Our first in-person Dell Technologies World in three years was successful on so many levels. It marked the culmination of an excellent year for the PowerScale team and gave us the opportunity to thank the thousands of customers in attendance and many more who joined us virtually. In the unstructured data space (file and object storage), we had the privilege of sharing the stage with many of them by presenting co-innovation stories – strengthening our relationships and fostering continued learning and growth.
When we look back at our customer stories from the past year, product innovation, with an emphasis on flexibility, remained one of the most consistent drivers of their success. By providing organizations with the flexibility to store and manage a wide variety of different data types, at the velocity and performance levels they need, customers were able to turn unprecedented data growth into strategic business advantages while keeping it secure from cyberattacks. The standard 3’s of big data (volume, variety, velocity) just added a new V – a secure vault!
These storage innovations were on full display at Dell Technologies World with our customers taking the spotlight.
Nature Fresh Farms, one of the largest independent greenhouse produce growers in Canada, gave attendees the opportunity to experience a smart farm in action with the help of live beehives and a vegetable garden located inside a mini greenhouse. Crowds gathered as the company’s vice president of information technology Keith Bradley shared the incredible story about its farm of the future based on Dell’s modern storage and infrastructure solutions. Today, the company is using Dell PowerScale, VxRail and our switches to power an “ecosystem” of AI workflows to control water supply, pest control, pollinations and vegetable selection – all with automation built into the supply chain, to help deliver fresh produce from the smart farm to the kitchen table. Knowing a great story when it sees one, CRN captured and wrote about our work together as well.
For SMC Corporation of America, a leading provider of automated manufacturing products for a wide range of industries, safeguarding their critical manufacturing files against ransomware attacks was critical. To protect the data that provides its competitive advantage, SMC has implemented secure data-at-rest encryption as well as the PowerScale Cyber Protection Solution to guard against ransomware and other cyberattacks. SMC’s Jon St. Arnaud also presented at Dell Technologies World, and even took time out of his busy schedule to meet with TechTarget, which resulted in a great story on how they were able to connect dozens of IT departments and bring its data centers to life.
Dell Technologies World gave us a glimpse into the future and delivered the insights we need to continue driving the farming industry forward.” Keith Bradley, VP of IT, @Nature Fresh Farms
Additionally, we want to recognize customers who were not able to physically join us at Dell Technologies World.
Like Animal Logic for example, who needed speed and agility to run its global animation studio. With Dell PowerScale storage and PowerEdge servers, the company was able to meet changes to workflow demands with ease and efficiency. As a result, they were able to innovate with faster more scalable storage and compute, enabling them to take full advantage of the latest animation advancements. Like a Photon is another example of an innovative animation studio, powered by Dell Technologies products such as PowerScale as well. It’s a great story worth checking out here.
We also recently celebrated the Miami Dophins’ success expanding their use of video for fan engagement, safety and security for all events at Hard Rock Stadium. Using Dell’s unstructured data storage and hyperconverged infrastructure systems, the NFL team generated more than $1.2 million in cost savings, which was used to help fund a data recovery site.
In addition to the Dolphins and many other sports franchises, we also worked with NBC Olympics to provide high performance storage systems for its production of the Games of the XXXII Olympiad. NBC Olympics leveraged the PowerScale family of storage systems to digitally store and manage petabytes of video content for sharing across the world as part of its Tokyo Olympics coverage last summer.
Shows like Dell Technologies World allow us to lean in and listen to what customers want next with a wide range of topics ranging from as –a-service delivery, to cyber protection, to cloud-based offerings.
Our technical preview of Project Alpine connected with our customers in a very meaningful way. In the new hybrid world, our customers need to simplify how they store, protect and move data to support their applications and want to have the flexibility to move data between on-premises locations and public clouds.
On the stage and show floor, we showed customers, partners, media and industry analysts what we are working on and it was received extremely well with mentions in major publications like Forbes, Blocks and Files, TechTarget, StorageReview, eWeek and many others. I am especially excited about what we are doing with OneFS in the public cloud and we will reveal more on this soon.
“As our greenhouses expand, we’ll be able to continue growing our deep roots with Dell with new innovations like Project Alpine, enabling the company to easily store and manage data in the cloud for increased flexibility,” Keith Bradley observed.
Call your Dell representative or Dell Partner today to find out about all the latest enhancements to PowerScale and discover how you can use them to modernize your business. You can also, watch this short on-demand DTW session recording (registration login required) to get started.
