounts of structured and unstructured data – driving new requirements in data storage, protection and analytics – at the edge, in the distributed core and cloud.   And that innovation is being broadly lauded across the ecosystem – with PowerMax 8000 and Dell EMC Unity 650F both taking home CRN 2018 Product of the Year awards; and Gartner recognizing Dell EMC as a “Leader” in its 2018 Magic Quadrant for Distributed File Systems and Object Storage for our Dell EMC Isilon and Dell EMC ECS platforms.   AND, our SC Series 5020 midrange array secured further recognition for Dell EMC Storage with the 2018 Editor’s Choice from Storage Review.

There’s way more to celebrate here and Dell EMC’s Storage President Jeff Boudreau does so in his latest blog.  Amazing work from the best Storage team in the industry.

Also trending is our growth in Servers and Networking – where again, we saw our eighth consecutive quarter of year-over-year revenue growth in Q3 FY19. Our Data Protection team’s Purpose-Built Backup Appliances (PBBA) gained share year-over-year for its second consecutive quarter in Q2 according to IDC, and our HCI business hit 14 consecutive quarters of year-over-year growth in Q2 CY18.

Further, our PC business continues to emphasize that the PC is very much alive and well — 23 consecutive quarters of year-over-year unit growth according to IDC[i] – talk about a trend! Through the first three quarters of 2018 we saw 7.1% growth, which is way higher than the paltry 0.8% growth of the industry as a whole.

These accolades and innovation are proof positive that we know what our customers need to be game-changers in their own rite.

So as I look ahead to the next year, I’m more optimistic than ever about our opportunity and more importantly – the opportunity for our customers to take advantage of what’s possible through Digital Transformation – arming their workforce with incredible innovation and services that keep them engaged, productive and resilient, and ensuring their IT strategy has them set up for nothing short of success and a strong competitive advantage.  We do this through our commitment to deliver innovation at the edge, notably as our customers prepare for 5G; leadership in Multi-Cloud flexibility as part of our continued and deep collaboration with VMware – enabling customers to achieve the right on- or off-prem, public AND private cloud strategy that works for them;  and, by advancing the capabilities throughout our entire IT portfolio with AI and Machine Learning for intelligence and automation

Success Secrets: How you can Pass Dell EMC Certification Exams in first attempt

Dell Helps Prepare Texas A&M Students for the Digital Era

To prepare students for a constantly changing, connected world, higher education is creating more personalized and collaborative learning environments. Colleges and universities are in the middle of a significant shift in educational models, delivering both unique learning models and student campus experiences through digital transformation. Students are increasingly taking advantage of technology on demand to meet their own learning needs and chart their own path to workforce readiness.

With the likelihood of a workforce shortages in many industries, we need to be looking for new ways to help build a future-ready workforce. Today’s students–who are digital natives–are the key to solving real world problems. According to a recent Dell Technologies study on Generation Z, 80% of Gen Z (those born after 1996) aspire to work with cutting-edge technology and more than a third are interested in IT careers. Yet, 94% of the Gen Zers are worried about having the right skills and experience. Universities are finding a way to tap the potential of budding innovators and by giving them an opportunity to show off their tech savvy, while also giving students the soft skills to make them more confident as they prepare to enter the workforce.

Specifically, Texas A&M engages students with immersive learning with Aggies Invent, a 48-hour intensive design experience which engages 60+ students in multidiscipline/multi-level teams in hands-on projects that will push their innovation, creativity, and communication skills. The end goal is to provide students the opportunity to acquire skills essential to becoming successful innovation leaders and support them in founding startup companies.  These events are held monthly during the academic year and have different themes. This past weekend, I had the opportunity to participate as a mentor as Dell with Intel and Nvidia supported the Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) competition.

Participating students were asked to address challenges using AR and VR solutions, in a wide range of industries including healthcare, first responders, education, military and designers. To reinforce the immersive experience at the event, students were provided with Dell Precision 7730 workstations, VR technology (HTC Vive headsets) and AR technologies including Microsoft Hololens, Magic Leap headsets and Meta headsets. In addition, Dell and supporting sponsors lent their expertise to assist students all weekend long with mentoring and assistance with the technology solutions, product development as well as marketing.

Over the course of 48 hours, students self-organize into teams and selected a challenge that they would like to  solve.  In the first few hours of the competition, the teams identified the specific need to address, developed three different options to solve the challenge and presented to a panel on how their plan will deliver a unique solution to address their challenge. From there the teams worked to develop the concept, produce a 90 second video describing their idea and a final 10 minute presentation in which they presented to the judges.

For me, the most of exciting part of the challenge was the ability to work as a mentor with the student teams.  Students wanted guidance on a number of different activities.  Technical guidance included helping them understand the different uses of AR and VR technology and how to determine which might be the best fit for their solution and what development platforms are being used today for content creation.  As they presented their plans, the Dell team provided feedback on presenting their solution, including Powerpoint and presentation best practices.  It was exciting to see how much the students progressed as a team over the course of 48 hours from their initial concepts to the presentations to the judges.

Success Secrets: How you can Pass Dell EMC Certification Exams in first attempt

DEA-2TT3 Cloud Infrastructure and Services Version 3 Exam

Overview

This exam is a qualifying exam for the Associate - Cloud Infrastructure and Services Associate (DECA-CIS) certification. This exam focuses on building cloud infrastructure based on a cloud computing reference model. It includes various aspects of cloud such as applications, cloud services and orchestration, modern infrastructure (physical, virtual, and softwaredefined infrastructure), business continuity, security, and service management that are essential for building a cloud infrastructure. This exam also focuses on the comprising technologies, components, processes, and mechanisms for each of these functions. A limited number of questions refer to product examples that are used in the training to reinforce the knowledge of technologies and concepts. Dell EMC provides free practice tests to assess your knowledge in preparation for the exam. Practice tests allow you to become familiar with the topics and question types you will find on the proctored exam. Your results on a practice test offer one indication of how prepared you are for the proctored exam and can highlight topics on which you need to study and train further. A passing score on the practice test

does not guarantee a passing score on the certification exam.

Exam Topics

Topics likely to be covered on this exam include:

Digital Transformation and Cloud Computing Reference Architecture (10%)

• Describe digital transformation, business and IT challenges, and IT
  transformation key focus areas
• Describe essential characteristics of cloud computing reference
  architecture, service models, and deployment models

  Application, Cloud Services, Orchestration, and Modern Infrastructure
  (32%)

• Describe the need for application transformation, characteristics of

  modern applications

• Describe cloud service functions, catalog, portal, service lifecycle,

   automation, and orchestration

• Describe physical, virtual, software-defined infrastructure, and

  infrastructure deployment options

Cloud Security and Business Continuity (37%)

• Describe security threats and related security mechanisms

• Describe the role of GRC

• Describe cloud service availability and fault tolerance mechanisms

• Describe data protection solutions

1-866-464-7381 Cloud Service Management and IT Transformation (22%)

• Describe cloud service portfolio and operation management

  Describe the key focus areas of transforming IT

The percentages after each topic above reflects the approximate distribution of the

total question set across the exam.