Jen Felch, CDO & CIO, Dell Technologies and Deepak Patil, SVP, Dell Technologies Cloud sit down with Lisa Martin at theCUBE Digital studios for Dell Technologies World 2020. #theCUBE #CUBEConversation #DellTechnologies @SiliconANGLE theCUBE @Dell Technologies https://siliconangle.com/2020/11/02/qa-project-apex-gathers-entire-dell-technologies-portfolio-one-umbrella-delltechworld/ Q&A: Project APEX gathers entire Dell Technologies portfolio under one umbrella BY BETSY AMY-VOGT The big news at the recent Dell Technologies World Digital Experience was the launch of Project APEX. Powered by Dell’s Cloud Console engagement platform, Project APEX is key to Dell Technologies Inc.’s future strategy, accelerating the company’s switch to offering its huge IT portfolio on demand. As the event drew to a close, Deepak Patil (pictured, right), senior vice president and general manager of Dell Technologies Cloud at Dell Technologies, and Jen Felch (pictured, left), chief digital officer and chief information officer of Dell Technologies, joined Lisa Martin, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, for a virtual conversation on how Project APEX is positioning Dell to help businesses transform today and setting organizations on a course for success in a digitally native future. (* Disclosure below.) [Editor’s Note: The following content has been condensed for clarity.] We heard a lot during Dell World about Project APEX powered by Cloud Console, and how it is a shift in Dell’s strategy to deliver as a service. What can you tell us about that? Patil: Project APEX essentially brings all the efforts across the entire Dell Technologies [portfolio], from product development to services to go to market motions, marketing, finance under the Project APEX umbrella. It marks a strategic milestone for us and our company in three specific areas. Number one is we are on a path to significantly accelerate our transformation into an as-a-service world. Number two, we are investing in radically simplify the way our customers engage with us — discover, purchase, manage offers from us. And number three is that we are continuing our commitment to provide more flexibility and more choice to our customers. The Cloud Console is a key component of taking Project APEX to our customers. With a few clicks, our customers can browse through a catalog of cloud services from us as well as our partners, using a self-serve immersive experience. They can then purchase products like the Dell Technologies Cloud Platform subscription, and IT professionals can provision and deploy workloads, including hybrid solutions like VMware Tanzu. So in many ways, the Cloud Console really brings the power of Project APEX and the entire cloud operating model to our customer’s fingertips. How has Dell’s information technology team enabled this shift to the as-a-service model? Felch: As the internal IT team, we play two roles. One is that we’re an internal customer of all of the Dell technology products and solutions. So, we get to offer a lot of feedback about how we would like to work. And we get to be an early adopter for our product groups to be able to give that early feedback and contribute to great solutions. The second part of it is actually doing the enablement of as-a-service of the underlying components that go into the engagement platform — the Cloud Console. How does that leverage the scale of Dell yet create those really simple consistent, transparent choices for our customers? So, [the IT and Project APEX] teams get to sit side by side in terms of how we develop these solutions and how we’re bringing Project APEX to life, both as a customer and as a development partner. Patil: The work that Jen’s team and my team are doing sitting side by side is a shining example of how we are putting the power of unified Dell Technologies behind this effort. The as-a-service market is highly competitive and has been for some time. What part of the market is Dell looking at capturing with Project APEX? Patil: We are in a massive shift across the industry to a simple, flexible operating model full of choices with respect to this as-a-service cloud transformation. Over the next few years, whoever essentially captures the market is going to have to deliver three core promises. ... Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Dell Technologies World Digital Experience event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Dell Technologies World. Neither Dell Technologies, the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)