In this era, almost every organization needs to become digital. Digital transformation is taking place, making more companies multi-cloud based, powered by data and ready to take on new challenges by turning them into opportunities.
Dell Technologies has managed to create new ways to use technology that speak to specific business-critical areas, providing hardware, software and guidance to both customers and end-users alike, in order to move towards a transformed digital industry.
In an interview with Telecom Review at Telecoms World Asia in Bangkok, Dell EMC’s General Manager and Senior Director, OEM Solutions, Erwin Meyer and David Lin, Business Development Director, Communications Vertical, APJ OEM Solutions, spoke about how Dell Technologies identified 4 transformations that are essential to the growth of many organizations in the technology industry: IT, workforce, digital, and security transformations.
“The IT transformation is about automating and optimizing the IT data center and how we can do a better job in orchestration and transformation within the data center,” Meyer said.
In reference to digital transformation, he said, “There’s a lot of work we are doing there, especially in the way we are helping companies build their software in a more agile way.”
Digital transformation allows for unprecedented growth and a plethora of opportunities for vertical solutions providers whereby data and technology could be leveraged to create new value and optimize systems.
“Data is revenue. It can create new business and it has great value,” Lin told Telecom Review.
Dell Technologies has a proven track-record of helping its customers grow and achieve digital transformation, and offers its customers consultancy which helps them develop software in a more agile manner and in the meantime provides a platform, the Pivotal Cloud Foundry, which helps customers develop their software.
“We are providing consultancy on how to provide and develop software in a more agile way. Pivotal Cloud Foundry is our industry leading platform. For organizations to compete and grow in a changing landscape, you need to invest in people and technology, adopt agile development methods, move to microservices, upgrade your legacy systems to new cloud-native platforms and modernize business-critical apps, initiate a “secure-by-default” posture and deliver more of what your customers want, faster. Pivotal helps customers to deliver this” said Meyer.
Around the notion of Application Transformation, Meyer stated that a new breed of applications is born in the cloud – meaning that when software is being built, it is a requirement for it to be cloud native.
“One of the leading cloud native software development platforms is Pivotal Cloud Foundry which is a company owned by Dell Technologies and we have received a great deal of investment from our partners. We saw early on in the cycle that companies like GE and Ford had a need to do a transformation as well. GE’s CEO realized they were no longer an industrial conglomerate, they were a software house which meant that the software developers in GE needed to transform the ways they created their software.”
He added, “From the software angle, it is typically the way we start our customers’ digital transformation. When you start talking about freeing up money for innovation, we need to take a critical look at how their data centers are structured. 30% of Fortune 500 companies are already partnering with the Dell Technologies OEM division. They have been searching for partners who can help them to bring their own products to market faster and do this on a global scale. That’s why at Dell Technologies we have a solution called OEM Solutions.”
Dell Technologies’ OEM Solutions provides infrastructure, service and software solutions in a way that meets the broadest range of application requirements. There are industry-specific OEM solutions such as healthcare, industrial automation, marine and telecommunications, among others.
“Dell Technologies along with its partner companies have maximized their ability to support the digital transformation and IT transformation to bring the new and old clouds together. With these capabilities, we have provided solutions to transfer the infrastructure for our service providers and customers. Dell EMC has built a fully integrated and validated ready bundle solution that enables service providers to immediately launch their own services on top of the Network Function Virtualization (NFV) platform, minimizing, if not eliminating, the need to apply engineering resources to develop their own infrastructure,” said Lin.
The company also offers a next-generation network based on its platforms the VEP 4600 and 1400 which provide next-generation access solutions to negligent regions in the industry to implement ST1 or unify UNICPE. In addition to this, its turnkey radio platform for service providers enables operators to view their sales information and subscriber experiences pertaining to the use of their network. This information helps improve the customer experience and provide better services in order to reduce subscriber turnover.
When it comes to operators in the current situation of this industry, there are some concerns regarding 5G and its deployment plan. One of the main concerns is the money that needs to be invested into 5G, especially in bigger markets.
Lin said he believes that while 4G deployment took place a couple of years ago, companies are still trying to get their investment’s worth as 5G is on the verge of deployment in several parts of the world.
“It puts a considerable amount of pressure on operators who have invested,” he said. “There are a few different paths to deploy 5G. You could do it from scratch, which is tough and requires a huge investment. The other way is you can leverage whatever 4G you have and gradually go into 5G with time. However, operators have differing views on that, depending on their situation.”
He added, “Either way, for us at Dell Technologies, we are providing our hardware to make the cloud part of the infrastructure which will support 5G once it’s been deployed.”
A great deal of 5G deployments are use-case driven or workload driven. Whether it comes to streaming or immersive content, Dell Technologies has been able to provide a capability for its customers by transforming infrastructure, making one of the first leaders in serving highly immersive workloads that are uniquely optimized and tailored for 5G technology.
“5G is part of the larger digital transformation, it is the rocket fuel,” said Meyer.
5G would make gaming, modern medicine, e-learning and training in VR/AR more efficient and a great deal faster. According to Meyer, 5G is going to make many industries boom. He believes that securing the right foundation is critical.
“If you’re building a new house, you need the right foundations. Like with a car, you have to get the engine right first before looking at all the other parts.”
In Asia, the telecommunications industry seems to be taking the lead in terms of size opportunities. Lin stated, “The population and industrial growth here [Asia Pacific and Japan] present opportunities for service providers in this region and for us to see that 5G is on the rise and that service providers in the region are leading in this field. Like last year in Korea during the Winter Olympics, they already tried and tested 5G on site.”
“In the telco world, our design philosophy is completely open so we can work together with any other partners especially since we don’t compete with them. We provide the hardware infrastructure, end-to-end server, computer, storage and networking. We have a hardware selection for them to choose from to build their infrastructure. Our philosophy is being more flexible which means that we can provide the best service for our customers out there,” said Lin.
Digital transformation is an essential aspect that organizations need to look into as our society moves rapidly towards the digital. Depending on how organizations act with regards to transforming their businesses, it will determine whether they will crumble or excel.
“We found that customers that rate themselves as the most mature in their digital transformation journey are able to free up 33 per cent more of their budget for innovation, and I think that’s the trick. It’s that we should optimize current IT infrastructure when starting the journey towards digital transformation. Freeing up money doesn’t necessarily mean that the budgets should become bigger; instead it is the division between the maintenance and innovation parts of the budget that has to change. There’s clear evidence in our research that companies who have started their journey and rate themselves as more mature than their peers, achieve better results,” said Meyer.
By Tala Issa
