Customer-centricity continues to gain steam in the enterprise world, because solutions are being tailor-made based on users’ needs, tastes and preferences.

Since users want more choice in the Kubernetes and container ecosystem, Dell Container Storage Modules enable the free movement of Kubernetes spots data from any storage or distribution, such as from OpenShift to SUSE Rancher, because it addresses application mobility, according to Itzik Reich (pictured, right), vice president of technologists, ISG, at Dell Technologies Inc.

“The hybrid cloud mobility, moving data between different cloud providers running off-premises is still very early days,” Reich said. “We’re starting to see customers that are telling us, ‘I’m starting with a specific Kubernetes distribution, cloud distribution, but then maybe I want to move to another vendor … how can you, as Dell, help us do this mobility?’ One of the things that we did is we developed this thing called CSM – Container Storage Modules.”

Reich and Brian Payne (left) vice president of product management for Dell Technologies cloud, spoke with theCUBE industry analysts Lisa Martin and Dave Vellante at Dell Technologies World, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed how Dell addresses the cloud mobility issue and the importance of meeting customer needs. (* Disclosure below.)

The big-ears idea

As part of the “big-ears approach,” Dell works side by side with enterprises as they evaluate emerging technologies and use cases. This helps discover issues early enough for them to be fixed, as showcased by APEX File Storage for AWS, a software-defined cloud file storage service that is fully customer managed, according to Payne.

“With APEX File Storage for AWS, as you begin to roll that out with our customers, they begin to spin it up,” he stated. “You discover things around integration with the public cloud that maybe is different in AWS than it is with Azure and different in these spaces. With APEX File Storage for AWS, we had great feedback from the customers.”

Given that there are numerous distributions within Kubernetes, Dell saw it fit to avail some of them based on customer feedback. As a result, Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Red Hat saw the light of day as users wanted an engineered remedy, Reich pointed out.

“We started to get a lot of customer telling us, ‘Hey, we actually want to work with other distributions such as Red Hat, OpenShift or SUSE Rancher,’” he explained. “Based on that feedback, we’ve already started to develop those features — for example, OpenShift, but eventually the customer wants an engineered solution. This is where Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Red Hat came up for this specific requirement.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Dell Technologies World:

(* 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