IT organizations are going through major transformations and face a range of challenges to do so successfully. Businesses are becoming more digital and the need to effectively managing IT operations is critical to being competitive and capturing new opportunities. For decades, IT organizations have relied on the advanced capabilities of PowerMax to support their most mission critical applications. The latest PowerMax OS 10.1 release builds on these proven capabilities with even more levels of security, automation, and sustainability. It allows IT organization to protect and secure data, automate operations, and increase efficiency – all delivering faster innovation and more value to the business. 

Top Challenges to Innovating Faster

According to ESG survey research, 91% of organizations have had to accelerate IT projects over the last 3 years. New investments have been made to address a range of near-term pressures, including controlling costs, addressing cyber threat concerns, and supporting key sustainability initiatives. ESG research found that the top 5 areas of IT spend for 2023 includes cybersecurity at 35%, cyber resiliency at 28%, and adhering to regulatory compliance at 28%.

Despite formidable technology barriers, businesses need to innovate with information. In fact, most organizations we speak with tell us that information will “be their business” within the next few years. So, what are the top challenges we hear from clients that are keeping them up at night?

1. Addressing cybersecurity threats and risks is still top of mind for every IT organization. Attacks are increasing at an alarming rate and users need a comprehensive strategy, versus a set of products, to defend their most critical asset — information. 
2. Increasing and accelerating automation projects to not just reduce costs but deliver new value to the business. The reason automation is so important is because technology is moving at a superfast pace. Keeping up with all this new “technology goodness” and making it consumable to users and the business is a challenge for IT organizations.
3. Reining in skyrocketing energy costs and meeting sustainability requirements and goals. It’s becoming more of a “hot” topic for organizations. Keeping up with the growth while keeping power, cooling, and footprint in check.

Let’s take a deeper look at each of these and highlight the new and cool things in the latest PowerMax 10.1 release to help address our client’s top challenges and help them sleep at night.

Cyber Resiliency

Let’s start off with cyber resiliency. 28% of IT orgs have cyber resiliency as a top 5 area of IT spend in 2023. Organizations are starting to feel more prepared due to increased investments. But despite this increase,18% of organizations report a disruptive attack in the last 12 months. Let’s look at what is Dell doing in this area to help address cyber threat challenges.

IT organizations are seeking a comprehensive cyber resiliency strategy to deliver a “zero trust” infrastructure. If we look specifically at the storage elements of the infrastructure, Dell has been innovating within our core security technologies for decades. Dell is also supplying advanced capabilities to secure data at the host and app level. And because of our client base, Dell has always been a leader in meeting a wide range of security compliance requirements. Let’s look at some examples that are part the PowerMax OS 10.1 release.

Anomaly Detection leverages AI Algorithms to learn normal access patterns detect and report anomalies. Unlike other array-based anomaly detection features that monitor for changes to data reducibility only, PowerMax uses advanced device level monitoring is used to detect unusual IO patterns which may indicate ransomware. The capability is available for Mainframe and Open Systems users.

PowerMax Cryptographic Ignition Key prevents data access to unauthorized users in cases where physical security of the PowerMax is compromised. It builds on PowerMax encryption capabilities introduced decades ago to protect and secure data at rest.

TLS 1.3 support adds to the advanced security capabilities that continue to make PowerMax the world’s most secure storage platform. Dell works closely with the most heavily regulated IT organizations in the world to understand and address their evolving requirements around security compliance and regulatory governance, both internal and external. Examples include being listed on the US Federal “APL Approved Products List” (APL) and providing “Security Technical Implementation Guide” (STIG) compliance.

 Automation and AIOps

Next, lets’ dig deeper into what’s been happening with PowerMax in the area of automation. According to ESG research, almost all IT organizations are prioritizing the need to streamline operations. The most common response is the increased adoption of automation and/or AIOps (Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations) with 64% looking to deploy automation on within their on-premises private clouds.

The role of an IT infrastructure administrator has evolved significantly over the years. Back in the day, it was typical to see teams of admins managing dozens of apps across dedicated silos of infrastructure. Today, admins face the challenge of managing thousands of apps deployed across virtualized clouds, managed as pools of resources. In this new world, the need to automate administration is no longer a “nice to have”, it’s a “must have”. Let’s look at how is Dell unleashing the new levels of automation and AIOps to help drive these projects with PowerMax.

New PowerMax automation capabilities are being focused at delivering AIOps. These advanced capabilities combine big data and machine learning to automate IT operations processes, including event correlation, anomaly detection and causality determination.

What does that mean and what can users expect? With the PowerMax OS 10.1 release, users are provided with automated remediations for predictive capacity, performance, and config issues before they have an impact. These issues are responsible for some of our most common service requests. Having the ability to detect and remediate these common issues is a big deal for users. It reduces triage time, eliminates service escalations, and reduces risks for potential outages.

Another key automation capability on PowerMax OS 10.1 is our Dynamic Data Mobility. It enables automation to seamlessly move customer applications between arrays to optimize performance and resource utilization. PowerMax can fully automate the movement of the data and associated snapshot protection policies, as well as cleanup of the source array.

Efficiency and Sustainability

Lastly, let’s look at a “Hot Topic” (Pun intended 😊) for many IT organizations, energy consumption and efficiency. Sustainability is becoming increasingly important. As reported by ESG, 93% of organizations have incorporated sustainability elements into their requests for proposals (RFPs) or requests for information (RFIs). In fact, research found that 87% have started internal programs to accelerate replacement time limits for existing IT equipment. 

Dell designs our data center products with consideration for how we implement sustainable advancements through the entire lifecycle. From the materials in our products and packaging to the strength and integrity of our supply chain, Dell looks for every opportunity to make, deliver and recycle products to help reduce the carbon footprint. PowerMax is well known for energy efficiency and saving our users power costs. Here’s are a couple of examples of what Dell is doing to help prioritize sustainability.

Higher density and more capacity efficiency is enabled through advanced data reduction technologies. The new Gen 3 DRR Assist Offload now delivers an improved 5:1+ data reduction for PowerMax. The new 5:1 DRR is supported with PowerMax Data Reduction guarantee taking risks out of the hands of the user.

Intelligent and proactive power and environmental monitoring and reporting based on actual usage is now included with the new PowerMax Intelligent PDU (iPDU). The iPDU’s allow users to track and manage energy costs and verify energy requirements. It offers up a built-in way to prioritize, validate, and reduce energy costs through accurate power efficiency and energy management.

More configuration flexibility and increased density via the independent node scale out architecture. New configuration capabilities include even more granular scale out at add CPU performance, memory caching, and connectivity without adding more arrays or unneeded capacity. This is a big technical difference versus dual node arrays that can only scale by adding more arrays and unneeded capacity.

Dell Technologies Can Help!

The bottom line is the role of technology is to make life easier, especially for business. With so much pressure to keep pace, IT decision makers need to not just focus on simplicity and consolidation, but ensure information is protected from cyber threats to minimize business risk, adopt an automation strategy to maximize efficiency and accelerate delivery of services, invest in technologies that help meet sustainability goals to support growth.

Addressing these challenges is why users continue to choose to partner with Dell and its leading technology portfolio to help secure, simplify, improve everything. The latest PowerMax release continues to show leadership and innovation in solving these high priority IT challenges.