This year Dell Tech World was back in person, and it didn’t disappoint. Here’s my take on the big announcements from the week.
We’re back and in person!
The biggest takeaway after two years of virtual events is, “We are back!” You simply cannot replace the connections made at an in-person event. Each connection may not be powerful by itself, but the collections of connections, and a few individual ones will be.
The excitement was palpable in tweets and posts from the event:
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The power of events like this lies in the community. I was able to interact with so many people, some old friends I haven’t seen in a while, and new friends as well. I’ve missed meeting new friends over the past two years and recognize we have some ground to make up.
Multi-Cloud
The second biggest takeaway is AWS (Amazon Web Services) getting mainstage mention. Dell is an infrastructure company. It wants to sell you hardware. Yes, it has a robust services portfolio, but no one compares its business model to a hyperscaler. Yet, on mainstage, Dell talked about how, internally, they use AWS and other hyperscalers. This struck me because if a company founded on selling hardware is acknowledging and embracing multi-cloud, it is a forgone conclusion this is the direction of the industry.
While the reference was subtle, I appreciate how Dell did not shy away from it and let the audience know Dell is not only aware of multi-cloud, but actively embracing it.
Major Announcements
It wouldn’t be Dell Tech World without some major announcements.
Once again Dell is offering cyber solutions that work with AWS and Azure. Data is key—it should not matter where your data is, on-prem or with a hyperscaler, we need to mine our data to get an edge. If you’re not heading in this direction, you are getting behind.
Snowflake
The biggest partnership announcement was with Snowflake. Here is a data analytics company, built in the cloud, acknowledging on-prem data is important too. I applaud Snowflake for realizing data lives everywhere and a company on-prem should have the same benefits as on-cloud. It should be up to the customer to decide what’s best, and the services should follow.
Conclusion
Overall, the conference reinforced the hybrid-cloud direction of the industry. If you are managing compute on prem or in the cloud, Dell Tech World is a must-attend conference each year. The new world is the hybrid cloud, and Dell Tech World is part of this equation.
Brad Tompkins
VMUG Office
450 Rev Kelly Smith Way, Nashville, TN 37203
[email protected]