The Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure empowers organizations to unlock innovation where they choose: at the core, in Azure public cloud environments and at the edge.
Today’s Enterprise IT Landscape Is More Complex Than Ever
The IT landscape for enterprise organizations presents unprecedented levels of complexity in today’s fast-paced business world. Organizations are generating, collecting, storing and sharing data across diverse locations including branch offices, satellite healthcare facilities, distribution centers and points of purchase.
This phenomenon is happening because organizations need to provide new and innovative applications and services quickly to optimize operations, be more agile and gain a competitive edge. In essence, organizations need to effectively leverage the full potential of their data, wherever it’s located. Many have adopted the use of containerization and DevOps methodologies that can accelerate the delivery of new applications and capabilities.
As a result, enterprises are increasingly embracing hybrid and multicloud strategies as they seek to harness the benefits of cloud computing both on premises and off premises, including at edge locations. With this strategy, organizations can utilize public cloud and on-premises resources flexibly to support their application needs. This helps ensure operational efficiency and enables organizations to navigate rapid development and deployment cycles with ease. By taking these approaches, organizations can achieve agility, efficiency and responsiveness to meet their dynamic business demands.
An End-to-End Unified Cloud Infrastructure
To help enterprises with their hybrid cloud environments, Dell Technologies and Microsoft have collaboratively designed the Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure. This infrastructure platform is built to optimize the Azure hybrid and multicloud experience by leveraging decades of technological innovations from both Dell Technologies and Microsoft. This unique platform combines Dell Technologies’ expertise in building integrated infrastructure platforms and robust infrastructure management and orchestration (M&O) automation software with Microsoft’s leadership in cloud services and enterprise software.
Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Azure meets enterprises where they are by extending Azure on-premises from core to edge. It optimizes Azure experiences and accelerates time-to-value across all these locations. In addition, this purpose-built platform supports both virtual and container workloads on common shared infrastructure, eliminating app and data siloes and streamlining management and operations.
The integration with Azure Arc—which includes Arc–enabled services like Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and other data and platform services—reduces the complexity often associated with modern applications. This simplifies application environments and DevOps processes, further accelerating app modernization and delivery while providing a consistent user experience.
As the industry’s first platform optimized for Azure cloud environments, Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Azure empowers organizations to innovate faster by helping them bridge the cloud divide and unleash their application value while hardening security and governance across locations.
Bridge the Cloud Divide
Dell APEX Cloud Platform Foundation Software serves as the cornerstone of Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Azure. This turnkey software gives organizations a consistent and unified experience across their Azure deployments.
Dell APEX Cloud Platform Foundation Software provides deep, cross-layer integrations and intelligent automation. This simplifies initial deployment and cluster creation, and it automates ongoing operations across the complete technology stack, promoting efficiency and enhancing overall performance. The advanced lifecycle-management capabilities enabled by this software help ensure that the full technology stack always remains in compliance and up to date.
The software deeply integrates infrastructure management and governance with Windows Admin Center and the Azure portal to manage, monitor and secure distributed Azure deployments in a streamlined and consistent way. The ability to use these familiar tools with a simple and intuitive interface helps reduce the learning curve, bridge the skills gap and improve operational efficiency. Users can easily set up their environments and start using the platform for faster time to productivity.
Unleash Application Value
Organizations can innovate faster with Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Azure by boosting DevOps productivity and IT agility with a responsive cloud operational model delivered on-premises. Designed to support both virtualized and modern, containerized apps, the platform accelerates app modernization and DevOps initiatives by optimizing delivery of AKS on premises.
Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Azure optimizes the delivery of Azure Arc–enabled hybrid on-demand app and data services, helping IT simplify application environments while accelerating DevOps productivity. It also offers API-driven programmability, enabling simpler DevOps and application workflows. Furthermore, the platform offers broad resource configuration choices and node options optimized for both data center and edge use cases, so IT can confidently execute workloads with diverse requirements wherever it needs to. The footprint-, cost- and power-optimized nodes suitable for edge deployments can help reduce cost and complexity at edge locations. Combining this with the Azure portal for centralized management and governance gives IT administrators a powerful solution across their operational footprint.
Harden Security and Governance
Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Azure helps mitigate potential security and compliance risks effortlessly by integrating with Azure management and governance services. IT admins can enforce consistent security and compliance policies across distributed locations through a centralized Azure portal. In addition, the platform provides a full-stack, intrinsic approach to security with sophisticated controls and multilayered protection from threats, embedding the security capabilities of both Dell Technologies’ and Microsoft’s security stacks. Some examples of these capabilities include secured core, infrastructure lock, role-based access control (RBAC) and multi-factor authentication (MFA).
With these security and governance features, organizations gain the freedom to pursue business-boosting innovations without putting systems, users and data at risk, all while maintaining compliance with sovereignty and regulatory requirements.
A Hybrid Cloud Platform Suited for a Wide Variety of Use Cases
Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Azure can help organizations reach their business and operational goals in a variety of ways:
- Modernize infrastructure. Organizations can update and refresh hardware with a modern, standards-based infrastructure that supports both virtual machines (VMs) and containers.
- Build cloud-native apps. IT teams can deploy applications in containers with simplified resource provisioning and scaling.
- Be more agile. Organizations can benefit from higher throughput and scale-out capabilities of databases, particularly Microsoft SQL Server, that run mission-critical applications.
- Gain data insights faster. IT teams can help customers get insights from data faster with AI/ML through centralized management, scalable throughput and I/O performance and broad GPU support, which help enhance infrastructure performance.
- Simplify virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) management. IT teams can deploy multi-session hosts on Azure Stack HCI infrastructure with Azure Virtual Desktop.
- Gain insights from the edge. Organizations can use Azure data services and analytics capabilities to uncover insights from edge data as soon as it is generated.
Drive Innovation No Matter Where Data Resides
Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Azure helps businesses overcome the complexities of the hybrid, multicloud IT infrastructure reality of today. Now enterprises can open the door to unrestrained innovation, increased operational efficiency and enhanced customer experiences across Azure environments.
Ready to embrace a modern hybrid, multicloud strategy? Get started today at www.dell.com/APEX-cloud-platforms.
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