Kathy Gibson reports from Dell EMC Channel Update in Sandton – There is a huge amount of disruption happing in the marketplace, and resellers need to make sure their businesses are aligned to help their customers tackled the challenge.
Eaton Kohl and Greg McDonald from Dell EMC SA explain that there are four pillars of business transformation: digital transformation, IT transformation, workforce transformation and security transformation.
Kohl points out that any business today is either disrupting or its being disrupted.
People confront a mass of issues and challenges every day – and technology is often able to solve many of these.
A raft of new startups are coming into the market, often leading the way and disrupting incumbent supplies – many of which have led their industries for literally hundreds of years.
“This is going to apply to many industries around the world,” says McDonald.
“The core message for customers is that, to solve the challenges of scale and complexity, we must give up direct human control and instead rely on software to run our systems.”
This doesn’t mean the machines are taking over, he adds, and organisations need to embrace the new ways of doing business, and running IT systems.
“You may know how cumbersome and complex IT processes can be.
“As application ecosystems become more complex, we must transform IT to deliver greater efficiency, predictability and business agility.”
Kohl adds that a mindshift is needed. “WE need to focus on business transformation, freeing up human resources to drive innovation.”
Dell EMC has conducted an IT Transformation Maturity study with ESG, to gauge what where CIOs are.
The study shows that companies all face the same issues: their IT processes are immature and frustrating; they want advanced technology but can’t afford it, McDonald points out.
In fact, 12% of companies still run on legacy systems; 41% are on emerging new technology; 42% are evolving with new technologies; and a tiny 5% are transformed.
“Think of the companies that run these new technologies – and a big thing is the small number of staff members running them,” McDonald says.
Companies want to run their IT environments a the lowest possible cost, and put resources where they can make a real difference.
“Seventy one percent of customer agree that if they do not embrace IT transformation, their firms will no longer be competitive in their markets,” Kohl points out.
IT transformation consists of three actions: modernise, automate, transform, says McDonald.
The key building blocks of servers, storage and network will help to enable this, he adds
The next block in the transformation stack is virtualisation, then orchestration and platform, topped by the company’s apps.
Kohl explains that Dell EMC is committed to supplying the relevant building blocks rather than on offering a public cloud itself.
“Our focus is on letting companies enable the cloud-like processes on-premise and then start moving cloud-ready services to the cloud world.
“It’s about bringing a hybrid approach to the on-premise environment.”
However, cloud is also an ongoing conversation. “And we are committed to help companies to solve their cloud challenges,” McDonald says.
The attributes of a modern architecture include flash storage, a cloud-enabled environment, scale-out systems, software-defined systems and trust.
“We can offer the converged and hyperconverged infrastructure into the data centre at the lowest possible cost,” McDonald adds.
Within the cloud layer, Dell EMC offers the platform for automating self-delivery.
“In the hybrid cloud solutions tack, we talk about APIs and tools that are native to the system, with IT able to move services or apps on to or off from the cloud offering,” says Kohl.
IT transformation, at the end of the day, is about bringing IT and business closer together so craft the solutions that are required, he adds.
When it comes to public cloud, Dell EMC offers the on-premise platforms and also provides the APIs to make
“I urge our partner community go out and sell the new wave of IT solutions,” McDonald adds. “Transformation is a major theme among all the vendors: the difference for us is we have the solutions.”
The Dell EMC brand is a good partner since it is able to do the consultation on behalf of reseller, while also providing installation and implementation services, McDonald adds.
In fact, the company can help resellers to enable on-premise, hybrid cloud and public could systems,.
“The message for these solutions is good,” McDonald says. In the IT Maturity study, companies that adopt these technologies tend to be tree-times further along on their transformation journey.
In addition, there have 33% more budget available, since they are able to consolidate investments. They are also more likely to have business and IT co-operation.
Most importantly, they are twice as likely achieve their business and IT goals.