Dell Apex Can Be 50 Percent ‘Less Expensive’ Vs. AWS, Public Clouds

“We started working with a large, global financial institution customer six months ago. I said, ‘I think we can do this for about 40 percent less than if you go to AWS.’ When the study was completed, it was 48 percent less,” says Dell President Bill Scannell.

Dell Technologies is taking the gloves off in its fight for customer mindshare and global market share against public cloud titans like Amazon Web Services with the recent launch of Apex, Dell’s new cloud operating and consumption as-a-service offerings that will eventually include all of Dell Technologies massive product portfolio.

Dell’s worldwide sales leader Bill Scannell said Dell and its channel partners will beat the public cloud giants with Apex by offering more buying options and flexibility for customers as well as upwards of “50 percent less expensive.”

“We started working with a large, global financial institution customer six months ago. I said, ‘I think we can do this for about 40 percent less than if you go to AWS.’ When the study was completed, it was 48 percent less,” said Scannell, Dell’s president of global sales and customer operations in an interview with CRN. “These are real dollars. I mean these are customers with multi-billion budgets and if we can have that type of significant impact, then money can go towards the customer’s market cap.”

“We have a significant one-two punch: we save them opex (operating expenditure) and they can have a higher valuation as a company because so much more money is going to their bottom line,” he said.

[Related: Dell Beats HPE In Global Server Market Share Fight]

Dell’s longtime executive said customers of all shapes and sizes are now starting to understand that cloud is not a destination, but an operating model which Dell’s Apex is now providing. From public cloud’s expensive data egress fees to customers margins or market capitalization taking a big hit when leveraging only public clouds, a hybrid cloud approach is the best approach, he said.

“So now customers are saying, ‘All the things I thought I would get by going to a public cloud, I can get by keeping those workloads on-premise or in a colocation. And I can do it for, by the way, 35-40-50-percent less expensive.’ That’s the real value proposition with Apex,” said Scannell. “The more we can help deliver that cloud operating model in keeping those workloads on-premise, they’re quickly realizing it’s a much better answer.”

AWS did not respond for comment by press time.

According to a recent report by venture capital and research firm Andreesen Horowitz titled, ‘The Cost of Cloud, A Trillion Dollar Paradox,’ the company says it’s “becoming evident” that while public clouds deliver on its promise early in a customers journey, “the pressure it puts on margins can start to outweigh the benefits, as a company scales and growth slows.”

“Now, there is a growing awareness of the long-term cost implications of cloud,” said Andreesen Horowitz’s 2021 report. “As the cost of cloud starts to contribute significantly to the total cost of revenue or cost of goods sold, some companies have taken the dramatic step of ‘repatriating’ the majority of workloads or in other cases adopting a hybrid approach. Those who have done this have reported significant cost savings.”

Scannell said many companies, especially Software-as-a-service (SaaS) and software companies who started off in the cloud are now realizing the “real cost” later on. “It confirms what we’ve been saying for years, there is a time and a place for a public cloud -- a hyperscaler -- but there’s more of a time and place for running those workloads on-premise in a cloud operating environment. So we can give the cloud operating environment, the speed and the agility, and give the cloud-consumption models,” he said.

Furthermore, Apex gives businesses more flexibility and choice in how to buy and consume technology, said Dell’s President who’s first started at Dell EMC in 1986. This is great news for Dell Technologies channel partners who now have the opportunity to save customers money buy moving workloads back on-premise or creating a new hybrid cloud environment.

“If you go to a public cloud – the hyperscalers – there’s only one way to consume it: and it’s as-a-service. Versus with Dell Technologies, our answer is, ‘Yes,’” said Scannell. “Do you want to buy it? Yes. Do you want to lease it? Yes. Do you want do consume it as a pure utility? Yes. We can do whatever the customers want. We also have Custom Apex offerings. So we’re trying to show an extra level of flexibility, above and beyond what you can get from the cloud. So you have the security of keeping it on-premise, you have the consumption models, and the Opex off your balance sheet benefits of Apex, and you have the cost saving associated with Apex, for example 35-40-50-percent savings versus going to the public cloud.”

Bob Keblusek, chief technology officer at Sentinel Technologies, a Downers Grove, Ill.-based solution provider who partners with public cloud players like AWS and Microsoft as well Dell Technologies and Cisco, said this type of choice and flexibility for customers “is excellent” for Sentinel to meet any need of the customer.

“Also, the tooling now on modern infrastructure is bringing cloud-like automation to the enterprise premises to meet those needs. So while we are big proponents of cloud, we can deliver similar experiences -- not just financial or consumption but automation, auto scaling groups and even infrastructure as code -- to the organizations that benefit from having all premises or a hybrid experience,” said Keblusek.

The nationally recognized CTO said it’s great to see vendor partners like Dell “investing to continue to bring the utility model to premises, as well as automation and, in many cases, is saving customers money.”

The $94 billion Round Rock, Texas-based infrastructure and PC giant officially made its first Apex offerings generally available in May. Apex currently consists of Apex Data Storage Services, an on-premise as-a-service portfolio of scalable and elastic storage resources; Apex Cloud Services for as-a-service hybrid or private cloud infrastructure with integrated compute, storage, networking and virtualization resources to simplify cloud adoption; and Apex Custom where customers can create their own on-demand pay-per-use or usage-based IT environment leveraging Dell’s entire infrastructure product portfolio.

Scannell said there’s certain workloads that makes sense to run in the public cloud like AWS, but for mission critical applications, offers like Apex are superior.

“For companies like the banks that have regulatory requirements, if every bank put their workloads in an Amazon cloud and that cloud went down, just think of the impact of the global economy. These banks are smart. You look at some of these large banks who are now building four new data centers, I won’t mention their names, but they know they don’t want to be in a public cloud,” said Scannell. “They know they can do it more cost effectivity on-premise in a cloud operating environment, with consumption models that makes sense for their business by working with Dell Technologies and VMware.”