Bill Wavro, Dell Technologies | Dell Technologies World 2021

[Music] welcome back to dell technologies world 2021 the virtual version my name is dave vellante and this is thecube i'm pleased to welcome bill waverow who's the president of gm dell financial services at dell technologies bill great to see you thanks for coming on yeah thanks dave it's really great to be here with you so we heard in allison dew's keynote dell technologies all in on as a service apex she's the executive lead so really passionate about that talk about dfs in that context you've always had a way to help people you know shift capex to opex but what's your specific role regarding apex yeah well thanks dave look we're really excited about apex at dfs you know we think apex solutions gives customers access to the broadest range of infrastructure solutions in the industry you know if you combine that with the dell technologies portfolio of isg technology and solutions that's a great combination for customers but you know you asked about dfs and at dfs we've been delivering consumption solutions for over 15 years so taking a you know a look at the apex portfolio you can broadly divide it into two categories turnkey apex turnkey solutions like data storage services and then apex custom solutions like data center utility and flex on demand and those custom solutions are where dfs plays and as i said you know we've been offering those for over 15 years we have a lot of experience with customers what customers are looking for we have tens of thousands of assets out there today with hundreds of customers that are being metered on a regular basis that we're billing monthly so we're getting a lot of feedback from customers and i think the apex solutions announcements that you heard here at dell technologies world or a further expansion of that they're built built on the backbone of what dfs has been delivering for a long time so we've taken i think the best of those solutions and we've listened to customers what are they looking for what do they want and we've got even new and improved offerings in the current announcement that we made so you know i think when you talk to customers they want a couple things they want simplicity they want to be able to understand how they're going to acquire it and how those payment solutions work and they want choice and i think the apex solutions gives customers both of those things and and the good news is you know they're available on all sorts of isg hardware be it servers storage hyper converge converged infrastructures customers can choose what technology they're looking for and they can create their own demand environment and the last thing i'll do is a little plug for dfs you know we've been in the payment solution business for over 25 years so we not only offer consumption solutions but we offer traditional leases and financing and so when you add all that together and you go talk to a customer about technology and how they want to pay for it we think we've got the broadest range in the industry and we're really proud of that okay cool so you have two the two areas that you simplify that which is great uh you got the standard off the shelf and then you got the custom solutions the standard stuff is like console data storage and then cloud services that breaks down even further and then the custom i got my notes apex flex on demand and apex data center utility how do apex custom solutions differ from those turnkey offerings yeah well the beautiful thing about apex is it gives customers choice so as you mentioned you have turnkey so if you think data storage services that's one of our new turnkey type offerings and those turnkey offerings are outcome based so think about it as an outcome what is a customer looking for do they want file versus block storage what sort of capacity do they need what performance level are they looking for but it's thinking of those outcomes and dell technology is going to take care of the rest right a customer can go to the apex console they can review those choices they can make their selections and then they can turn it over to dell and we'll deploy that technology we'll manage it we'll upgrade it and we'll service it over the life of the term so the customer can focus on outcomes versus on acquiring and managing technology so that's the turnkey solution and that's probably the the biggest and newest part of our announcement of apex solutions and then we have the custom the custom as you mentioned you know data center utility flex on demand that's what dfs has been delivering for many years now and and that's for a customer who wants to select the product so think of it as a product based solution where a customer wants to select the technology they may want to manage it themselves they may want to have a partner manage it they may want to include different services so they're able to put that together in a custom way and satisfy whatever problem they're trying to solve so we found that you know many customers are going to want to select that custom solution because they're in some part of their data transformation journey where they still want to control some of the technology and others will want to go the turnkey route so again it kind of goes back to the customer choice and allowing them to acquire it the way that they want to acquire it okay so like an example might be i'm just making this up i'm a financial institution i'm a big vmax customer i got some kind of special process that i use that i wrote that gives me competitive differentiation because i can get a millisecond faster than my competitor speed a lot or whatever and i want that i'm not going to take that's not part of your turnkey solution but that's part of my value-add i want that but i want your help in sort of customizing that and then making it as a service is that like a reasonable example that's a that's a great example and so you know let me talk about that a little bit so let me give you a couple of examples of the use cases and what the products provide so think about let's talk about data center utility first because when you think of the data center utility think data center right these are large deployments uh they're big customers they're most likely a global customer and they want to get out of the data center business right they want to get out of the day-to-day management of that and be able to focus on hey how do we as a as i as a cio deliver value to my business i want to make a difference in that business strategy you know cio's more and more being asked to help the business and enable that business strategy and so many of them want to get out of the data center management business and this is where the data center utility product can come in it allows us to go in as dell and help that customer manage that data center so it has the most flexibility in terms of you know custom building custom reporting very low if any minimum commitments and one of the best features is we have a delivery manager who's assigned to every account who can help you know that customer procure assets manage assets deal with capacity management so we really can take over the management of that data center and allow the customers it group to focus on delivering value to the business so we think that's a really important aspect of it and it allows us to manage even existing assets that are sitting out at the customer as well as new purchases and then back to the kind of example that you gave you know where a customer really wants that high performance they have specific hardware in mind they can also use the flex on demand type products so the the customer is able to pick the hardware whether it be server storage uh you know converged infrastructure hyper converged and they can select the technology that they want to use they can sign up for a very flexible period of time so they can go from one year to five years you know they may only need this hardware for a limited period of time maybe they're working on a a project where they're going to need additional storage capacity for the next couple of years so they can sign up for a two-year contract if they want they can sign up for the commitment level that they want to use so you know one of the great things that customers are looking for is they want that cloud-like operating model they want to pay for the technology as they utilize it and they don't want to be locked in to having to purchase a large amount of data if potentially they're not going to use it so flex on demand gives them that flexibility they can sign up for 50 uh of a storage array's capacity and only pay for usage above and beyond that 50 so it offers customers a lot of choice and a lot of ability to get the technology they want um and and be a very flexible utilization method as they go forward so i don't think a lot of people realize that you said very low or no minimum commitments uh and so maybe you can explain that a little bit and who owns the asset well you know every when we talk about flex on demand it is still owned by dell so dell you know owns that asset and the customer can commit we think we have the broadest range of commitment levels in the industry so if you think about a flex on demand type offering and let's say you want to purchase a storage array you can sign up for a 50 minimum commitment so again you've got flexibility on the terms so you can go one to five years you can sign up for 50 commitment so you're going to get a bill for 50 of of that storage usage every month but you're not going to get a bill for anything more unless you utilize it now let's say one month you go to 60 right so you're going to pay that extra 10 percent only when you use it if you go back down to 50 the following month you don't pay and let me let me point something out on this because i think this is where we differ from a lot of our competition the rate you pay is the same so it's the same for the minimum commitment level of fifty percent as it is for the incremental ten percent or twenty percent that you use above that some of our competitors have surge pricing so basically once you go above your commitment you're paying a premium we don't do that we've heard from customers they don't like that they want it simple they want to pay one rate per gigabyte throughout the life of that contract and so we do that another unique feature which we kind of just implemented recently is that the max that you can pay is 85 on that storage usage so if you sign up for a 50 minimum commitment and let's say you use 90 of it so you've got a pretty significant increase off your minimum we will only charge you up to 85 and that's a new feature uh that we added to all our flex on demand products recently for future customers as well as previous customers so we've actually gone back to all our current customers and said this applies to you even though that wasn't part of the original offering we're going to cap you at that 85 percent level and the reason we did that is because while customers love pay for things as they use them they're a little uncomfortable on uncertainty of maybe paying too much right so we put this in to help protect customers that they wouldn't have to worry about paying you know more than they expected to so we think that's a pretty cool feature of what we offer yeah so to summarize the features i got the portfolio i got the whole portfolio i have access to i got the flexibility that you just described in great detail and pricing transparency or or certainty and then and then the other piece is the value the 85 percent cap so that that's that's pretty cool yeah okay so you you've been doing this for a while you got you have data and experience with with real customers with different types of custom solutions maybe you could share some of the the business impacts and benefits that customers have seen yeah well let me give you example so data center utility like we had a large multinational manufacturer who again as i mentioned earlier they wanted to get out of the data center environment they had a they don't want to manage that anymore they had a complex data center it was managed with about 50 percent of of their own internal i.t department and 50 with a third party service provider they had multiple hardware vendors multiple third parties providing services it was very very complex so they came to dell technologies we took that data center put it into a data center utility contract and we took over management of the data center so it freed up those that 50 of their own i.t staff to work on other things that provided value to the business and then we were able to take that consolidate vendors make it a lot simpler and improve the efficiency of the data center and that and that's an important thing so it's not just about how you pay for it that you pay for it in a variable manner it's how efficient can you make that data center and no one knows dell technologies assets and hardware better than us right so we were able to create tremendous value by utilizing those assets more efficiently so they were getting more productivity out of the underlying i.t assets we simplified it for them

and you know we were able to take their team out of that day-to-day management which is what they were looking for so there's a great example of you know a win-win on both sides and what we found with these customers is once they go to this kind of model they stay with it they like it and we actually end up expanding our relationship with these customers so it's good for us you know in a lot of ways and one of the things we didn't you know talk about earlier you know is is another benefit that maybe isn't so obvious you know particularly when you look at a flex on demand type product so so let's think about flex on demand you know one of the things customers are struggling with is how to predict how much data storage they're going to need in the future you know there's this huge data explosion going on in the world we've talked about that many times and cios often have trouble trying to predict how much capacity they're going to need in the future right they don't know exactly where it's going to go and so one of the struggles that they have is when they have a need for that data it takes time to get it available so if you think about a cio that all of a sudden has additional capacity they need to add to their infrastructure it could take 90 days to get that out on the floor you know they've got to go through their internal requisition process they've got to select a vendor they've got to acquire the hardware get it all set up this all takes time 90 days later is too late one of the things that flex on demand offers is that you're able to get that capacity on the floor and at the push of the button you can have it up and running so you're not paying for it until you use it but once you do need it you can have it available really quickly and that's one of the benefits that maybe people don't expect when they they use this flex on demand product but provides tremendous value for customers so we've seen that kind of time and time again with flex on demand we had a large pharmaceutical customer who you know went to one of these uh had a mandate that they wanted to go to a cloud operating model for all their i.t purchases so they wanted to free up cash flow that was kind of a directive from the top you know free up cash flow let's get out of the capex business and flex on demand was a perfect answer to that because it freed up the cash flow they paid for the technology over time um and they were able to have this capacity available whenever they needed it so so you know we've seen that as a tremendous benefit of the custom flex on demand model i've done a lot of tco studies bill and i'll tell you the the upfront planning the capacity planning the asset management uh the procurement these are a big chunk of the labor cost associated with with total cost um okay so we got the turn key with the three components we got the custom with the two components there was a there was a fifth bucket in my notes here which is the partners uh in the in the channel and i'm really interested in how the channel is transforming no longer can you just be a box seller in the channel those days are gone made a lot of money doing that you know good deal but now you got to add value uh the cloud has really changed everything there so it's all and of course as you know it's all about the margin and profitability so so talk about the channel you've always had relationships and how apex fits with channel partners yeah well look dave we've had great experience working with our partners i mean partners are hearing the same thing from customers that we're here you know they want a cloud-based type operating model they want to pay for their technology as they use it so partners are looking to provide the same value to customers and we found that working with partners you know expands our reach tremendously and they have a lot of expertise so the apex the solutions are designed to work with partners partners can either sell those themselves so they can sort of resell our solution to them or they can just refer the business to us and they're going to get a 20 you know uplift on the committed contract value for those contracts so so this is you know really financially attractive to our channel partners and it allows us to work with those partners to get to more customers right and as i mentioned earlier you know these custom solutions can include services from the partners so we can provide the hardware piece to them uh they can add on their services on top of that and they can be the primary relationship with a customer or again they can refer it over to us so we found that to be a really good value proposition for partners and we think you know they're pretty happy about it i mean we we have an example uh relatecare as a company that supports healthcare organizations around the world so helping you know with patient communication appointment scheduling telehealth which is a really big area right now as you know with the pandemic still going across the world this is an area of tremendous growth so relatecare was working with one of our partners arcfire and they needed more flexibility in the data center and so these apex flex on demand was a perfect solution for that it allowed them to deliver a secure flexible data center you know and work with their partner to you know really improve the service level that was occurring in that relationship and if you think about it one other thing we didn't mention is particularly for a lot of health care companies and and companies and customers who you know have a high sensitivity around data security and where that data resides one of the advantages of on-prem solutions like apex flex on demand or data center utility is you know where your data is you know the public cloud can move the data around often without you knowing about it and so that security that assurance that you know exactly where your data is is really important to a lot of our customers so kind of another feature um that has beneficial for customers and again we're seeing you know partners adopt this more and more and i think you know over time that is going to continue to grow yeah so 20 points on the uplift plus additional services that i can bring in because i get a tighter relationship you know in this model right the the the renewal starts when you sign the contract so it's it's a much much deeper relationship can the partners do they do they can they white label the service is it co-branded is it all dell branded yeah well they have the choice i mean the partner can can actually take on the billing and relationship primarily if that's what they would like to do and again so so that's one of the offerings or they can refer it to us you know many partners don't make they don't have the back end or the infrastructure to do all that building and collecting themselves so they prefer just to refer it to us other partners are large they do have those capabilities and they want to take on the primary relationship so we can work with them both ways and we have worked with in both ways nice uh we're out of time bill but give us the bottom line you touched on some of this but why apex over the competition yeah well look i think it goes back the first thing is is dell technologies right we dell technologies has the broadest selection of products and services in the industry so you combine that with apex solutions you've got a win-win it's unbeatable in my opinion we also i think have the the best range of flexibility in those payment solutions so you can go from a minimum commitment of 40 you know all the way up to 85 you can go one to five years you know no surcharges right the rate is the rate the rate goes from the minimum all the way to the maximum we have the storage cap that i talked about hci cap at 85 so you're going to be capped so you don't have unexpected costs that you didn't you didn't forecast and you can flex up and down right so you flex up you flex down some of our competition once you flex up you can't flex back down and that's that's a real uh negative in my opinion and we've got 15 years of experience of doing this so so that's really important you know we work with a lot of customers we've learned a lot during those journeys and we think we're the best equipped uh to provide you with consumption solutions and as a service solutions that really work customers financial flexibility asset management uh the really key part of it that we don't spend enough time talking about bill thanks so much for coming on thecube and sharing your insights hey thanks dave really glad to be here thank you all right and thank you for watching everybody this is dave vellante for the cube's continuous coverage of dell tech world 2021 the virtual edition we'll be right back right after this short break [Music]

2021-05-08 09:13

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