Dell EMC Announces Enhancements to Elastic Cloud Storage Platform 

Oct. 19 -- Dell EMC today announced a wave of significant product enhancements to the Dell EMC Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS) platform, further enabling rapid and wide-scale digital transformation across enterprises globally. With new support for Dell EMC PowerEdge Servers, ECS 3.0 is purpose-built to help businesses navigate the shift to an increasingly digital economy, with multiple consumption models offering 60% lower TCO than public cloud storage.

In the digital world, businesses and industries are being disrupted everywhere. The Internet of Things is transforming the way businesses operate. This phenomenon is propelling innovative companies forward and accelerating the demise of others. In fact, 78% of global businesses surveyed in a recent study by Dell Technologies believe that digital start-ups will pose a threat to their organization, while almost half (45%) fear they may become obsolete in the next three to five years due to competition from digital-born start-ups.

Although the threat of disruption is acutely felt, enterprises looking to accelerate digital transformation are being hamstrung by legacy technology infrastructure that is poorly suited to handle the needs of today’s “cloud native” applications, as well as the exponential growth in unstructured data being generated by businesses.

As a modern storage platform, ECS is aimed at helping businesses transform their datacenters by realizing faster time to market and compelling cloud economics. With ECS, organizations can not only embrace cloud-native applications that directly enable digital transformation, but can also optimize their existing, traditional IT investments.

“Digital change is coming whether the industry is ready for it or not,” said Manuvir Das, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Advanced Software Division, Dell EMC. “Good news: ECS is purpose-built to help customers transform their data centers—and their businesses—while breaking down data silos, leveraging the flexibility of software-defined storage and choosing the right cloud formula to store and harness data to help drive organizations forward.”

Summary of ECS-related announcements at Dell EMC World 2016:

• ECS Software on Dell EMC PowerEdge Servers: ECS is now certified to run on popular PowerEdge Servers, such as the Dell EMC DSS 7000 and the Dell EMC R730xd.
• New High-Density “D-Series”:Dell EMC launches the ECS D-Series hardware, a high-density appliance aimed at helping organizations with tape replacement efforts. The new D-Series can store up to 6.2 PB of data in a single rack, a 63% improvement in capacity over other ECS hardware offerings
• ECS Dedicated Cloud Service, hosted by Virtustream:The ECS Dedicated Cloud Service is a managed offering that allows customers to provision dedicated ECS units running in Virtustream datacenters around the world.  Entering Directed Availability (DA) later in 2016, the ECS Dedicated Cloud Service combines the rich capabilities of ECS with private cloud control, while offering the hands-off operations and flexibility of the public cloud
• Cloud Tiering:ECS is now certified to be a cloud storage tier for Dell EMC Data Domain Cloud Tier.
• Support for Windows applications:With the 3.0 release, ECS can support Windows applications requiring CIFS/SMB access
• Enhanced Enterprise Capabilities: ECS 3.0 offers advanced compliance capabilities, improved monitoring and alerting infrastructure and increased storage utilization

Availability:

ECS 3.0 and D-series hardware is currently available. Customers can download and try the latest version of ECS through the ECS “Free and Frictionless” download page. The ECS Dedicated Cloud Service will be available to select customers later in 2016, with general availability expected in early 2017.

Flexible payment options from Dell Financial Services help customers match their technology with their financial objectives

Dell Financial Services (DFS) has a full range of flexible payment options to support customers wherever they are in their journey to the cloud. Whether a customer is seeking to balance op ex vs. cap ex or determine the right mix of off-prem vs. on-prem solutions, DFS has a solution – from traditional leases to the new portfolio of OpenScale flexible consumption solutions  – to match the full range of consumption use-cases Dell EMC customers face.

“Dell EMC is #1 in cloud, according to Gartner,” said Jeremy Burton, Chief Marketing Officer, Dell Technologies. “Enterprises are under increasing pressure to do more with data, more quickly while reducing traditional infrastructure sprawl and costs. You can’t go cloud native in a day—but enterprise customers can embrace cloud thinking from the beginning of their digital transformation initiatives so that data can be leveraged to help bring lower cost and higher value to the organization.”

Dell EMC 

Dell EMC, a part of Dell Technologies, enables organizations to modernize, automate and transform their data center using industry-leading converged infrastructure, servers, storage and data protection technologies.  This provides a trusted foundation for businesses to transform IT, through the creation of a hybrid cloud, and transform their business through the creation of cloud-native applications and big data solutions.  Dell EMC services customers across 180 countries – including 98 percent of the Fortune 500 – with the industry’s most comprehensive and innovative portfolio from edge to core to cloud.

Source: Dell EMC