Citing a goal to deliver “a cloud experience wherever customers have apps and data,” Dell Technologies Inc. today is stepping up its multicloud game with a set of data storage and backup services that span multiple cloud platforms.

The company also said it’s expanding support for the agile DevOps software development methodology with new offers and resources intended to help developers choose the right cloud environment with appropriate security and support.

Dell cited a study it commissioned from Forrester Research Inc.’s consulting arm that found that 83% of organizations have adopted a multicloud strategy or plan to do so within the next 12 months. Those numbers are consistent with other recent research.

Lack of cohesion

“For most customers, multicloud is multicontract without a lot of cohesion between environments,” said Varun Chhabra, a Dell senior vice president. The result is a lack of transparency into costs, data security risks, developer productivity slowdowns and skills shortages caused by the inability to keep up with the tools and frameworks required to manage multiple environments. “This is an issue we’ve heard a lot more about over the past year,” he said.

The new Apex Multicloud Data Services provides file, block, object and data protection services for simultaneous access to all major public clouds from a single source of data. Services are integrated with the Apex Cloud Console to allow organizations to connect storage and data protection to preferred public clouds and services.

Dell said the service helps avoid public cloud vendor lock-in, excessive egress fees and the cost and risk associated with moving data from one cloud to another. “Customers will be able to access data wherever it is and to consume cloud resources wherever they need them,” Chhabra said. “They don’t need to move data around.”

Apex Backup Services provide secure data protection with centralized monitoring and management for software-as-a-service applications, endpoints and hybrid workloads. The cloud service can be deployed in a few minutes and scales on-demand, the company said. Security capabilities include instant detection, rapid response and accelerated recovery.

The full range of Apex data storage services is being expanded to cover 13 new countries with on-premises deployment or managed colocation arrangements in selected countries through a partnership with Equinix Inc.

Storage as a service

Dell is also extending its storage portfolio to encompass leading public clouds through an initiative it calls Project Alpine. It’s aimed at allowing customers to buy storage software as a managed service using existing cloud credits while providing for consistent storage management across on-premises and public cloud infrastructure with data-sharing across multiple clouds.

“Today the vast majority of our storage portfolio is sold on purpose-built appliances,” said Caitlin Gordon, a Dell project management vice president. “We are abstracting that so it can be run as software or a fully managed service in the public cloud.”

Extending existing partnerships with major cloud platforms and cloud technology vendors, Dell is also adding increased support for the Kubernetes orchestrator for software containers. Support for Amazon Web Services Inc.’s EKS Anywhere on Dell PowerFlex and PowerStore platforms allows organizations to run Kubernetes across public or on-premises clouds. EKS anywhere is an option of the Amazon EKS Kubernetes service that lets users create and operate Kubernetes clusters on their own infrastructure, with support provided by AWS.

Through a new service offering called PowerProtect Cyber Recovery that Dell developed with AWS, the company is also now offering air-gapped data protection in the AWS cloud to protect against ransomware.

New support for SUSE Linux GmbH’s version of the Rancher multi-cluster orchestration platform on VxRail provides multicluster, multicloud Kubernetes management on whatever cloud orchestration platform customers choose. Dell is also expanding its developer portal to become a destination for developers and DevOps teams looking to provision infrastructure as code. The portal will provide continual access to the latest Dell application program interfaces, software development kits, modules and plug-ins.

APEX Backup Services are now globally available. APEX Data Storage Services is available in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Ireland, India and Singapore.

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