A Dive Into Dell Technologies' Project APEX with Akanksha Mehrotra

In this episode of the Futurum Tech Webcast – Women in Tech series, host Shelly Kramer has a conversation with Akanksha Mehrotra, VP Marketing for Dell Technologies on Demand Program and Services & Dell Digital Bus about her work on Project APEX, the trend to everything-as-a-service and end-to-end aaS that we are starting to see a lot of in the marketplace. This is particularly timely because companies of all sizes are finding that IT operations are just too complex, they are having frustrating experiences with the inconsistency between on prem and off prem management and operations, and they are also dealing with the reality of both a global pandemic and a distributed workforce, along with a dearth of skilled tech talent. Dell’s Project APEX is the expansion of the consumption-based offering that Dell initially brought to market in 2019 and Akanksha explained that the offering is all about simplifying how Dell Technologies’ customers can consume IT as a service. Here are some key highlights of our conversation: APEX is designed to deliver a radically simplified experience, featuring pay-as-you-go and pay-as-you-use options. Akanksha explained what she sees as the reason there’s growing interest in as-a-Service offerings for on-prem infrastructure. She also explained why Dell Technologies’ is doubling down on as-a-service offerings, which is largely in response to what they see as customer desire for ease and agility, along with the attraction of security, performance, low-latency, and control that you get with an on-prem solution She shared that an additional strategic move here is that Dell Technologies is looking to serve a wider base of customers than only the enterprise, and infrastructure on demand, wherever they need to run their workloads, along with a pay-as-you-go solution, is attractive to a wide range of organizations of all sizes. Lastly, Akanksha and I we discussed Dell Technologies’ Cloud Console, which is a single web interface that customers can use to navigate their entire IT journeys. Cloud Console will provide the foundation for Dell’s Project APEX, and the solution is meant to unify the company’s as-a-Service and cloud strategies, technology offerings, and go-to-market efforts. APEX aims to provide a consistent as-a-Service experience wherever a company runs its workloads, including on-premises, edge locations and public clouds. All in all, our conversation was an interesting one and one I think you’ll be interested in if you’re thinking about your organization’s cloud journey, simplifying IT operations, and also exploring Infrastructure-as-a-Service offerings to see how they might benefit you. Dell’s Project Apex is rolling out in beta now and Akanksha provides more information in our interview on what’s ahead on that front.