Stay Competitive With Next Generation OEM Solutions - Dell EMC Certifications

An independent survey recently predicted that companies that engage in above average levels of OEM partnership have the opportunity to accelerate sales growth and cost reductions by 35 and 45 percent by 2025. On a more negative note, the survey also predicted that by 2025, up to 50 percent of current businesses will cease to exist.

Digital dilemmas

Here’s the big question – which side of the wave of disruption, do you want to be on? The wave can either propel you forward, leave you floating, looking for the next one to chase or immerse you in the deep. We all know that staying relevant and competitive is tough. There is no end game. New capabilities are affecting every industry and show no sign of abating.

Customer experience is a key differentiator, yet expectations are rising and there’s the sheer pace of technology changes to contend with. Take, for example, supply chain security. It’s no longer enough to worry about the protection of your own IT systems but you now have to think about that of your critical suppliers. How much do you know about the third-party components in your solution and where they originate from?

There are also challenges finding the right people – you need a slew of engineering talent, not just to develop your IP but also to manage integration, networking and the underlying platform. Business continues to get more complex.

Next gen solutions

What can you do differently to stay competitive and accelerate growth? In my book, you have stay ahead of the curve and outpace disruption by innovating faster. I believe that as industries evolve through digital transformation, solution builders and their customers need a whole new generation of solutions to support their applications. We need horses for courses – the same old, same old isn’t going to cut it any more. A picture paints a thousand words so let’s talk a few industry examples.

Digital transformation in manufacturing

For example, take the typical manufacturing plant. In the beginning, we had manual production with humans doing the work. Smart machines then arrived, freeing workers up to do more value-add activities. Smart factories were the next evolution, leveraging inventory and analytical systems. Machine vision then arrived on the scene to bring higher levels of accuracy to assembly and product inspection. Fast forward to today. Welcome to the era of the smart, interconnected factory, capable of linking into core business systems and shaping customer demand to match the factory and supplier capabilities.

Increased appliance workload

All good but here’s the crunch – with all these additional demands, the appliance workload is increasing all the time. Smart devices are continuing to feed even more data into the mix. In the smart, interconnected factory, your appliance now needs to be multi-functional, managing everything to do with production, from supply and demand modelling, and communicating with suppliers through to prioritizing production schedules and ramping up or down certain factories.

Digital transformation is pervasive

Healthcare is another great example. Increasingly, technology is changing how patients and doctors interact with artificial intelligence being used for rapid and accurate diagnostics. In the telecom world, we can predict network usage and optimize for customer demand before a problem occurs. In smart surveillance, AI can analyse live video to stop crime in real time, allowing a single set of eyes to cover many cameras at once. When suspicious activity is detected, the relevant camera is highlighted and security personnel are called, only when needed.

Data deluge

Apart from offering sophisticated solutions and an improved customer experience, what do these four examples share What is the Edge?

It may sound like an obvious question but what is the Edge? Where is it located? The short answer is that can be wherever you want or need it to be. There’s no single definition. For example, in the telecom world, the Edge is considered anything not located in the core data center.  The Edge might be a micro data center placed in a sub region of a large city.

Meanwhile in a smart city environment, the Edge might be a smart traffic light or a video surveillance camera. It could be processing video to count the number of pedestrians on a sidewalk to avoid sending all the raw video to the cloud or sending only when necessary or interesting.  In the transport or maritime industry, might be talking about the back of a truck or a ship on the high seas collecting engine data watching for anomalies and uploading data when available bandwidth is present. In many cases, we’re talking about challenging environments. As a result, rugged and highly available systems blended with the ability to withstand extreme temperatures are critical characteristics.

in common? The answer is not just data, but real time understanding of the data. However, this tidal wave of data is threatening to overwhelm and consume us. Having an architecture that can handle this is critical. Surviving the wave is no longer enough. It’s all about being prepared to ride and surf the data for the benefit of your business and your customers versus going under.

In tandem, of course, we’ve seen huge advances in compute power, moving from the traditional single-purpose operating systems to virtual environments and multi-functional appliances, all the way through to converged and hyper-converged solutions.

The age of containerization and offload

Well, get ready – Next Gen Computing is the new frontier! Think highly available compute power, extending from the Cloud to the Core to the Edge, elastic scalability and software-defined everything. By wrapping functions in a virtual machine or container, you can treat that function as an atomic entity. The advantages are that you can independently roll out or replace virtual functions in a modular fashion without impacting other functions.

The modularity of these functions also allows you to build a multi-purpose solution. For example, in the case of the smart, interconnected factory, you can drop both the virtual machine vision solution plus a failure predicting solution into a single appliance, size it and go. It really represents the best of every world.

Of course, as individual appliances need to run faster, you’ll need to offload capabilities to pack more processing power into denser space. It’s all about mapping what your workload needs to do and choosing the right accelerator – be that FPGA, GPGPU or ASIC.

Data collection and analysis

Of course, compute is just one half of the solution. It’s also going to matter where compute is done. In terms of analysis, I believe that industry needs to move to the Edge for data collection and real-time analysis while continuing to avail of a centralized Cloud for overall infrastructure. It’s usually not an either/or – you probably need both.

It may sound like an obvious question but what is the Edge? Where is it located? The short answer is that can be wherever you want or need it to be. There’s no single definition. For example, in the telecom world, the Edge is considered anything not located in the core data center. In this instance, the Edge might be a micro data center, placed in a sub region of a large city.

Meanwhile in a smart city environment, the Edge might be a smart traffic light or a video surveillance camera. For example, it could be processing video to count the number of pedestrians on a sidewalk to avoid sending all the raw video to the cloud or sending only information that’s necessary or interesting.

Act on insights in real time

The advantages are clear. With the Edge, you can process data close to the source and act on insights in real time. As more and more data sets are generated, it’s simply not going to be possible to send all data to the Cloud, at least not in real time, when they are most valuable. From a cost perspective, it makes sense to intelligently aggregate data at the Edge and send only what’s interesting or relevant out to the Cloud. In a lot of workloads, the Edge can be used to make quick data-based decisions with the Cloud just notified of the outcomes.

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Discover All the Opportunities around Dell EMC Microsoft Solutions - Dell EMC Certifications

Have you investigated the key reasons why you should be embracing and driving customer conversations around new Dell EMC Microsoft Solutions? We’ve now produced a full suite of training and sales enablement materials to help you get up to speed.

There are three compelling events that will invariably help you drive business opportunities:

• Cloud strategy as an essential aspect of Modernized Infrastructure

Every one of your customers is considering how the cloud can help their business, and many have already moved some applications and development activities onto Microsoft Azure Public. However, many (if not most) Microsoft Azure Public users are actually looking for a hybrid cloud option – because of data gravity or application alignment.

You can help them as they begin to work with the Microsoft Azure stack. How? By introducing them to Dell EMC VxRack AS for Microsoft Azure Stack, which brings the cloud to the workload, delivering infrastructure and platform as a service with a consistent Azure experience – both on-premises and in the public cloud.

Proactively driving the dialog around optimizing development environments in a hybrid cloud model leads to logical conversations around the customer’s on-premise infrastructure status, as well as the key business applications, such as Microsoft SQL.

It’s a compelling conversation and provides an excellent pivot point for further discussions around modernization and migration.

• Hyper-converged infrastructure helps drive tangible operational benefits

Are your customers using hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) yet? With approximately >60% CAGR through 2019, HCI is not just a trend – it’s a phenomenon. Customers are realizing tremendous operational and performance benefits from hyper-convergence, and Dell EMC has the industry’s broadest HCI portfolio.

Our Solutions for Microsoft Windows Server Software Defined (WSSD) / Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) deliver all the performance capabilities of Microsoft’s unique HCI design, with additional one-stop support – from the hardware, all the way to the software stack.

What’s more, with the added cost benefit of free inclusion with Windows Datacenter Edition licenses, S2D eliminates the investment considerations – making it the perfect solution for customers who have already embraced Microsoft business applications, and a great recommendation for you to suggest to customers who haven’t yet tried it.

• The SQL Server 2008 end of support opportunity can accelerate application migrations

Microsoft SQL is the most widely deployed database management solution on the market – approximately 3 times more broadly deployed than all other DBMS combined. So your customer’s SQL environment status should always be a topic of conversation.

This is a major, compelling event – it affects 90% of organizations currently running SQL and is a massive opportunity for you as it will force many organizations to migrate to the latest version.

You can provide significant business value by helping customers migrate to modernized infrastructure, with a modern operating system running on modern hardware and the most recent version of Microsoft SQL Server.

Become a trusted advisor for the entire Microsoft data estate

Whether they’re on their journey to Microsoft Azure cloud utilization, reaping the benefits of HCI modernization via Microsoft WSSD/S2D, or leveraging the enhanced data analytics and expanded business benefits delivered by Microsoft SQL, the Dell EMC Microsoft Solutions portfolio addresses your customer’s entire Microsoft data estate.

These new pre-tested, pre-validated and fully certified Solutions help you support your customers on their journey towards Modernized Infrastructure, while also positioning you as a trusted advisor for optimal migrations and integrations.

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Save Time and Resources with Server Automation - Dell EMC Certifications

Today’s IT departments face significant challenges on several fronts. They need to manage multiple workloads, respond quickly, and decrease downtime across both the IT infrastructure and the wider organization – while also making a positive contribution to the overall strategic direction of the business. Do your customers typically complain about these frustrations too?

It’s a demanding task list, of course, but not an impossible situation. The solution lies in the ability to implement successful server automation – because embracing IT automation generally increases performance while also creating business advantage.

Automating helps companies to take advantage of a more efficient data center. Which means that, with the right tools and processes in place, your customers can save time and crucial resources. When they’re not required to spend so much time on routine tasks, IT staff can take on more strategic activities that add value to the organization.

Server automation can help free up time and resources

It’s clear that making a smart, strategic investment to automate the server infrastructure and use intelligent systems management tools can help increase productivity.

In a new eBook1, Dell EMC states that server automation helps companies overcome common frustrations such as:

• Slow response time (only 30% of business users consider their IT to be distributed, agile and flexible);
• Inefficient management (nearly 70% of time is spent maintaining existing IT environments);
• Increasing downtime (up to 75% of downtime is caused by manual and disconnected IT processes);
• Customer retention (IDG predicts a 25% drop in customer retention in 2019 for those failing to incorporate automation into their roadmap);
• AI implementation (71% of organizations say inefficiencies due to lack of server automation are a challenge to their AI strategies).

Meeting all the needs for modern server infrastructure

Likewise, in its recently published analyst paper2, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) maintains that the three key components of successful IT automation are speed, security, and efficiency.

The report sets out 8 essential tips for implementing successful IT automation – and details how the Dell EMC OpenManage systems management portfolio meets each of the 10 requirements for modern server infrastructure.

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Data is Everywhere in EMEA - Dell EMC Certifications

For the past 25 years, I’ve been lucky enough to work in the technology solutions industry and witness some truly exciting business trends. One of the most prominent in recent years has been the rise of data. Just under a third of all internet users come from EMEA, each one contributing to the quintillions of bytes of data created every minute. However, more than half of businesses aren’t making use of that data. With so much raw, untapped potential available to companies, why is so much valuable data left forgotten in data centres?

When I speak to our customers, it’s clear they understand the advantages of using data. They know that some of the most promising and profitable business opportunities are driven by data. They read about how valuable data is – after all five of the world’s largest six companies are data companies. And like many organizations all over the world, they start to gather as much as possible. But is data truly valuable if it’s not being utilized?

Unlocking the power of data is the next big challenge for CIOs. From my experience with the big data movement in EMEA, I see four key current business trends which are reliant on data.

Digital Transformation

Digital transformation has been one of the largest areas for investment among businesses in recent times, acting as a key driver to support growth through efficiency and innovation. According to IDG’s digital business study, 89% of organizations have adopted or have plans to adopt a digital-first business strategy. To truly benefit from digital transformation, data is required to help guide strategic IT investment decisions, as well as providing insight into which areas are performing as expected.

Artificial Intelligence

AI is huge consideration for our customers. According to Forrester, 70% of enterprises will implement the technology this year. When it comes to AI, a machine can only become as smart as the data you’re plugging into it. Just like with actual people, if you starve an AI of information, it will struggle to become clever. The more data is fed into the algorithms, the faster it can learn and refine its predictive analysis. Successful machine learning depends on large and broad data sets.

The relationship between data and AI is very much a two-way street. As AI gets smarter it can reveal patterns in a dataset which we wouldn’t be able to find ourselves. Unlike humans, an AI can simply look at what numbers correlate without any unconscious bias which helps to find relationships in huge datasets.

IoT

To say that IoT is a broad subject would be understating it somewhat. The number of opportunities that exists within this technology umbrella encompasses everything from manufacturing to healthcare. As the surge in IoT continues in the B2B space, tens of billions more data gathering devices are brought online, creating increasingly more data. With such large amounts of data comes the challenge of storing it. During a year where data regulations and breaches were rarely out of the news, how and where a business stores and uses data is a major consideration.

Smart Cars

One sector we are seeing each of these aspects come together in EMEA is with smart cars, particularly in France and Germany. We are edging closer to the holy grail of connected cars – the fully autonomous vehicle, which requires an on-board system that not only processes incoming data in real-time, but also makes informed decisions. Getting to that point, however, requires the collection of millions of miles’ worth of data in order train the machine. Data will be the ultimate differentiator between the services that manufacturers come up with. In the connected car example, it will require a massive data set – we’re talking in the exabytes – to train the autonomous vehicles before they become a reality.

As one of the most promising times for businesses, I’m excited to see how we can help to navigate our customers towards a robust data strategy. The good news is that as technology rapidly rises to the top of the agenda, even more data will be used. During our presentation at the AI Summit, we predicted a 100 fold increase in data that actually goes into analytics come to pass. If this happens, we will likely see a boom of new capabilities and innovations across many industries across EMEA.

Ultimately, data remains the linchpin of our customers’ digital growth and strategies, helping to make services and products better around the world. To witness the true potential of current and future technology trends, businesses still have work to do on using the data we are gathering. Unlocking the power of data isn’t just a race to hoard information, it’s requires a holistic approach to data from capture to the data centre and then delivering it to the right systems at the right times.

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