by Gary Mintchell | Sep 8, 2016 | Internet of Things, News, Operations Management
Powering the Next Industrial Revolution. I was attending a virtual press/analyst conference on Sept. 7. Michael Dell formally introduced Dell Technologies. Talk of the Next Industrial Revolution is the last thing I expected to hear, but it fits with the company’s moves into Industrial Internet of Things and the data storage and analytics that accompany the concept. That company, the result of the combination with EMC, includes the familiar Dell (PCs and so forth), Dell EMC, Dell Services, and several publicly traded companies including VMware.
Dell also talked about the Internet of Everything along with the next Industrial Revolution and about how this new company changes the competitive landscape of the industry.
Why do we need to know?
I have been following Dell’s entry into the Industrial Internet of Things for almost a year now. It began with an intelligent gateway device introduced at last October’s Dell World. This device includes ports to bring sensor data into a local database with some analytic and visualization capabilities at the edge. It then can send the information to the cloud, to mobile or other visualization devices, and to other databases.
Dell has held a series of Think Tanks with technology providers and end users to explore how companies are using or are planning/preparing to use IIoT technologies to enhance their manufacturing businesses. This statement from the top of the organization certainly validates the effort. And the addition of EMC for even greater enterprise penetration should make the rest of the industry re-evaluate their positions.
Michael Dell’s Letter
Dell couldn’t contain his enthusiasm and superlatives while introducing this new powerhouse in computing, services, and enterprise. Here is the official letter:
Welcome to Dell Technologies, a unique family of businesses that provides the essential infrastructure for your organization to build its digital future, transform IT and protect your most important asset – information.
The largest parts of Dell Technologies will be very familiar to you. Our Client Solutions business, and our most well-known business, will continue to be known simply as Dell. Our Enterprise Solutions business, a real powerhouse in data center infrastructure, brings together the very best of Dell and EMC and will be known as Dell EMC. We have the services to provide strategic guidance and expertise to ensure you get the very best outcome from your investments, and we’re committed to providing you with unparalleled service and support. With that in mind, for now, there will be no change to your support interactions, processes, resources or contacts.
The rest of our family – Pivotal, RSA, SecureWorks, Virtustream and VMware – will continue to keep their independent identities and retain their freedom to develop their own ecosystems. That’s part of our commitment to providing you with choice. Importantly, we’ll also align our capabilities where it makes strategic sense to deliver integrated solutions in the areas that matter most to your future.
We stand at the very beginning of the Internet of Everything, an intelligent world pulsing with processing power and connectivity. It’s been called the next Industrial Revolution and the next quantum leap in human progress. By 2031, the number of connected nodes and devices will grow from 8 billion to 200 billion or more, about 25 times the number of people on the planet. All of these will create massive new sources of information. Using that information, in real time, to provide better insights and to build a better world is the greatest opportunity of our generation.
Dell Technologies exists to make that opportunity a reality for you. We are facing a future of infinite possibility. You’re going to cure cancer. You’re going to feed and water the world. You’re going to create jobs, and hope and opportunities on a global scale. Now is the time to dream big, think big and do big. Let the transformation begin!
What resides in the three core businesses?
Client Solutions
– Our Client Solutions business consists of Dell’s Client Solutions Group, which retains the Dell brand. Our Client Solutions offerings include hardware, such as desktop PCs, notebooks, 2-in-1s and thin clients, software, including end-point security, and peripherals, such as monitors, printers and projectors, as well as third-party software and peripherals.
Infrastructure Solutions
– Under the Dell EMC brand, we have combined EMC’s Information Infrastructure business and Dell’s Enterprise Solutions Group to create our Infrastructure Solutions Group, which includes RSA and Virtustream. Dell EMC will enable our enterprise customers’ digital transformation through our trusted hybrid cloud and big-data solutions, built upon a modern data center infrastructure that incorporates industry- leading converged infrastructure, servers, storage, and cybersecurity technologies.
Dell EMC Services – Dell EMC Services is a trusted advisor to our customers and partners, providing strategic guidance, technology expertise, and outstanding execution to drive business outcomes quickly and effciently for enterprises of all sizes and for users at work or play. From consulting and technology deployment, to education, support and asset disposition, we offer the most complete portfolio of technology and fnancial services available, addressing the diverse needs of enterprise and consumer customers with choice, fexibility and scale. Our global team of more than 60,000 Dell EMC and partner service experts in more than 165 countries stand ready to help customers digitally transform and modernize their IT with world-class capabilities spanning hardware, software, solutions and IT operations.
Dream Big
Dell stated during his presentation, “Dreaming big is always what Dell is about.” Completion of this acquisition is certainly implementing a big dream.
by Gary Mintchell | Oct 27, 2015 | Automation, Data Management, Internet of Things, News, Operations Management
The Internet of Things does not exist in a vacuum. Just putting devices on the Internet with Internet Protocol will achieve nothing. That only generates data. The data must reside somewhere that is organized and easily accessible.
We have come to identify that place as the “cloud”. The cloud is a server bank that may or may not be on the premises. Examples of cloud services include Amazon Web services and Microsoft Azure.
I wrote about Dell’s introduction of a gateway device to enable Internet of Things through connection to edge devices and passing data on to the cloud. To further this, at Dell World, Dell and Microsoft Corp. announced a new cloud solution and program that enable organizations of all sizes to use the Microsoft cloud platform to transform their business. A new, Microsoft Azure-consistent, integrated system for hybrid cloud and extended program offerings will help more customers benefit from Azure and Dell to drive greater agility and increased time to value, whether they choose on-premises or public cloud solutions.
“A core part of our mission to empower every organization on the planet requires us to build world-class platforms and forge deeper partnerships that help businesses of all sizes transform with digital technology,” said Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft. “By expanding our longstanding partnership with Dell to offer a truly integrated hybrid cloud, we will make the cloud more accessible to organizations of all sizes with the choice and flexibility to best meet their needs.”
“Digital transformation is an imperative for business today, and we are making our customers’ journey easier and faster through adoption of hybrid cloud,” said Michael Dell, CEO, Dell. “Dell shares a vision with Microsoft that open architectures and simplified cloud management will benefit customers of all sizes, freeing them to focus on their businesses and not their technology.”
Azure-consistent integrated system for hybrid cloud
Customers are increasingly turning to hybrid cloud as a way to achieve the agility and cost-savings of the cloud while maintaining control of their assets. Extending their commitment to deliver simple yet powerful hybrid solutions, Microsoft and Dell announced Cloud Platform System Standard (CPS Standard), the newest addition to the Microsoft Cloud Platform System (CPS) family. CPS is the industry’s only integrated system with a true hybrid cloud experience, built on optimized Dell modular infrastructure with pre-configured Microsoft CPS software, including the proven Microsoft software stack and popular Azure services.
The hybrid cloud experience comes from the platform’s consistency with Azure, enabling agile deployment and operation of workloads and allowing customers to build multi-tiered, scalable applications. A fully integrated, preconfigured system, CPS Standard is purpose-built to remove many of the complexities and costs traditionally associated with hybrid cloud deployments, including the following:
Quick time to value and operational simplicity. CPS Standard arrives ready to be plugged in and can be up and running in as little as three hours, while operations, patching and updates are simplified with an automated framework.
Simplified business continuity. In case of a datacenter outage, CPS Standard features archival backup to Azure and failover to Azure that is easy-to-activate, reliable and cost-effective.
Increased flexibility. Its modular design allows customers to start smaller and incrementally scale from four to up to 16 servers based on business needs.
CPS Standard is shipping now with Windows Azure Pack, System Center 2012 R2 and Windows Server 2012 R2 and is ready to install Microsoft Azure Stack when it becomes available. Dell and Microsoft also offer CPS Premium for large enterprises and service providers requiring a higher-capacity hybrid cloud solution.
Dell joins Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider program
To help customers leverage the cloud, Dell also announced that it has joined the Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider program and will sell Microsoft cloud solutions across Azure, the Microsoft Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS) and Office 365. This will help customers accelerate their journey through end-to-end cloud, mobility, identity and productivity solutions that drive new innovation, improve employee productivity and increase security.
The combination of Azure services and Dell’s hardware, software and consulting services will assist customers through their entire hybrid cloud journey from inception to implementation. Consultants will be trained to help customers build tailored cloud solutions to address a range of core business needs including hybrid infrastructure deployments, elastic scale and bursting, backup and disaster recovery, Web and mobile development, and data and analytics.
As a Cloud Solution Provider, Dell will also provide end-to-end enterprise mobility and identity solutions, based on EMS and Azure Active Directory, to empower employees and protect corporate data and applications. EMS, combined with Windows 10 and Office 365, provides a comprehensive platform, productivity tools and management capabilities to help secure company data without compromising mobile productivity experiences.
by Gary Mintchell | Oct 22, 2015 | Internet of Things, News, Operations Management
I received an invitation to Dell World that seemed like a great opportunity to broaden my horizons and dig deeper into the technologies that will provide the platform for Industrial Internet of Things applications and benefits.
When one of the Dell people asked me how it went, I told them that learning about Dell’s technologies helped fill in a gap in my coverage of the whole “connected manufacturing” space. As perhaps the only manufacturing focused writer attending, I certainly received attention
The ecosystem that many refer to as Internet of Things or IoT includes connected things, database + storage (cloud), analytics, and visualization. Dell does not play in the “things” space as defined by the end devices, but it has significant data center, software, and analytics plays. Two items announcemented at Dell World expanded the offering.
The first that Michael Dell, CEO of Dell, announced during his keynote was an IoT product called Edge Gateway 5000. This industrialized intelligent, connected device serves to gather inputs from the “things” of the system, perform some analytics, and serve them to the cloud. The second was announced jointly with Satya Nardella, Microsoft CEO. This is a cloud partnership where Dell will be supporting Microsoft Azure.
Some excerpts of the announcements are below, but first an observation. In the industry I cover, the CEO will usually appear for a few minutes at the keynote and talk a little about financials or the theme of the week. Then they have a motivational speaker who goes for 45 minutes. Sometimes there is a product speaker who will do 30 minuts of product introductions.
Dell held the stage for most of the 90+ minutes. He gave an outline of the new, private company, discussed the industry, interviewed several customers, yielded the floor for the CMO to talk about Dell company support for entrepreneurship, then sat for a 30 minute conversation with Nadella. He showed intelligence, grace and humor.
Here are excerpts from the product announcements.
Wednesday at Dell World, Dell and Microsoft Corp. announced a new cloud solution and program that enable organizations of all sizes to use the Microsoft cloud platform to transform their business. A new, Microsoft Azure-consistent, integrated system for hybrid cloud and extended program offerings will help more customers benefit from Azure and Dell to drive greater agility and increased time to value, whether they choose on-premises or public cloud solutions.
Dell today announced the launch of the new Edge Gateway 5000 Series purpose-built for the building and factory automation sectors. Composed of an industrial-grade form factor, expanded input and output interfaces, and with wide operating temperature ranges, the Edge Gateway 5000, combined with Dell’s data analytics capabilities, promises to give companies an edge computing solution alternative to today’s costly, proprietary IoT offerings.
The Dell Edge Gateway sits at the edge of the network (near the devices and sensors) with local analytics and other middleware to receive, aggregate, analyze and relay data, then minimizes expensive bandwidth by relaying only meaningful data to the cloud or datacenter. Thanks to new Dell Statistica data analytics also announced today, Dell is expanding capabilities out to the gateway. This means companies can now extend the benefits of cloud computing to their network edge and for faster and more secure business insights while saving on the costly transfer of data to and from the cloud.
by Gary Mintchell | Aug 26, 2015 | Data Management, Manufacturing IT, Operations Management, Software
Cisco just released the findings of a global study that indicates cloud is moving into a second wave of adoption, with companies no longer focusing just on efficiency and reduced costs, but rather looking to cloud as a platform to fuel innovation, growth and disruption.
The study finds that 53 percent of companies expect cloud to drive increased revenue over the next two years. Unfortunately, this will be challenging for many companies as only 1 percent of organizations have optimized cloud strategies in place while 32 percent have no cloud strategy at all.
The Cisco-sponsored InfoBrief “Don’t Get Left Behind: The Business Benefits of Achieving Greater Cloud Adoption” was developed by International Data Corporation (IDC) and is based on primary market research conducted with executives responsible for IT decisions in 3,400 organizations across 17 countries that are successfully implementing private, public and hybrid clouds in their IT environments.
Nick Earle, Senior Vice President, Global Cloud and Managed Services Sales, Cisco, said, “As we talk with customers interested in moving to the second wave of cloud, they are far more focused on private and hybrid cloud—Primarily because they realize that private and hybrid offer the security, performance, price, control and data protection organizations are looking for during their expanded efforts. This observation, which drove our strategy to build a portfolio of private and hybrid infrastructure and as-a-service solutions, is reflected in the new IDC study, which shows that 44 percent of organizations are either currently using or have plans to implement private cloud and 64 percent of cloud adopters are considering hybrid cloud.”
In the study IDC identifies five levels of cloud maturity: ad hoc, opportunistic, repeatable, managed and optimized. The study found that organizations elevating cloud maturity from the ad hoc, the lowest level to optimized, the highest, results dramatic business benefits, including:
- revenue growth of 10.4 percent
- reduction of IT costs by 77 percent
- shrinking time to provision IT services and applications by 99 percent
- boosting IT department’s ability to meet SLAs by 72 percent
- doubling IT department’s ability to invest in new projects to drive innovation.
The study also quantified the economic benefits the most mature cloud organizations are realizing. Organizations studied are gaining an average of $1.6 million in additional revenue per application deployed on private or public cloud. They are also achieving $1.2 million in cost reduction per cloud-based application.
The revenue increases were largely the result of sales of new products and services, gaining new customers, or selling into new markets. Organizations were able to attribute revenue gains to increased innovation resulting from the shifting of IT resources from traditional maintenance activities to new, more strategic, more innovative initiatives.
Operational cost reductions associated with cloud stem from the advantages to the business of running on a more scalable, reliable, and higher-performing environment. These include improved agility, increased employee productivity, risk mitigation, infrastructure cost savings and open source benefits.
Private Cloud’s Correlation
Private cloud allows better resource use, greater scale, and faster time to respond to requests, but with the added control and security of dedicated resources for a single company.
Adopting hybrid cloud can be more complex than adopting other forms of cloud. It requires workload portability, security, and policy enablement. These requirements were evident in the study, which showed that up to 70 percent of respondents expect to migrate data between public and private clouds (or among multiple cloud providers) and have high security and policy requirements.
Mature Cloud Adoption by Country
Mature cloud adoption varies by country, with the United States and Latin America among the countries with the greatest percentage of organizations with repeatable, managed or optimized cloud strategies, and Japan with the fewest among the countries studied. The study notes the percentage of organizations with mature cloud adoption in each country:
- 34 percent USA
- 29 percent Latin America Region
- 27 percent UK
- 22 percent France
- 21 percent Germany
- 19 percent Australia
- 19 percent Canada
- 18 percent Korea
- 17 percent The Netherlands
- 9 percent Japan
Cloud Adoption by Industry
By industry, manufacturing has the largest percentage of companies in one of the top three adoption categories at 33 percent, followed by IT (30 percent), finance (29 percent), and healthcare (28 percent). The lowest adoption levels by industry were found to be government/education and professional services (at 22 percent each) and retail/wholesale (at 20 percent). By industry, professional services, technology, and transportation, communications, and utilities expected the greatest impact on key performance indicators (KPIs) across the board.
Cisco Business Cloud Advisor Adoption Report, Tool and Workshop
Cisco is helping customers translate the findings of this study into customized reports for customers. These Cisco Business Cloud Advisor engagements come in two formats, a simple, survey-based tool and a more in-depth workshop.
The Adoption Report allows customers to go through a structured survey to determine their own cloud adoption maturity and associated business benefits relative to their industry peers—by industry, company size and geography.
The Adoption Tool and Workshop allows Cisco and qualified channel partner sales teams to bring a much deeper level of analysis to organizations. The half-day workshop will help organizations better measure the potential impact of cloud adoption on their IT organizations across a broad range of key performance indicators. The recommendations include vendor agnostic guidance regarding how organizations can evolve their cloud journey across a number of domains, including the Intercloud. The Adoption Tool and Workshop are currently being rolled out on a worldwide basis.
The Cisco Business Cloud Advisor Adoption Report, Tool and Workshop are based on the same unbiased primary market research conducted by IDC for the study.
