Microsoft Ignite 2024 Unpacked | Varun Chhabra, Dell Technologies

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Varun Chhabra

SVP, ISG Product Marketing

Dell Technologies

Three insights you might have missed from Microsoft Ignite

Multicloud AI strategies are revolutionizing how organizations approach secure, scalable and integrated artificial intelligence solutions across complex technology landscapes. As businesses prioritize seamless connectivity and robust data access, industry leaders at Microsoft Ignite 2024 spotlighted innovative approaches to simplifying AI deployment and enhancing productivity.Simplifying connectivity has become a critical focus due to the growing need for consistent access to data and applications in multicloud environments, according to theCUBE Research’s Rob Strechay and Bob Laliberte

Dell supports Microsoft Azure with focus on data security and simplified AI workloads

The announcement from Dell Technologies Inc. this week that it would introduce new products and services for Microsoft Corp. compute platforms points towards continued enterprise customer interest in data protection, resilience and security. It also highlights customer interest in simplifying deployment of AI workloads in multicloud environments such as Microsoft Azure.“Listening to customer feedback in this space, we’re providing a big enhancement to the APEX File Storage for Microsoft Azure offer,” said Varun Chhabra (pictured), senior vice president of product marketing at Dell. “We’re basically introducing a Dell-managed version

play_circle_outline Simplifying AI Workload Deployment and Management with Dell on Microsoft Azure

play_circle_outline New professional services for Microsoft Azure AI and Copilot+ PCs

play_circle_outline APEX Protection Services for cybersecurity and cyber resilience on Azure

play_circle_outline APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure provides fast time to value for hybrid cloud deployments

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Varun Chhabra, Dell Technologies

Varun Chhabra

SVP, ISG Product Marketing Dell Technologies

Rob Strechay, managing director at theCUBE Research, discusses AI technology ecosystem and Azure applications with Varun Chhabra, SVP of product marketing at Dell Technologies. They discuss enhancements to APEX File Storage for Microsoft Azure, providing managed file services optimized for AI workloads on Azure. Dell also offers professional services for Azure AI implementation and Copilot+ PCs. APEX Protection Services for Azure focus on cybersecurity and resilience. Dell offers services for aligning with industry standards like CMMC. APEX Cloud Platform for... Read more

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What enhancements have been made to the APEX File Storage for Microsoft Azure offer this year? add

What professional services is Dell rolling out in the AI space at Ignite, and what is an example of one of the services being offered? add

What is Dell APEX Protection Services for Azure and how does it help with cyber security for businesses? add

What are some key features of the APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure in relation to Azure Stack HCI? add

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Varun Chhabra, Dell Technologies

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>> Hello and welcome back to Microsoft Ignite 2024 Unpacked. I'm Rob Strechay, a managing director with theCUBE Research. One of the things we're really unpacking this week is the technology ecosystem and how organizations are looking to take advantage of AI and Azure to really build new applications on their corporate data. To help me unpack this is... I am excited to have Varun Chhabra, who's the SVP of product marketing for Dell Technologies. Welcome, Varun.

>> Rob, thanks for having me. It's great to see you.

>> Yeah, and long time no see. You had your analyst day a couple of weeks ago, and those days we got to see-

>> It was great to see you there....

>> some... Yeah, it was a lot of great stuff behind the scenes, but one of the things that was striking there is that you guys have had, obviously, a long working relationship with Microsoft, but Dell is simplifying AI workload deployment and management on Microsoft Azure. Why don't you help the people watching understand what you're working together, especially when it comes to that AI deployment?

>> Absolutely, Rob. So as you mentioned, AI is on the tip of everybody's tongue in the IT space. So no surprise that there's a lot of innovation there at Ignite and the announcements we're making with Microsoft here. The other place that we've got a lot of announcements to cover as well as in the... The other thing that usually comes up when you talk to CIOs is security and data protection. So like you said, let's cover the AI portion first. So last year we announced an offer. One of the things that we get asked by customers a lot last year was, "Hey, I'm using your file storage, your power scale file storage on prem for my high performance workloads, for my AI demanding file workloads. How do I take advantage of the same performance and scale heuristics on cloud and specifically on Azure workloads?" where some customers have some data and Azure some data on prem. So last year we had announced the Azure file storage, APEX File Storage for Microsoft Azure. And what we're doing this year with our announcement, and Ignite is listening to customer feedback in this space, we're providing a big enhancements to enhancement to the APEX File Storage for Microsoft Azure offer. We're basically introducing a Dell managed version of the offer. So this, we believe will be a cornerstone for AI-driven workloads on Azure, bringing that managed capability and managed advanced file services. The customers are looking for their data in Azure to be able to run demanding analytics workflows, HPC workflows, AI workflows on top of that data, that file data that's sitting on structured data that's sitting in Azure. And really, what this offer is, it's basically a fully native, a fully Azure native offer that has unified billing support, unified billing and support from Azure and managed by Dell so customers can instantly provision the right performance that they need. They can scale as they need, both scale performance or capacity through the Azure portal just like they would for an Azure service. And it brings that power scale file capabilities to customers that are running the workflows on Azure. So it's a really optimized for fast efficient data processing. It has support for bi-directional movement of data between on-prem and cloud and back between cloud and on-prem. And really, the thing that it meets the need for in the Azure ecosystem is the need for a high performance file storage platform with all the enterprise data services that customers are looking to Dell for.

>> Yeah. No, I think that to me makes a lot of sense, because as we know, I can't remember whose stat it is, but it's like 1% of corporate data is really in LLMs. And so you've got to bring the data to the AI in some cases, or the AI to the data. But what other services are being introduced to support that custom AI solutions for Microsoft Copilot and Azure in particular?

>> Yeah, you said it, Rob. What we hear from customers and on their AI journey and we have been hearing for the last two years is that clearly the interest is there. Clearly people love the technology innovation that's being rolled out, but often what we find, and I'm sure Rob, you see this as well for enterprise is a big roadblock comes before the technology. It's around optimizing or aligning strategy internally with different stakeholders, all of whom have different agendas and priorities. How do you think through what could be... In some cases, like hundreds of use cases, potential use cases, how do you pick the ones that are going to deliver the fastest value? How do you bring your data to bear, et cetera, et cetera? So professional services and advisory are really, really important part of the puzzle, is what we've found. And customers are looking to Dell professional services for help and looking to Dell for help beyond just the technology innovation. So for that, we've been rolling out a lot of different professional services in the AI space over the last couple of years, and what we're doing at Ignite is no different. So we've got three new professional services that we're rolling out. There's the implementation services for Microsoft Azure AI, so for example, for customers that are looking to take advantage of Azure AI capabilities on-prem through Azure Stack HCI. As you know, Microsoft provides that Azure AI services both on-prem as well as in the cloud. So customers that are looking to take advantage of Azure Stack HCI capabilities with Azure AI services, the implementation services that we're announcing really help customers get access Dell experts. We'll work with them to select one of their use cases, develop a market-ready prototype, think through what are the responsible applications using the AI services, what out-of-the-box capabilities can they use, how do they customize? Dell has experts really available to help customers with that. The second service is, as you alluded to, is really aligned with the other area where Azure or Microsoft rather, is putting a lot of focus in around AI innovation. It's with their Copilot+ PCs. So we've got accelerator services for Copilot+ PCs that streamline adoption of these AI powered PCs that are coming into the market. They provide tailored implementation plans, help optimize workflows for customers, and help them enable future-ready capabilities as they start to think about rolling out Copilot+ PCs amongst their workforce. And then finally, the third service is really attacking that third area of Microsoft innovation around AI, which is around Copilots, right? So we have services now that we're announcing for Microsoft Copilot Studio as well as for Azure AI Studio. And again, the idea here is to really provide our experience and expertise, our Dell experts who really understand and have had a lot of ad paths with deploying workflows on Copilot Studio, as well as Azure AI studio, and help customers develop and deploy these custom or bespoke AI solutions that really address their unique workflows and help them take advantage of their proprietary data and their strategic goals in there. So if I take a step back, then we're bringing to market, continue to bring to market AI capabilities like the ones that we're delivering with APEX File Storage for Azure, along with professional services for customers to take advantage of Copilot+ capabilities or Copilot+ PCs, I should say, Microsoft Copilot capabilities as well as Azure AI capabilities on-prem with Azure Stack HCI.

>> Yeah. No, I think that to me it makes total sense to bring the two together or all three together and the services because, again, finding people who have experience with this is like a needle in a haystack from that perspective.

>> That's right.

>> So bringing all of these services to bear. I know... I also liked... Even with all the Copilot+ AI PC thing, I mean, to me, the way that Dell looks at it as tier one and tier two applications, tier one being something like Copilot, it makes total sense, and especially with the hardware there to take advantage of, it's just-

>> That's right. Yeah....

>> killer.

>> Thinking through what you can deploy on a device versus in the cloud, et cetera. All of those are... The innovation in the space is so fast, Rob, as you know that what we're getting asked for most often is help and guidance based on our experience of deploying so many of these AI applications across different industries and different geos.

>> Yeah. So let's kind of take a little different tack because some of the stuff... You mentioned some of the APEX stuff, but Dell APEX Protection Services are really being brought to organizations to help them enhance cyber security and cyber resilience on Azure. How does that really work for customers and what have you seen there?

>> You know what's amazing to me, Rob, is that... or maybe not amazing but just remarkable, is that with all the noise that is with AI in this space today, if you look at all the latest and greatest surveys around what keeps CIOs up at night, it's cyber security. Given how digital every business is today, businesses can be brought to their knees through cyber attacks and ransomware attacks, et cetera. So not surprisingly, this continues to remain and remains as a really, really tough issue for our customers. So to help them with that, we have, as you mentioned, the Dell APEX Protection Services for Azure. And basically, what it does is it delivers enterprise-grade protection for customers for their data, but has a unique focus on resilience. We all know that it's... No matter how protected you are, you're still always vulnerable to ransomware attacks and cyber security attacks. So in addition to fortifying your estate, it's also really important to think about resilience when that attack does happen. So with APEX Protection Services from Microsoft Azure, what customers get are secure storage. So there's multiple layers of Zero Trust security built into it, data immutability encryption, multi-factor authentication, and RBAC. There's also a cyber vault that secures any critical data that customers mark off as such off the attack surface air gap, provide that capability to customers to be able to really put their really sensitive data in a cyber vault. And then finally, cyber vault analytics that leverage AI intrinsically to deliver superior threat detection, be able to isolate attacks when they happen before anybody else can detect them. And then assist with the recovery, using AI to help understand what's clean data, what data has been affected, et cetera, et cetera, and be able to help assist with the recovery as soon as possible so that our customers' businesses are not impacted. And all of this is done with Zero Trust security architecture built throughout, as I mentioned, AI driven detection and recovery. And then this is also the file storage offer that I talked about, is a managed offer by Dell. So Dell is managing this offer on behalf of the customers. We work closely with Microsoft Azure's team to deliver a native service, which simplifies adoption and ensures robust protection of customers' data assets. And this builds on what has already been a pretty big business for us. We have over 10 exabytes of customer data that's protected in Azure today using our protection services capabilities. And it delivers a really, really fast time to recovery. So 80% time to recovery is 80% less time spent on recovery compared to other solutions that are out there. So this is building on a lot of customer deployments, a lot of experience with customers in Azure, protecting 10 exabytes of data.

>> Yeah. And I think you're also talking about some new security features and services that are helping customers align with these industry standards. I know my favorite one seems to be DORA that started in France, but not the Explore, but the resiliency directive for the EU and stuff. What's going on with these new features and services that you're offering?

>> So just like we did with AI, Rob, it's important to pair cybersecurity technology offers with guidance know-how experts to be able to help, excuse me, align business processes to take advantage of these new capabilities and stay abreast with what is a pretty quickly evolving landscape. Just like in the AI space, we've got some professional services here to complement our technology footprint with customers. So the first one is the managed detection and response with Microsoft Defender XDR service. It's kind of mouthful, but it provides access to a team of experts, certified security experts within Dell that know how to leverage AI-based capabilities to help our customers look at their security posture, strengthen it, and then help them address any issues that come up as part of the assessment. And the end goal here is to really help customers get end-to-end threat monitoring capabilities, be able to look across multiple vendors for compatibility, and provide that expert guidance for rapid detection response and recovery. So that's one--professional services offer. The other one is really built around evolving department of defense requirements. So we've got a new service for... called Cybersecurity Model Maturity or Maturity Model Certification, so CMMC alignment for Microsoft. So this is a new requirement based on a new requirement from the Department of Defense. And what the CMMC alignment capability provides for customers is helping them organize their compliance capabilities, their readiness by identifying gaps, building remediation strategies, and then delivering actionable roadmaps that can align Department of Defense contractors or other organizations that work with Department of Defense and have to then align with the CMMC capabilities. So these offerings are really built to help organizations maintain a robust security posture, but then also simplifying their compliance and managing the risk in a most efficient way possible.

>> Yeah. No, I think if you can do stuff for the DoD, you're doing pretty good in that space, to put it mildly. So final question here is: again, we've talked about it before, the APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure. It's been out there for a bit. How's it going? What's up with it?

>> Yeah, it's great question. We are seeing a lot of momentum with this offer. We announced it last year, and it's the first premier solution for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI, which obviously brings the Azure experience on-prem. And what we're so excited about is the joint work that we've been doing with Microsoft. It provides... The APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure really provides the fastest time to value for the Azure hybrid cloud deployments that customers are looking to do. It has the deepest levels of engineering integration on Microsoft or Azure Stack HCI, and really provides this end-to-end hardware, software solution that includes lifecycle management, allows customers to really simplify the deployment and management of their Azure Stack HCI environment. And we're just seeing so much interest and excitement from customers in this. They're seeing a lot of value in the joint innovation that we have. Obviously, Rob, as you know, Azure Stack HCI is an area that sees a lot of interest from customers. And what customers are really asking us for and what we believe the APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure delivers is that superior experience that comes with joint engineering work and joint integration between our hardware, our software, management capabilities, as well as Microsoft's Azure stack capabilities all packaged together in one uniform platform. So very, very excited about the customer momentum there and excited. We've got a lot of customers talking about it at Ignite as well.

>> I'm sure given the landscape for HCI and for virtual machines and Kubernetes and everything else that's going on, absolutely makes total sense. So, hey, thanks Varun for coming on board. This has been really exciting.

>>

>> I, again, love the direction you guys are going in and glad to get this update.

>> Always a pleasure to talk to you, Rob. Thanks so much.

>> And thank you for watching Microsoft Ignite 2024 Unpacked. Stay tuned for more on theCUBE--the leader in tech news and analysis.