Dell Technologies World 2022: 5 Biggest News Announcements

From new ransomware offerings with AWS and Microsoft Azure to Dell Apex Cyber Recovery Services, here are the five biggest news and product announcements launched Monday at Dell Technologies World 2022 in Las Vegas.

AWS, Apex, Azure And Snowflake News From Dell Technologies World 2022

Dell Technologies is hosting its largest in-person event in years with Dell Technologies World 2022 in Las Vegas this week, with thousands of customers, investors and channel partners in attendance.

During the first day of Dell Technologies World 2022 Monday, the company unleashed several new offerings and partnerships including a new cybersecurity Apex-as-a-Service offering as well as collaborations with major cloud players such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Snowflake.

Dell Monday delivered new cloud experiences, ransomware offerings, an expanded SaaS ecosystem and as-a-service offerings to help customers better manage and protect applications across data centers and multi-cloud environments.

The Round Rock, Texas-based infrastructure and PC giant is coming off a record-breaking fiscal year 2022, as revenue exceeded $100 billion for the first time in the company’s history. Dell generated $101.2 billion in total revenue for fiscal year 2022, which ended Jan. 28, 2022, representing a revenue increase of 17 percent year over year.

Dell Technologies World 2022 marks the first time the IT giant has hosted a large in-person event for customers, channel partners and employees since the global COVID-19 pandemic caused a halt to in-person events in early 2020. Dell hosted Dell Technologies World as a virtual event in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dell is now looking to kick-start its flagship event this year with Dell Technologies World in Las Vegas this week along with other Dell Technologies World events in different geographies scheduled for later this year.

Dell Technologies World 2022 runs from May 2 to May 5 at the Venetian Expo Center with keynote speakers including CEO Michael Dell and Vice Chairman and Co-COO Jeff Clarke as well as special guest speakers such as actor Matthew McConaughey and astrophysicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson.

CRN breaks down the five most important announcements from the first day of Dell Technologies World 2022 with a focus on security, cloud and Dell Apex as a Service.

Here is CRN’s full coverage of Dell Technologies World 2022.

Dell Apex Cyber Recovery Services

Dell Technologies launched an Apex as-a-Service Cyber Recovery Services offering, the first in a series of new Apex full-stack offerings.

Apex Cyber Recovery Services aims to simplify recovery from cyberattacks with Dell managing the day-to-day cybersecurity value operations while also assisting with data recovery.

Apex Cyber Recovery Services is delivered in a consumption-based as-a-service model with standardized configurations, simplified Dell-assisted recovery options and expertise from nearly 2,000 isolated value solutions deployed globally.

Chad Dunn, vice president of product management for Dell’s HCI, CI and software-defined storage, told CRN that the new Apex offering enables channel partners to provide a cloud-like experience to customers when recovering from a cyberattack and achieve more agility by offloading the daily management of cyber data protection.

“Customers also get more resiliency through recovery operations from an isolated, immutable and intelligent data vault. Cyber Recovery Services streamlines the deployment of cyber recovery solutions through standardized configurations, and recovery service options will give customers more control with templated recovery, runbooks and procedures,” Dunn said. “We provide the expert guidance at every step, helping customers optimize the selection of applications and data to protect in the vault, while one point of contact communicates the status of the vault operations throughout the subscription.”

Availability: Dell’s Apex Cyber Recovery Services is now available for channel partners and customers in the U.S., with plans for broader availability in other geographies later this year.

Dell PowerProtect Cyber Recovery For Microsoft Azure

Dell is boosting access to its data protection offerings for public clouds with the release of Dell PowerProtect Cyber Recovery for Microsoft Azure.

The new service will allow organizations to deploy an isolated cyber vault in the Azure public cloud to more securely protect and isolate data from a ransomware attack, with the goal of improving cyber resiliency and reducing the impact of cyberattacks.

“We did bring the Cyber Recovery software to [AWS] late last year. And I’ll say the No. 1 question I’ve gotten from customers over the last six months is, ‘When is it coming to Azure?’” said Caitlin Gordon, vice president of product management for Dell Technologies. “So we are bringing our Cyber Recovery software to Azure. This is all about being able to create that air-gapped copy, and in this case a physically isolated air gap copy as well, of that data in the public cloud.”

Dell PowerProtect Cyber Recovery for Microsoft Azure provides flexible recovery options in the event of a cyberattack including recovery within the data center, in a new Azure private network or in an unimpacted Azure environment.

The new offering will join a broad portfolio of Dell offerings available through Microsoft Azure Marketplace.

“Not only do we have that ability to deploy that in the public cloud, but you can also transact that through the Azure Cloud Marketplace. Our customers can really burn down their pre-recommitted spend with [Azure],” said Gordon.

Availability: Dell PowerProtect Cyber Recovery for Microsoft Azure will be globally available in the second half of 2022.

CyberSense For Dell PowerProtect Cyber Recovery For AWS

Dell is building on its collaboration with AWS by unveiling its CyberSense for Dell PowerProtect Cyber Recovery for AWS offering.

The offering allows customers to use adaptive analytics, scan metadata and complete files, and implement machine learning and forensic tools to detect, diagnose and speed data recovery.

CyberSense for Dell PowerProtect Cyber Recovery for AWS monitors files and databases to determine if a cyberattack has occurred and identify the last known uncorrupted copy of data to speed a more secure and confidential recovery.

Dell’s CyberSense analytics is fully integrated with its Cyber Recovery offering for ransomware protection. Dell leverages the backup workflow to copy and secure critical business records in an isolated vault using backup software. CyberSense will provide full content indexing of air-gapped cyber vault copies for AWS and Dell customers.

“In the case of a ransomware attack, you’ll be able to use CyberSense to find the last known good backup copy and be able to recover that confidently in the public cloud,” said Dell’s Gordon. “The other benefit is we found is that CyberSense actually can be a last line of defense to detect that an attack has occurred. Because it’s doing full content indexing, it can actually have the intelligence to detect if a ransomware attack has actually happened. … So a lot of incremental value for cyber recovery in the public cloud.”

Availability: CyberSense for Dell PowerProtect Cyber Recovery for AWS will be globally available in the second half of 2022.

Dell Forms Unique Snowflake Partnership For Cloud, Data Storage

Dell is teaming up with cloud data analytics all-star Snowflake in a unique partnership that connects data from Dell EMC enterprise storage systems with the Snowflake Data Cloud.

Dell’s new Snowflake collaboration looks to give customers greater flexibility operating in multi-cloud environments, meet data sovereignty requirements, and more easily turn data into insight wherever it resides.

Dell and Snowflake customers will be able to use on-premises data stored on Dell object storage with the Snowflake Data Cloud while keeping their data local or seamlessly copying it to public clouds.

The partnership will leverage Dell EMC’s object storage platform, ECS—which provides scalability, performance and resiliency to derive insight from wherever data resides—as well as Dell EMC ObjectScale storage platform, which delivers a software-defined microservices-based architecture using Kubernetes. Businesses leverage Snowflake’s Data Cloud to unite siloed data, discover and securely share data, and execute diverse analytic workloads in the cloud.

“Customers want to keep some of the data in their data center, but they still want to use that with Snowflake’s cloud-based analytics,” said Dell’s Gordon. “By not changing where the analytics run but keeping the data in place, we’ve been able to collaborate to enable Snowflake’s external table capability to actually read the data that exists on our on-premises object storage capabilities—which is either ECS or ObjectScale—so that you can actually read that data, keep it in place, but leverage that with other cloud-based data that you have in the Snowflake platform.”

Availability: Dell and Snowflake said they will pursue product integrations and joint go-to-market efforts in the second half of 2022.

Project Alpine Details Emerging

In January, Dell unveiled a glimpse into its future hybrid cloud storage strategy with Project Alpine.

“Project Alpine is our initiative to bring all of our Dell storage software—block, file and object—to the public cloud. So you can combine the great data services and capabilities of our storage platforms with the hyperscalers’ data services like analytics and AI,” said Dell’s Gordon.

At Dell Technologies World 2022 Monday, Dell set up demonstrations of how its storage software could be used in public clouds such as AWS and Azure.

Project Alpine will provide data mobility and consistent operations across on-premises and public cloud environments. Customers will be able to quickly deploy or easily consume Dell storage software and services that will offer performance in public cloud efficiency and protection based on Dell’s enterprise storage products, Dell said.

With Dell storage software in the public cloud, customers can seamlessly move data to the cloud and leverage cloud-based analytics services. Developers can write applications once and deploy them anywhere they are needed to create a consistent, cloud-native experience across multiple public clouds.

Availability: Dell has yet to give a specific time frame for when Project Alpine will generally available.