There’s more to hybrid information technology than cloud and on-premises data centers. The edge is exploding; and now, “near-cloud” is wending its way into the picture. This is giving infrastructure companies, like Dell Technologies Inc., new ideas about how to develop, sell and service hardware outside of the old on-prem model. 

Dell might be synonymous with the on-premises infrastructure in many people’s minds. However, it’s setting its sights afield lately to cater to customers with widely varying needs.

“We’re trying to build outcomes for customers,” said Devon Reed (pictured, right), senior director of product management at Dell.

Some increasingly popular outcomes sought include efficient edge computing. “The edge is definitely what we see as the next battleground for infrastructure,” Reed said. 

Right now, millions of distributed sensors and applications outside of data centers and at the edge are creating and consuming huge volumes of data, he explained. All that data needs to be processed, analyzed and then, basically, brought back on-prem for the purpose of deriving actionable insights from it. This represents a huge infrastructure opportunity that Dell is actively invested in. 

Reed and Sanjeevini Mittal (pictured, left), senior director of product marketing at Dell Technologies, spoke with Lisa Martin, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during Dell Technologies World. They discussed the edge, near-cloud and Dell’s latest efforts to serve hybrid customers with infrastructure-as-a-service offerings. (* Disclosure below.)

Dell at the edge and ‘near cloud’

Last year, Dell announced its APEX offering, which applies an as-a-service consumption model to on-prem infrastructure, like storage. It’s now leveraging its APEX Private Cloud in a joint edge solution with Parametric Technology Corp., which develops internet of things  software. Dell and Parametric’s particular solution is geared toward users in the manufacturing vertical. Overall, edge computing is an “extremely important” area to Dell, according to Reed.

Moreover, manufacturing is just the first vertical edge solution, with more to come, Mittal explained. “That same, or similar, scenario exists for other industries as well, whether you think about retail or healthcare,” she said. “That same model of building these edge solutions that connect into a cloud environment is something that Dell will continue to invest in.” 

If companies cannot house APEX-based products, such as the edge manufacturing solution, within their own walls, Dell has come up with an alternative. It has partnered with co-location provider Equinox, which can run APEX solutions in what Reed calls a “near-cloud” deployment off the company’s own property.

APEX Private Cloud and APEX Hybrid Cloud services — which combine scalable consumption with flat-rate guarantees — currently takes 14 days from when the order is made to when companies can start provisioning, according to Reed.

“We will continue to shrink that over time. We have aspirations to get to much lower than that for on-premises,” he said.

Also, with the Equinox partnership, “We’ll be providing these services not only on-prem and in the edge, but also in near-cloud facilities in co-location facilities, and at that point, we can get to near-zero instant time to value,” Reed concluded. 

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Dell Technologies World. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Dell Technologies World. Neither Dell Technologies Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE