There’s comfort in familiarity, especially for specific software platforms employed in the enterprise. But when these platforms evolve to meet modern computing demands, things can get complicated for those employees using the software on a regular basis. While many technology providers work hard to ensure such systems and their upgrades are implemented properly, it can be a challenge to educate customers better than the competition.

Such is the case for Dell Technologies Inc. as it looks to offer a broader portfolio of multicloud solutions. That means partnerships and integrated support teams are crucial for Dell, particularly when it comes to SAP SE. The customer service software platform, used by many Dell customers, is undergoing a massive transition to consolidate under its flagship HANA database management system.

Chhandomay Mandal (pictured), director of product marketing at Dell EMC, spoke with Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Rebecca Knight (@knightrm), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Dell Technologies World event in Las Vegas, Nevada. They discussed the many challenges Dell is tackling on behalf of its customers, the connection with SAP, and how it’s utilizing partnered tech support to better its services and improve customers (see the full interview with transcript here). (*Disclosure below.)

[Editor’s note: The following answers have been condensed for clarity.]

Knight: You’re here to talk to us about SAP. Explain to our viewers a little bit about the connection between your companies.

Mandal: SAP connects a lot of our customers. They are running their ERP, CRM, digital procurement, HR systems, and many other workloads on SAP, and we, Dell Technologies, as a company, have a portfolio of solutions to support SAP workloads, so that’s the big connection. SAP and Dell EMC, we are big partners, and we work hand in hand as well.

Vellante: There are challenges in migrating off Oracle. How are customers dealing with that? Are you guys in a position to help with the partnership with SAP? Can you talk about that a little bit?

Mandal: SAP implementations, as you know, are complex. They take many months or years, and customers have been running SAP for a long time, so their challenge is, “How do we keep our businesses running while we need to transition from what we have to these SAP HANA based deployments?”

They are looking into modern infrastructures that will be able to consolidate all of this around their applications with the same SLS. And at the same time, when they migrate one application to the next on SAP HANA, that platform should be able to add up and deliver all the SLS.

Refactoring what they have into this SAP HANA is big for all our customers, as well as how to have a better performing platform, how to deliver the agility’s simplification, and lowering the TCO. These are the projects that CIOs are running for our customers.

Knight: As we know, simpler is always better. Can you talk about some of the ROI? What are companies seeing in terms of these benefits?

Mandal: Dell EMC PowerMax is the backbone of running SAP applications for a long time. Our previous generations in terms of VMAX, VMAX All-Flash, now with our PowerMax, it has the highest skill ability of SAP HANA. It can run 162 SAP HANA nodes on a single array, but that’s not the end game. The thing is, it can consolidate SAP, traditional SAP workloads, SAP HANA, as well as other mixed workloads while delivering the same performance masking the SLS with its built-in mission learning capabilities.

We have several customers seeing benefits out of this. For example, a big sports equipment manufacturer, when they move to this platform, there are software quality assurance processes. It used to take 10 days in all the infrastructure. Now, they could run on this new platform in two days. That’s literally about 80% improvement because of the higher performance.

Vellante: Talk a little bit more about the differentiation that Dell EMC brings relative to some of your other storage competitors, specifically within SAP environments.

Mandal: First, Dell comes in with a portfolio of solutions. These are complex deployments, and customers are looking for a cross-state partner with professional services, experience and a portfolio of solutions, not just one solution fits all. I talked about Dell EMC PowerMax. It’s great for consolidation, for running HANA and the existing workloads, but then when you look at the next generation of applications, the IoT, AI, blockchain, the unstructured world, Dell EMC Isilon is a great platform which has already been in the market and in the forefront of AI workloads.

Dell, as a company, offers a portfolio of solutions, and it’s not a piecemeal. We see the broader picture and plug in all the right pieces with the right consulting surfaces as well, so that the customers can run their applications day in and day out and transition, as well as bring in new deployments like SAP Leonardo.

Watch the complete video interview below and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Dell Technologies World 2019 event. (*Disclosure: Dell Technologies Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Dell nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE