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The big news coming out of this week’s Dell Technologies World event currently taking place, wasn’t just that the company remains so optimistic that the world will right itself in 2021  that its next big convention is already on the cards for next year. Rather, it was the reveal of Project Apex.

This, the company explained, is intended to simplify how customers and partners access Dell Technology on-demand, across storage, servers, networking, hyperconverged infrastructure, PCs and broader solutions.

Dell Technologies elaborated that Project APEX will unify the company’s as-a-Service and cloud strategies, technology offerings, and go-to-market efforts. What this means for businesses is that they can anticipate having a consistent as-a-Service experience wherever they run workloads from on-premise and edge locations to public clouds.

Just one click

In other words, Project Apex is intended to deliver a simple and modern experience with a single click – and aimed at being an “easy button.” But it is also a bit more ambitious than that – Dell representatives noted that it is aimed at enabling an entire technology portfolio to become a service, accessed with a single click.

“Project APEX will give our customers choice, simplicity and a consistent experience across PCs and IT infrastructure from one trusted partner—unmatched in the industry,” enthused Jeff Clarke, chief operating officer and vice chairman, Dell Technologies. “We’re building upon our long history of offering on-demand technology with this initiative. Our goal is to give customers the freedom to scale resources in ways that work best for them, so they can quickly respond to changes and focus less on IT and more on their business needs,” he added. 

The company continued that its new Dell Technologies Cloud Console will provide the foundation for Project APEX and “will deliver a single, seamless experience for customers to manage their cloud and as-a-Service journey.”

Sounds great – if a bit mind boggling - but how will it work?

In practical terms, businesses will be able to browse the marketplace and order cloud services and as-a-Service solutions to quickly address their needs. With a few clicks, customers will then be able to deploy workloads, manage their multi-cloud resources, monitor their costs in real-time and add capabilities.

The environment, besieged but not forgotten

“Our customers expect their applications and internet services to be always-on, and that requires highly reliable and available storage infrastructure,” commented Sandra Rodel, Head of SAN Storage, Swisscomm AG. “Dell Technologies as-a-Service and flexible consumption storage solutions give us affordable, on-demand access to the capacity we need as we need it, eliminating bottlenecks and ensuring customer satisfaction. Dell Technologies also retires infrastructure in an environmentally sustainable manner, saving us time and money.”

Indeed, sustainability was a key question at our round table discussion subsequent to the announcement, and for good reason. A concern expressed was that in light of Covid-19 and the strains places on all businesses, whether sustainability would take a back seat. However, the chairman and CEO, Michael Dell, quickly reassured this would not be the case. Indeed, Project Apex is apparently joining the fight, with the company pledging that it will assist in helping companies retire their infrastructure in a secure and environmentally friendly manner.

Michael Dell

The company further reiterated its Progress Made Real goals, unpacked a mere year ago at its Dell Technologies Summit event in 2019 (when the world looked quite different). These include things such as reselling 100% of returned leased assets; refurbishing and reselling 89% of working assets in the North America and EMEA regions, reselling 10% of non-working assets to Environmental Disposal Partners who repair, reuse, resell and recycle each asset and help customers resell or recycle their excess hardware and prepare to return leased equipment in a secure and environmentally conscious manner.

While Dell Technologies Cloud Console​ is available now as a public preview in the United States, EMEA territories have just a little while to wait – its availability for those of us in EMEA has been slated for the first quarter of 2021.

Which, if the speed of 2020’s ascent to the apex of the year is anything to go by, should be here in five eyeblinks.