The agenda for Dell Technologies Inc.’s upcoming gathering in Las Vegas this month promises to follow a path much like the company itself. At the center will be Dell’s core businesses of compute, networking, PCs and storage. Unquestionably, we’ll hear about the topic of the year, generative AI and large language models. It’s likely we’ll hear explorations into edge, telecom, security, multicloud and artificial intelligence – and maybe even data management. 

What will make Dell Technologies World particularly significant is that the company has placed a major bet on APEX, its platform for delivering public cloud agility with private cloud control. Most of the domains above ultimately feed into APEX, and there will be no shortage of news this month on this and other areas of the business from what is expected to be a record-setting showcase for Dell.

“This Dell Technologies World promises to be the largest from a news standpoint relative to any other DTW ever,” said Dave Vellante, industry analyst for theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. “Expect to hear progress on APEX, and more detail on the projects that Dell announced last year. Dell’s expansion of its infrastructure business with subscription as-a-service offerings follows the wider industry trends, and we’ll be watching closely for key milestones and progress points.”

TheCUBE’s coverage of Dell Technologies World 2023 will run May 22-24 and include interviews with company executives, industry analysts and Dell customers who will provide insight into the latest announcements and future trends in the tech world during one of the year’s signature shows. (* Disclosure below)

Connectivity across cloud and edge

Dell is expected to provide updates on two key projects that are central to its business. One is Project Alpine, which the company announced last year, an initiative that brings seamless connectivity between the cloud and Dell’s on-prem services, such as PowerStore, PowerScale and PowerFlex.

“When will it actually be a product is a key question, because the problem it solves, multicloud complexity, is needed now,” Vellante said. “To do this requires serious engineering around hardware enablement and software that simplifies cross-estate management while creating the cloud experience everywhere and maintaining performance and security.”

The other key initiative is Project Frontier, a software operations platform for enterprises to manage and orchestrate edge applications at scale. Dell launched Project Frontier in October, and it is an important part of a long-term strategy for making inroads into the telecommunications market while extending its offerings out to the edge. In February, the company announced the launch of a Dell Open Telecom Ecosystem Community and has recently partnered with Red Hat Inc. to facilitate open telecom networks.

Focus on security

Data protection and security represent major opportunities for Dell. Backup and recovery solutions have become an important adjacency to cybersecurity, and Dell’s large installed base in this area gives it influence in the market. The company’s focus has been on supply chain security, zero-trust principles, silicon root of trust and end-to-end protection. These are timely areas because ransomware attacks and supply chain corruption have become a major part of the threat landscape.

Last year at DTW, the company unveiled an expansion of its PowerProtect Cyber Recovery solution and followed that with a new release in November. The latest iteration included the addition of Google Cloud as a backup target, highlighting Dell’s interest in providing cloud protections on top of existing appliance-based storage safeguards for the three major hyperscalers.

“We can recover known good data that hasn’t been compromised back into your production environment so you can resume operations,” said Michael Wilke, senior consultant, Product Marketing-Data Protection at Dell, in an interview earlier this year with SiliconANGLE. “What customers want to know is that their data is safe and secure. They want that peace of mind.”

Ecosystem partnerships

Dell’s prominent position in the computing industry attracts a crowd, and its partner ecosystem will be on full display in Las Vegas this month. There will likely be announcements and discussion surrounding Dell’s extensive partner relationships, which historically have been focused on VMware Inc. as a primary partner, but are increasingly encompassing other key players such as Snowflake and Starburst. One of Dell’s more significant partnerships is with Broadcom Inc., a major provider of intersystem connectivity through its focus on networking, infrastructure and broadband. According to Broadcom, 99% of all internet traffic crosses at least one of its chips.

Broadcom manages the internal fabric between CPUs, network interface cards and storage, and DTW attendees will have an opportunity to see the chip giant’s 100GB NICs and PCIe switching capabilities within Dell’s PowerEdge XE9680 server line for emerging AI and high performance computing workloads.

Broadcom’s alliance with Dell spotlights a transformation taking place within the enterprise computing community as connectivity becomes paramount. Both companies are finding that customers are moving toward software value decision-making with a focus on business return beyond infrastructure, and this will likely be a key theme at DTW this month.

“Infrastructure is the enabler of transformation, but infrastructure needs to be smarter, easier, more automated, more secure,” Shannon Champion, vice president of product marketing at Dell, said in an interview with SiliconANGLE. “Our hardware platform engineers worked with software engineers to design software-defined storage capabilities within the PowerEdge platform. We can use software to exploit the underlying hardware features and capabilities and do that in a differentiated way because it delivers value for customers.”

TheCUBE event livestream

Don’t miss theCUBE’s coverage of Dell Technologies World May 22-24. Plus, you can watch theCUBE’s event coverage on-demand after the live event.

How to watch theCUBE interviews

We offer you various ways to watch theCUBE’s coverage of Dell Technologies World, including theCUBE’s dedicated website and YouTube channel. You can also get all the coverage from this year’s events on SiliconANGLE.

TheCUBE Insights podcast

SiliconANGLE also has podcasts available of archived interview sessions, available on iTunes, Stitcher and Spotify, which you can enjoy while on the go.

SiliconANGLE also has analyst deep dives in our Breaking Analysis podcast, available on iTunes, Stitcher and Spotify.

Guests

Stay tuned for theCUBE’s complete guest list during Dell Technologies World here.

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Dell Technologies World. Dell Technologies Inc. and other sponsors of theCUBE’s event coverage have no editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE