Less than a year after its novel approach to customers’ IT needs was launched at Dell Technology World, Dell Technologies today announced that Dell Technologies APEX Custom Solutions is in South Africa. APEX Custom Solutions bring the industry's broadest infrastructure portfolio to customers as-a-Service.

APEX’s significance comes from two main components. First, it enables organizations to have greater access to technology across Dell Technologies’ infrastructure stack including compute, storage, networking, virtualization, and data protection in a way that is affordable. Secondly, and particularly relevant to the economic environment in which many local businesses find themselves, it offers flexible payment options.

Somewhat similar to the way cloud changed storage, APEX enables users to utilise IT as much or as little as they need to, or what Doug Woolley, the MD of Dell Technologies South Africa, referenced as “pay as you choose.”

More specifically, organisations can work with Dell Technologies to plan, deploy and manage their entire IT footprint and choose how they consume and pay for IT solutions.

The company enthused that APEX Custom Solutions can “’help reduce the time and complexity of acquiring, managing, maintaining, and servicing physical IT infrastructure. Customers can scale IT as needed to launch new applications, start new projects, and address the changing needs of their business.’’ Dell Technologies and its partners architect and manage the infrastructure.

How it works

Dell Technologies assists organisations to determine their hardware, software and services requirements to establish for today and plan for their future needs. From there, all technology is installed and made available to customers.

As with cloud offerings, usage is monitored with automated tools which allows Dell Technologies to respond quickly to new service requests, workload fluctuations and changes driven by the business to improve IT flexibility. Customers can also customise configurations based on their workload and therefore avoid over-provisioning and control cost by paying for elastic resources only as they are consumed.

With the introduction of APEX Flex on Demand, organisations in South Africa can use a pay-per-use flexible consumption model for custom configurations, where elastic capacity is delivered and measured at the product level. For instance, customers can choose the term of the usage, the minimum commitment and cap costs.

Making transformation possible

“Organisations across South Africa are fast-tracking technology implementation to drive long-term business success. But lack of budget and resources means they are looking for a more agile and simple way to continue their technology investments. With the introduction of APEX Custom Solutions, Dell Technologies is enabling customers to overcome these barriers to transform their IT,” explained Woolley.

"APEX Custom Solutions allow businesses to acquire infrastructure and services, paying only for what they use, with the ability to scale up and down, and enables them to start using technology more quickly to help achieve their business goals,” he continued.

A data centre without the hassles?

Another APEX offering that merits mention is APEX Data Centre Utility. This, the company noted, is highly customizable and enables organisations to move part, or all, of their data centre operations into a pay-per-use model. With a monthly payment based on their actual usage, Dell Technologies can support and manage their data centre and its operations. There are no minimum capacity requirements for Data Centre Utility and reporting is individualized based on specific needs.

Along with South African organisations struggling with the quandary of cutting costs while deploying the right technology to remain competitive, Dell Technologies partners also stand to benefit from the announcement.  

The company pointed out that APEX Custom Solutions offers the Dell Technologies partner community in South Africa the ability to unlock additional revenue with their value-add and increase their margin benefits by growing their opportunities. Solution providers can play a major role, it stressed, in assessing and supporting their customers by helping them optimize their costs, resources and performance.

APEX Custom Solutions is now available to channel partners in South Africa.