The Dell Technologies World 2021 virtual event kicked off last week with a theme of moving forward together. A familiar theme in how many companies in the industry survived and thrived in 2020—together with strong partnerships. As expected, Michael Dell delivered an inspirational keynote that touched on how we persevered and excelled amid difficult times. Technology kept the world going and drove innovation like never before. You don’t have to look far to see examples of this in the world around us. Clearly, the healthcare industry has been at the center of change as they quickly adapted, developed a vaccine, and made progress in disease identification and prevention. These innovations have been pervasive across industries from education, banking, retail, and telecom to manufacturing and everything in between, enabling us to do anything from anywhere.
Silver lining of the Pandemic: do anything from anywhere
We no longer have to go to work, school, shop, etc., as things now come to us. Entertainment is at our fingertips, groceries are delivered to our cars, our kids are learning at home on their devices, and many of us only take a few steps to begin our workday at our home office. This shift will forever change how we live, and at the center of it all is technology. Customers like AMEX illustrate this reality by sharing the story of how they successfully moved 64,000 employees to a work-from-home environment in three short weeks—all thanks to their partnership with Dell Technologies. But that was just the beginning; as COVID progressed, AMEX formed the coalition, Stand for Small, to get small businesses back up and running. The result in spending began to change, and online retail spending grew 25% year over year. Could you imagine your company making such massive changes in such a short amount of time? Organizations around the globe made bold moves in uncertain times. As Michael said, it is the silver lining in the pandemic, but it is also the spark of what is possible. And where is this happening? At the edge.
The future is unfolding with Edge computing
The edge is where the data is generated. The closer we get to the data, we can quickly turn data into insights, actions, and results. By 2025 it is estimated that 75% of all data will be processed outside of a traditional data center or cloud. It will be generated and transformed at the edge, driving spend on edge infrastructure to support 5G and the data era. Dell Technologies offers consistent infrastructure and operations from the edge to the cloud and, with VMWare, they are offering the multi-cloud platform for digital transformation. Introducing APEX, bringing together cloud and as-a-service capabilities. The next evolution of how core Dell enables customers to consume technology.
Let us not forget that all of this is designed to drive human progress. Dell’s commitment to Progress Made Real is illustrated in the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital success story of transforming healthcare and the investments they are making to transform one billion lives by 2030. It is inspiring to see the stories of how technology is being used. From the depths of the ocean to the depths of space, it expanded our connections to the world around us.
3 takeaways from Dell Technology World 2021:
Jeff Clarke spoke about the three big takeaways from 2020. Beginning with technology infrastructure as the infrastructure of the 21st century. The economy now moves on data highways, and our opportunity lies in unleashing the power of the data to release breakthroughs and outcomes. The second is the PC, an essential device in the hybrid world. The world and everything we needed came to us via our PC. Yet, there are so many still not connected, leaving a gap that needs to be closed. The third and final takeaway is optimism. We never imagined the things we could achieve and how quickly we could adapt. Resilience and grit helped all of us to overcome uncertainty. Our perspective has changed, and things like geography are no longer an obstacle to filling our need for resources and talent to drive innovation. We are seeing growth and accelerated investment in digital transformation to continue the momentum throughout all of this.
Security is key
Since the start of COVID, there have been a 400% increase in cyberattacks, especially dangerous ransomware attacks. Dell Technologies has always considered security a critical component and looks at it from end-to-end, starting with the supply chain and then built into the technology. Every Dell Technologies offering has security built-in with things like VMWare and SecureWorks, as well as the global services and support teams that helped ship 142,827 PCs each day throughout 2020.
Innovation delivered
The pandemic and 2020 did not stop the teams at Dell Technologies from developing new customer-inspired product offerings to meet market needs. PowerStore is the industry’s first modern, mid-range storage architecture in over a decade. It is the fastest-growing architecture that Dell has ever released. In addition, next-gen PowerEdge servers have AI built-in to meet the challenges of digital transformation. In addition, they launched new PCs and notebooks for the do from anywhere world.
New client devices are being offered with more flexibility that take connectivity and battery life seriously. In addition, advancements like 5G and AI are embraced in these new offerings to take advantage of the innovation available to make it easier and more secure to work from anywhere. Everything is being reimagined, especially at the edge. Data has become the lifeblood of modern organizations, with 71% of businesses gathering data faster than they can analyze or use. With the right architecture in place, organizations can react quickly and make decisions in real-time. A cloud-native approach makes things more agile, programmable, and distributed, unleashing 5G at the edge.
John Green, VP OEM Sales Engineering at Dell Technologies, and Alan Brumley, CTO OEM Solutions Organization at Dell Technologies, discuss OEM and PowerEdge. Together with their partners, Dell Technologies can customize solutions for OEM customers and, at the foundation, enable innovation. The current rush to the edge to enable quick decision-making and immediate action is causing companies to break out of the data center. Technologies like AI/ML provide scale to manage this need properly. Across all industries, solutions are emerging at the edge in nontraditional places and with additional requirements like the need to speed workloads, maintain long life, or the ability to function in extreme environments. Technology like iDRAC server management secures the servers and provides an easy way to update in the field. Together with Dell Technologies, UNICOM Engineering drives velocity and minimizes risk for OEM customers while speeding time to market and revenue.
Workload-focused platforms: XR11 and XR12
It is essential to understand today’s environment to discover what is driving value for your organization. Many organizations would point to operations and optimization, leveraging the cloud, optimizing workloads to drive business innovation, and AI and edge to unlock new value. New challenges pushed creativity and unlocked new value, but what now. The latest PowerEdge servers feature adaptive compute, autonomous compute infrastructure, and proactive resilience. Dell is looking to create workload-focused platforms like the newly introduced XR11 and XR12 specifically designed to address edge and telco requirements.
In comparison, the R750xa is the mainstream offering of choice for AI and machine learning workloads. A few new advancements are in thermal designs with multi-vector cooling, re-architected motherboards, and the new PSU Versa bays for the most demanding workloads. As a result, servers like the R750 show 43% greater performance than previous generations and are verifiably secure.
UNICOM Engineering and Dell Technologies are better together
UNICOM Engineering is a Titanium OEM partner and the current Dell Technologies Americas OEM Partner of the Year. Our team is trained and ready to power your solutions with technologies from Dell’s industry-leading portfolio to deliver truly unique solutions with greater speed and reliability. If you would like to learn more about how we can help you drive your solution forward, watch our Why Build on Dell Video or visit our website to schedule a consultation today.
If you missed the event or would like to revisit some sessions, the content is available until June 4. You can access the event at Dell Technologies World Digital Experience | Dell Technologies US.