Containerized applications are taking cloud-native on a new journey.

Enterprise migration to hybrid models has opened new vistas in the computing landscape, where users want applications closer to the data. This means edge locations — in the cloud or on-premises.

In 2022, Dell Technologies Inc. formed a strategic collaboration with Red Hat Inc. to create an on-premises cloud experience for developers that leveraged OpenShift and Dell’s APEX-managed-container-as-a-service solutions. Dell’s APEX sits at the center of its multicloud strategy, and the company is providing enterprise clients with significant flexibility to build applications in a wide range of platform environments.

“Customers for a long time have struggled with how to get better agility, how to get more flexibility in where they build, where they deploy their applications,” said Caitlin Gordon, vice president of product management at Dell, in a recent interview with theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s livestreaming studio. “That was for a number of years, virtualization … increasingly, that’s containerized workloads. For customers, that means it’s a combination of public cloud and on-prem … we knew that we really wanted to help simplify that experience on-prem. There was clearly only one partner to work with to do that, and that was Red Hat.”

This article is part of SiliconANGLE’s ongoing exploration of how organizations are accelerating their cloud modernization journeys in 2023. This piece highlights key developments from Dell APEX, a media partner and sponsor of the Dell APEX event series on theCUBE.net.

Creating an experience

In May, Dell announced that it would combine its hardware with Red Hat’s OpenShift container management platform to provide simplified installation and maintenance in on-prem and hybrid cloud environments. The jointly engineered offering began shipment in late October.

This year’s announcements followed the news over a year ago that Dell would be expanding its strategic relationship with Red Hat to focus on simplifying deployment and management of on-premises, containerized infrastructure in multicloud environments. This included the Dell Validated Platform for Red Hat OpenShift, which allowed users to more easily and rapidly deploy on-prem infrastructure using Dell’s PowerFlex software-defined technology.

“This is about creating an experience,” said Chris Morgan, senior director of hybrid platforms customer and field engagement at Red Hat, in a recent interview with theCUBE. “We’ve had a long history with Dell, where it’s been about putting our operating system on a piece of metal, and this is really about now taking a lot of that and bringing it together. We’ve been about hybrid for a long time at Red Hat, and this is really an extension of that, where hybrid is becoming more about the experience than just a consistent technology.”

Delivering consistency

Morgan’s reference to consistency highlights an important element behind the collaboration between Dell and Red Hat. As customers seek cross-platform capabilities, they are also interested in a consistent experience at all layers of the stack, from infrastructure all the way to the application itself.

Operational consistency matters, especially when it involves connectivity between Dell storage deployed on-prem and the major public clouds. Originally introduced a year ago as Project Alpine, Dell APEX has evolved into storage and infrastructure platform offerings to provide customers with a choice of workload deployment on-premises or in a public cloud.

“We are giving choice, consistency and control … that’s what the APEX cloud platforms offer,” said Sudhir Srinivasan, senior vice president of multicloud and data solutions at Dell, in an exclusive interview on theCUBE. “Not only do we do the automation across the APEX cloud platforms, we have also integrated this foundation software into the partner’s management plane. It gives a customer that familiarity with their cloud environment, so they can still leverage that, but it also gives consistency across the cloud environments.”

Along with “consistency,” another key word in the Dell/Red Hat collaboration is “turnkey.” Both companies emphasize that Dell’s customers can set up and run OpenShift on an integrated bare metal platform with the software and hardware already configured to facilitate simpler deployment.

“That bare metal piece is so important,” Gordon said. “That’s a cost to complexity reduction, it’s also a performance increase for your workloads. We call it a turnkey appliance, but it’s really a combination of the power of Red Hat software, the power of Dell software and the power of the Dell infrastructure coming together to provide that unique experience to our customer.”

Addressing complexity

A turnkey solution is designed to address one of the biggest roadblocks for enterprises seeking multicloud interoperability, and that is complexity. Organizations have made clear that a multicloud path is the desired option but the inherent complexity of the journey can be daunting.

An additional concern is that containers themselves are not the simplest technology to deploy. As containers have grown in popularity, the numbers of packages, components, licenses and metadata specifications have expanded as well. Dell and Red Hat view the future of multicloud as a quest for simplification.

“The number one problem that we see our customers facing is more and more operational complexity because it’s multicloud,” Srinivasan said. “Most customers are still trying to get hybrid done right, and now they’re having to deal with multiple clouds. We’ve had a lot of success, years of success, delivering that level of ease of use and automation in hyperconverged infrastructure on-premises, and we’re doing that now for multicloud as well.”

The Dell-Red Hat appliance was designed with AI in mind, as evidenced by the attention paid to both compute and storage. AI workloads are generating increased demand for processing power, and compute for the integrated application delivery platform is driven by 4th generation Intel processors.

Dell has also focused on providing a universal storage layer, a linear, scalable, software defined platform for cross-cloud connectivity. Storage in the APEX Cloud Platform is based on a universal layer employed by Dell’s public cloud offering in order to simplify data movement.

“With the universal storage layer, now you can actually move data to wherever you need, wherever you might have the GPUs, for example, to be able to do your AI,” Srinivasan said. “The rate at which customers need to consume resource infrastructure to do analytics and to do AI is just incredible. You may not always be able to have those resources in one location.”

Momentum for hybrid

In addition to the need for processing power, the rise of AI has also reinforced why the hybrid cloud has become a preferred choice for many enterprises, what SiliconANGLE’s analyst Dave Vellante has termed the “AI-powered hybrid-multi supercloud.”

Survey data provided to SiliconANGLE by Enterprise Technology Research shows that the cloud market may be reaching an equilibrium, where 43% usage of public cloud today is expected to grow to only about 55% over the next two years. 

“Looking at the data from E.T.R., we’re seeing that the market is becoming much more balanced,” said Vellante, during a recent analysis on theCUBE of Dell’s announcements. “It’s not really reached an equilibrium yet, but definitely the balance is tipping back toward on-prem.”

What drives this quest for the hybrid cloud is data, an ability to move information between different environments efficiently and seamlessly without a tremendous amount of work. A consistent experience and universal storage layer enable data mobility, a key factor in the architecture that defines APEX’s cloud platform.

“We’re moving data in much more efficient ways,” Srinivasan said. “Because it’s the same storage stack on both sides, we can actually leverage very efficient data mobility techniques or mechanisms between them. Because it’s the same operational interface, customers don’t have to replatform their application whether they are going from in the cloud to on-prem or vice versa.”

The collaboration between Dell and Red Hat offers a glimpse into the future direction of enterprise computing. Customers want the flexibility to build applications in a wide range of environments, with speed, reliability and a minimum of complexity.

“These platforms are leveraging Dell’s unique proven IP in a range of areas,” according to Shannon Champion, vice president of product marketing at Dell, in a recent interview with theCUBE. “We have options. If they’re looking for cloud experiences, regardless of where their IT landscape is with subscription or as-a-service offers, we have that too. Our APEX strategy is very comprehensive and intended to respond to what we’re hearing from our customers.”

Image: shylendrahoode from Getty Images Signature