Organizations are focused on customers more than ever. In a recent survey commissioned by Broadcom around digital transformation, more than half of respondents cited “increasing customer value” as their top strategic focus for 2023.¹ But two-thirds of those same respondents cited the disconnect between business priorities and IT as an impediment to achieving business goals.
When organizations that are hyper-focused on customers, or “customer-obsessed,” align technology with business goals, the outcomes pay off. According to Forrester Research, customer-obsessed companies generate two and a half times higher revenue growth than non-customer-obsessed counterparts.² Over a 12-year time horizon, the return on investment is at least 700%.²
One of the ways organizations can align and leverage IT to improve business outcomes is to rethink their cloud strategy. Adopting a consumption-based multicloud strategy can help organizations overcome the challenges of public cloud and deliver customer-enhancing solutions much faster and simpler.
Easy, Agile, Cost-effective IT that also Meets Data Security Needs
Red River, a global technology provider and strategic Dell Technologies partner, understands IT and business alignment. It supports all branches of the military, federal civilian agencies and commercial businesses with specific capabilities to serve environments with stringent regulatory and compliance needs. Though its customer base is diverse, Red River finds that virtually all organizations are seeking more agile IT solutions that are easy to implement and manage and also meet data security needs.
While many organizations focus on a public cloud-first strategy, it’s increasingly apparent that access, speed, security and cost control limitations often inhibit them from meeting their goals. Instead, Red River helps customers devise a more balanced approach, aligning application and organizational needs to public, private and on-premises IT infrastructure. That’s why multicloud, anchored by consumption-based IT, is an ideal choice. Most Red River customers choose Dell APEX Flex on Demand, bringing much-needed flexibility, security and control through an improved financial model and elevating business outcomes.
“Today, you must lead with multicloud because customer environments are diverse and public cloud has limitations. The first two things our customers care about are cloud and security. Dell Technologies and APEX Flex on Demand’s simplified approach bring together what organizations want from the public cloud and what they need to secure their data centers. Dell APEX Flex on Demand’s hybrid approach gives us a lot of flexibility to effectively meet our customers’ specific and varied needs,” states Kush Kumar, Chief Revenue Officer, Red River.
Reducing Complexity Pays Off
Cloud technologies live at the intersection of exponential data growth and an increasingly digital society. As such, the cloud provides the nimble engineering and storage environments required to increase speed to market and improve customer experiences. But taking full advantage of cloud technology benefits does not require a public cloud-first strategy. Actually, managing multiple public cloud environments adds complexity that can inhibit productivity, a leading reason why many organizations are adopting a multicloud strategy instead.
Flexible consumption-based IT solutions like Dell APEX Flex on Demand help future-proof technology investments with speed, simplicity and agility. That’s because consumption-based IT enables best-of-breed technology and readily allows for ongoing expansions and refreshes. For example, the deployment and set-up time for Dell APEX Flex on Demand is greatly accelerated because Dell Technologies spearheads it. Since customers don’t own or support the IT infrastructure, it frees them up to focus on other business priorities, while decreasing operating costs by up to 60%.
Pivoting from CapEx to OpEx to Keep Pace with IT Shifts
Red River helps customers stay agile and future-fit. “The Dell APEX Flex on Demand portfolio allows our team to provide a breadth of capabilities that are unmatched in this industry. Our customers can be very reactive when it comes to technology. By the time customers get through the acquisition phase, the technology has changed, and they must restart the process again. With Dell APEX Flex on Demand, customers can maximize their operating budgets and build a model that helps them deploy and scale quickly. Customers can expand their technology solutions year over year versus scrambling each year to fund IT infrastructure with capital budgets,” says Kumar.
As Kumar explains, Dell APEX Flex on Demand provides all the security and reliability benefits of on-premises infrastructure without the red tape and delays of securing a CapEx budget. Customers tailor their hardware and software configurations and set “committed” and “buffer capacity” upfront. Usage is measured with automated tools, and customers pay only for what they use, with a single billing rate that helps accurately predict future costs – a model that fits perfectly into OpEx budgets. Dell APEX Flex on Demand also offers buffer capacity with a total monthly billing cap at 85% usage** of total installed capacity, an offer unmatched by other infrastructure providers.
For many organizations, the future rests on customer obsession. And customer obsession relies on moving quickly to align technology to business needs with agility and security. Dell APEX Flex on Demand delivers just that, paving a powerful, future-ready pathway for organizations of all sizes and across multiple industries and geographies.
Learn more about Dell APEX Flex on Demand here.
**Available with Flex on Demand for Storage, Data Protection, and VxRail. Dark sites, non-metered deployments, and customers non-compliant with their contract terms are not eligible.
1 Broadcom Software, 2023 Trends in Value Stream Management Report.
2 Cordial, Q&A featuring Forrester: The Powerful Benefits of Customer-obsession.
