Dell unveils Cloud Console, eyes everything as a service

In a bid to help customers and partners on their digital transformation journey in the pandemic times, Dell Technologies on Wednesday announced a Cloud Console that will provide customers a single interface to manage multi-cloud, on-premise and edge deployments.

The Dell Cloud Console, touted as a "unified and seamless experience" for customers to manage their entire cloud and everything-as-a-service journey, is available as a public preview in the US with general availability expected in the first half of 2021.

The Cloud Console is part of a new 'Project Apex' as-a-service strategy that aims to simplify how customers access Dell's capabilities across storage, servers, networking, hyper-converged infrastructure, PCs and architectural offerings.

Jeff Clarke, chief operating officer, said that 'Project Apex' will give customers a simple and consistent experience across PCs and IT infrastructure.

"Project Apex is our strategy to deliver a radically simplified as-a-service and cloud experience to our customers and partners," noted Sam Grocott, senior vice president of product marketing at Dell Technologies.

"Customers will be able to browse a marketplace, choose which cloud products and services and solutions they want, then actually order and transact an as-a-service solution for their business," Grocott said as the company kicked off its virtual 'Dell Technologies World 2020' conference.

Directionally, Project Apex will be Dell Technologies' North Star.

The new Dell Storage as a Service is an on-premises portfolio of scalable and elastic storage resources.

"Customers are going to be able to scale up and down via the Cloud Console their Storage as a Service if their workloads grow or shrink. They'll be able to optimise that environment very, very quickly and easily," Grocott informed.

The Storage as a Service will be available in the US in the first half of 2021.

In a nutshell, Dell's flexible on-demand pricing, multi-cloud management and similar plans will be built into 'Project Apex'.