CRN is live at Dell EMC World 2017 in Las Vegas. Get all of our coverage of the event, as well content from the Dell EMC World 2017 special issue of CRN, here.

Dell EMC World News

Dell EMC Bringing Mission-Critical Cloud Power Virtustream Into Channel Program The Virtustream Enterprise Cloud's move into the Dell EMC partner program is effective immediately and was announced today at the Dell EMC World conference in Las Vegas. Pat Gelsinger: VMware Opens Up Tech Partners To Expand Cloud Capabilities VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger said new partnerships with Amazon Web Services, Google, and other parts of the Dell EMC business will make it easier for customers to run applications and manage IoT over private, hybrid, and public clouds. Virtustream Extends Mission-Critical Cloud Tech To Complex Health Care Applications Virtustream, known mainly for its public cloud infrastructure for mission-critical apps like SAP, is now providing the ability to run Epic and other health care apps in a HIPAA-compliant cloud. Michael Dell To Partners: 'Enormous Cross-Selling Opportunities For You' Dell EMC CEO Michael Dell tells partners that the complexity inherent in enterprise digital transformations opens up more opportunities for partners to sell across Dell EMC's broad portfolio. Dell EMC's David Goulden: Modern, Automated Infrastructure Provides The First Step For Cloud Migration A big focus of this week's Dell EMC World is the ability of Dell EMC to provide the modern infrastructure that lets customers look at the cloud and other ways to add flexibility to their applications. Dell EMC Rolls Out 'Flexible Consumption' Rebate For Partners Channel Chief John Byrne hit the Dell EMC World conference stage in Las Vegas to talk about the vendor's new consumption-based rebate model for partners selling cloud and hyper-converged resources. Dell EMC Takes Aim At Cisco With New Open Networking Push Dell EMC is putting the pressure on Cisco and other networking market leaders, unveiling a slew of new open networking products at this week's Dell EMC World.

Dell North America Sales Chief: 'Winning In Both Consumer And Commercial PCs' Is Key David Schmoock, who took over as North America sales head at Dell EMC in early April after the departure of 18-year sales veteran Bill Rodriguez, made the case at Dell EMC World for keeping the competitive pressure on in the PC arena. Dell EMC World: Michael Dell's 7 Keys To The Future Of Dell Technologies And The IT Industry In a keynote at the Dell EMC World conference in Las Vegas, Dell laid out the company's broad product portfolio for the more than 13,000 in attendance and gave insights into how that portfolio is positioned for the future of global business. Dell EMC World: Enterprise Sales Chief Scannell Says Partners Are Booting Competitors, Winning Big Deals Amid Huge Market Opportunity Scannell says the market opportunity for Dell EMC now is bigger than he's seen in more than three decades. Michael Dell To Partners: 'Enormous Cross-Selling Opportunities For You' Dell is contributing its Project FUSE source code to the EdgeX Foundry initiative, a project aiming to create a standard to align market leaders around a common Internet of Things framework. Partner Marketing Push: Dell EMC Arms Partners With New MDF Resources Dell EMC is simplifying its MDF strategy with its Partner Marketing Institute, an online portal that enables partners to seamlessly make their marketing efforts an extension of Dell EMC's. Dell EMC Gives Partners The Nod On Commercial PCs With Extension Of Partner-Led Strategy Dell EMC moves closer to launching its sales strategy for servers, storage and networking lines, establishing a "line of sight" for partners to make money. Dell EMC Launches All-Flash Storage Barrage Dell EMC debuts its VMAX 950X all-flash enterprise storage array and second-generation XtremIO all-flash block storage platform at Dell EMC World. 15 Hot Products Unleashed At Dell EMC World 2017 Whether you made it to Las Vegas for Dell EMC World or not, CRN was there.

Dell EMC World Special Issue

Dell EMC World: Transformation Titans Map Out Dell EMC's Path To Growth
With the right pieces now in place, Dell EMC's complete-portfolio call to action is being heard loud and clear across the partner ecosystem.

Marius Haas On Why There's 'Zero Debate' About The Value Of Dell EMC's End-To-End Portfolio
Marius Haas believes that when it comes to determining which vendor partner is going to provide you with long-term value creation opportunities, there's no debate that it's Dell EMC.

John Byrne On Partners Pivoting Away From Cisco, HPE, Lenovo, And Selling The Entire Dell EMC Portfolio
John Byrne says that Dell EMC partners are rapidly moving away from competing vendors and aggressively pushing new business opportunities across the entire combined portfolio.

Dell EMC's Cheryl Cook On The Combined Partner Marketing Perspective
Dell EMC's global channel marketing chief Cheryl Cook talks to CRN about the importance of communication when combining the marketing efforts of two massive partner programs.

Chad Sakac On Dell EMC's Push To Turn Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Into A Utility
Dell EMC is putting the 'pedal to the medal' when it comes to hyper-converged infrastructure and is tasking Chad Sakac and his team with making customer transformation as simple as possible for partners.

Jeremy Burton On How Partners Can Take Advantage Of A Combined Dell, EMC
Ahead of Dell EMC World 2017, Jeremy Burton dug into the blockbuster acquisition and how it primes partners to take advantage of the new combined company.

Dell EMC's David Goulden On What It Means To Be The Biggest Player In Storage
Ahead of Dell EMC World 2017, David Goulden talks to CRN about the new combined storage powerhouse and why you won't heard anyone referred to as 'ex-Dell' or 'ex-EMC.'

​​​CLP4NET, the Cyber Learning Platform for Network Education and Training, allows users to easily find educational resources related to Topics ranging from nuclear energy, nuclear safety and nuclear science and technology. It contains instructor-led courses and e-learning self-study resources and is provided to the interested public as a cost-free service.

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TECHNOLOGICAL advances mean the world is changing so rapidly it’s a struggle to keep up.

One of the key issues is the ever-growing skills gap because, while it is commonly thought by the older generation that many young people all want to enter the technology sector, the reality is that not enough are studying STEM subjects to meet future needs.

For Dell Technologies the answer is a diverse and inclusive workforce that includes minority groups, females as well as men, and everyone from graduates to those re-entering the workforce at a later stage in life.

Diversity and inclusion is seen by Dell Technologies not just as a politically correct slogan but a business imperative - which is why the company has launched a range of programmes to attract and retain diverse talent.

Dell Technologies’ diversity and inclusion strategy is as important as its technology strategy because it is regarded as bringing business and social value to the company.

“We are in 180 countries and have 140,000 employees and what we want is to create a place where people can come to work and be themselves,” said Tricia Smyth, EMEA Diversity and Inclusion Lead for Dell Technologies.  
“We want them to feel a sense of belonging so they do their best work rather than sit worrying about how they are perceived.

LEADING THE WAY:  Tricia Smyth, EMEA Diversity and Inclusion Lead for Dell Technologies

That is a key part of our code of conduct. On the flip side we want customers to see we value these groups.” 
Artificial intelligence (AI) is one area where homogeneity does not make good business sense.

“At the end of the day AI is programmed by a person and if you have a homogenous group programming it means there is just one dimension,” pointed out Smyth. “If we can apply diversity to that we are more likely to reflect what customers are looking for.

“As one of the largest technology companies in the world the onus is on us to use that position of privilege to make a difference. 

“We are in a unique position to work on global challenges and we have built our agenda around sustainability, inclusion and transforming lives with technology.”
The seriousness of the skills gap can be seen in the fact that by 2024 in Europe and North America alone there are expected to be 600,000 unfilled computing jobs based on current graduation rates. 

This is where programmes like STEMAspire comes in as it is aimed at encouraging females to study science, technology, engineering or mathematics and reverse the tendency for female students to drop out before they finish their studies. 

This is Dell Technologies’ biggest programme in Scotland and has been so successful that the same model is being adopted by the company’s Pride employee resource group to encourage more of the LGBT community to enter the field. “We have just finished piloting this in Ireland and the feedback has been superb both from the mentors and mentees,” said Smyth. 

“For mentors it is good to see they can cultivate talent and from the LGBT standpoint we are providing role models within Dell Technologies. Often LGBT students fail to make the transition from college or university into the industry as they are unsure of how they will be received.”

Dell Technologies also goes into secondary schools with its Digital Futures Programme to supply pupils an idea of what it is really like to work in the sector and the range of jobs available.

“This is working well too,” said Smyth. “At the start of one of my exact sessions I asked for a show of hands of those considering a career in the technology industry. Three out of 165 pupils put their hands up but at the end of the hour every single hand went up. We show how technology affects everything we do so that they can see all the different aspects of being a computer programmer.”

Another Dell Technologies programme centres on those who have taken a few years out of the workplace and would like to go back to work but are in need of new skills as well as a confidence boost.

Flexible working is also seen as key to encouraging people with family responsibilities to work for Dell Technologies and by 2020 it is expected that nearly 50 per cent of the workforce will have flexible work arrangements.

“We want to attract talent and make sure we create an environment where people can be themselves,” said Smyth. 

“Dell Technologies is committed to that and is regularly voted one of the most ethical and most admired companies.

She added: “The core to all of this is addressing issues of bias. We all have biases and these affect how we make decisions so we need to be aware of them.”
In order to help employees recognise their biases the company has launched its Many Advocating Real Change (MARC) programme.

“We are not trying to change people but we need to eliminate bias from how we hire and recruit to make sure we build a diverse workforce,” said Smyth. “People tend to hire someone they like or someone like them so it is building awareness that someone unlike you does not always mean worse - it just means different.” 

For more information go to https://corporate.delltechnologies.com/en-us/social-impact/cultivating-inclusion.htm

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Gender was on the agenda in Edinburgh

Dell Technologies are working collaboratively with Equate Scotland to help support and prepare the next generation of female STEM professionals entering today’s transforming work environment. 

Scotland’s gender equality expert within STEM Equate Scotland, recently hosted their annual Student Network Conference and Awards Ceremony at the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation. Equate Scotland, established in 2006, is an organisation that actively promotes and encourages the advancement of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. 

CAPITAL VENTURE: The Student Network Conference and Awards Ceremony

The event brought together female students from colleges and universities across Scotland, celebrating their passion for their chosen field. Students connected with inspiring female professionals from companies such as Dell Technologies, Data Lab, Ernst Young and Balfour Beatty, to help build on their network and enhance their career development.

The conference came about as part of Equate Scotland’s strategy to make tangible and sustainable change in Scotland, enabling the development of women studying and working within STEM industries by supporting their recruitment, retention and career progression.

Scotland’s STEM employment sector struggles with skills shortages which many expect will be exacerbated by Britain’s exit from the European Union. Studies suggest there are too few students coming through, particularly females, which jeopardises Scotland’s chance to be at the forefront of innovation. 

Only 25% of women have a profession within the STEM sector and 70% of university students studying STEM will not progress onto a role within the industry. Dell Technologies attended the event and hosted an interactive workshop for students and employers. The workshop focused on effective communication and social media, providing students with tips and guidance on how to enhance and maintain a professional social media presence across platforms such as LinkedIn and Twitter.   

Sarah O’Donnell, Executive Communications at Dell Technologies says: “The event was very much a celebration of super inspiring young women, bringing them together to connect with peers and other female professionals to help enhance their career development. 

“Dell Technologies were delighted to support the event and I was particularly privileged to impart some of my knowledge on social media and communication skills in a super interactive workshop.” 

Equate Scotland initially connected with Dell Technologies in 2017, providing support in the launch of their STEMAspire mentoring programme. The programme came about as part of

Dell Technologies wider social impact strategy to drive growth and innovation through advancing diversity and inclusion in the workplace.  

The convergence of information technology (IT) with operational technology (OT) and engineering technology (ET) is a crucial enabler for digital transformation in companies, particularly asset-intensive industries such as mining and manufacturing. We can see this in the partnership between AFRY, a leader in engineering design and advisory services, and Infosys, a leader in next-generation digital services and consulting.

This article focuses on AFRY’s process industry business and how the two companies partnered to deliver an IT-OT-ET integrated "single source of truth," assuring data integrity from the time of initial engineering and construction and across all the plant lifecycle stages, speeding the ability to ramp up to design capacity, eliminate delays due to engineering rework and costly design fixes, reduce unplanned downtime and Strengthen overall plant performance and productivity.

AFRY is a trailblazer in a domain that has traditionally been slow in fully embracing the latest technological advances. As Kai Vikman, COO at AFRY, noted, "Successful IT-OT-ET integration is a clear prerequisite to reap the benefits of digital manufacturing at scale." He also believes that this will be an obligation with the new European Data Act calling for more harmonized rules on fair access to and use of data.

Getting started: The handover from construction to operations

The life span of a process plant in industries such as industrial chemical manufacturing is typically more than 50 years. Building such a plant is a complex multistep process, and its success will rely heavily on effective collaboration among all stakeholders covering multiple disciplines from process engineering to mechanical engineering to architecture to electrical and instrumentation to piping and construction.

After the plant is complete, there is a handover of information from the builder to the plant operator. The handover may involve millions of documents from multiple engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractors. Transferring relevant data in a format usable by the plant’s operations and maintenance is a challenge and a potential inhibiter that could add months or years to the schedule for making the plant fully operational.

The data involved in this process spans multiple disciplines. It might include the standard technical specifications, process and instrumentation and process flow diagrams, architectural designs and schematics, electrical circuit diagrams, instrumentation details or a 3-D model of the plan. Each of these elements adds to the complexity.

Leveraging global standards for data sharing and integration

IT-OT-ET integration plays a central role as a critical facilitator for many other systems and information integration. The key to success is information standardization, ensuring minimum effort to hand over information between parties. Infosys worked with AFRY to establish the standard guiding principles and class libraries from multiple industry standards and best practices, as no single standard could address the data integration challenges across the lifecycle. The approach uses ISO 15926 (“Integration of lifecycle data for process plants, including oil and gas production facilities”), a globally recognized standard for data sharing and integrating complex plant and project information.

ISO 15926’s Resource Description Framework (RDF) acts as a universal reference across disparate information systems, providing a neutral information layer with which any software application with an ISO 15926 adaptor can exchange data. It preserves the precise meaning of the data as it is being exchanged by referencing a data dictionary containing definitions of all objects and associated attributes within the plant. This ability for systems to exchange information with shared meaning by using universal standards is called semantic interoperability.

In a semantic implementation, data arrives pre-packaged with self-described context, and the receiving system can derive meaning from that data through a universal vocabulary. In this case, Infosys added data about the data (i.e., metadata) and linked each element to a controlled, shared vocabulary defined by ISO 15926.

Other standards leveraged were the Capital Facilities Information Handover Specification (CFIHOS) and the DEXPI Initiative, promoting general data exchange standards for the process industry, with a current focus on Piping and Instrumentation diagrams. Infosys also used the OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA) standard for operational technology integration for machine-to-machine communications for industrial automation.

Together with Infosys, AFRY has set up a sandbox environment integrating Virtual Site, a plant engineering system, SAP, the enterprise business planning system, and the Simatic platform, a plant automation system, to demonstrate new use cases. The structured data is implemented in an application server that binds the semantics to data based on the chosen standards to retrieve information in subsequent applications efficiently. The environment is currently set up on the Microsoft Azure platform but can be implemented on any on-premise or public cloud platforms. The unique contribution of the AFRY-Infosys partnership is the standardization and harmonization of data using the interoperability layer aligning to global standards.

Overall benefits of a single integrated source of truth

By integrating plant lifecycle data across the IT, OT and ET domains, Infosys and AFRY were able to build a single source of truth across the plant lifecycle—a digital twin of the entire plant. The digital twin is an exact digital representation of the physical plant and accurately reflects the state of the plant, including all of the information about work processes for operations and maintenance and engineering information.

Sharing integrated plant engineering data in the correct format between EPC companies and the plant operator reduced delays, rework, conflicts and change orders during the construction phase. Multidisciplinary engineering data simplified conformance to regulatory, environmental, safety and compliance standards.

For operations, a single source of information available at the right time, place and format led to significant improvements in long-term lifecycle performance and optimization, maximizing plant yield and efficiency. Safety information management with standardized processes, augmented by safe working training, led to fewer safety accidents and less lost time due to injury.

Effective maintenance management reduced unplanned downtime and a significant reduction in maintenance costs thanks to well-organized maintenance data and procedures, easy-to-find technical data sheets and ready access to spare parts. Deploying engineering data management as a shared data source to support digital solutions such as predictive maintenance resulted in improved productivity per technician and reductions in mean time-to-repair.

Wrapping up

The challenges that AFRY is tackling are in a domain that has been hesitant and slow to embrace the latest technological advances fully. The result has been fragmentation, inadequate collaboration with suppliers and insufficient knowledge transfer information from project to project. For the longest time, plant engineering data has resided in silos.

When a problem occurs in the plant, it is hard for engineers, operations and maintenance people to access information and identify the cause. When changes occur, it takes way too long to update the other systems that need to know about the change. The result is that the systems people rely on don't have accurate or sufficient data. The industry needs a radical approach. If digitalization is the primary goal, interoperability is the means to achieve it, and interoperability requires standardization.

Transactional and business process information (from IT), the monitoring and analysis of industrial assets (OT) and the use of engineering design data (ET) are all essential for the proper day-to-day function of a process plant. The incremental value of the AFRY-Infosys partnership comes from creating interoperability among these domains when the IT-OT-ET data is brought together in a single source of truth as the foundation for a digital enterprise.

Moor Insights & Strategy provides or has provided paid (wish services to technology companies, like all tech industry research and analyst firms. These services include research, analysis, advising, consulting, benchmarking, acquisition matchmaking, and video and speaking sponsorships. The company has had or currently has paid business relationships with 8×8, Accenture, A10 Networks, Adobe, Advanced Micro Devices, Amazon, Amazon Web Services, Ambient Scientific, Ampere Computing, Analog Devices, Anuta Networks, Applied Brain Research, Applied Micro, Apstra, Arm, Aruba Networks (now HPE), Atom Computing, AT&T, Aura, Avaya Holdings, Automation Anywhere, AWS, A-10 Strategies, Bitfusion, Blaize, Box, Broadcom, C3.AI, Calix, Cadence Systems, Campfire, Cisco Systems, Clear Software, Cloudera, Clumio, Cohesity, Cognitive Systems, CompuCom, Cradlepoint, CyberArk, Dell, Dell EMC, Dell Technologies, Diablo Technologies, Dialogue Group, Digital Optics, Dreamium Labs, D-Wave, Echelon, Elastic, Ericsson, Extreme Networks, Five9, Flex, Fortinet, Foundries.io, Foxconn, Frame (now VMware), Frore Systems, Fujitsu, Gen Z Consortium, Glue Networks, GlobalFoundries, Revolve (now Google), Google Cloud, Graphcore, Groq, Hiregenics, Hotwire Global, HP Inc., Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Honeywell, Huawei Technologies, HYCU, IBM, Infinidat, Infoblox, Infosys, Inseego, IonQ,  IonVR, Inseego, Infosys, Infiot, Intel, Interdigital, Intuit, Iron Mountain, Jabil Circuit, Juniper Networks, Keysight, Konica Minolta, Lattice Semiconductor, Lenovo,  Linux Foundation, Lightbits Labs, LogicMonitor, LoRa Alliance, Luminar, MapBox, Marvell Technology, Mavenir, Marseille Inc, Mayfair Equity, MemryX, Meraki (Cisco), Merck KGaA, Mesophere, Micron Technology, Microsoft, MiTEL, Mojo Networks, MongoDB, Movandi, Multefire Alliance, National Instruments, Neat, NetApp, Netskope, Nightwatch, NOKIA, Nortek, Novumind, NTT, NVIDIA, Nutanix, Nuvia (now Qualcomm), NXP, onsemi, ONUG, OpenStack Foundation, Oracle, Palo Alto Networks, Panasas, Peraso, Pexip, Pixelworks, Plume Design, PlusAI, Poly (formerly Plantronics), Portworx, Pure Storage, Qualcomm, Quantinuum, Rackspace, Rambus, Rayvolt E-Bikes, Red Hat, Renesas, Residio, Rigetti Computing, Ring Central, Salseforce.com,  Samsung Electronics, Samsung Semi, SAP, SAS, Scale Computing, Schneider Electric, SiFive, Silver Peak (now Aruba-HPE), SkyWorks, SONY Optical Storage, Splunk, Springpath (now Cisco), Spirent, Splunk, Sprint (now T-Mobile), Stratus Technologies, Symantec, Synaptics, Syniverse, Synopsys, Tanium, Telesign,TE Connectivity, TensTorrent, Tobii Technology, Teradata,T-Mobile, Treasure Data, Twitter, Unity Technologies, UiPath, Verizon Communications, VAST Data, Veeam, Ventana Micro Systems, Vidyo, Volumez, VMware, Wave Computing, Wells Fargo, Wellsmith, Xilinx, Zayo, Zebra, Zededa, Zendesk, Zoho, Zoom, and Zscaler.  

Dell Technologies is the latest IT vendor to jump on the generative AI bandwagon with a range of new AI offerings that span its hardware, software and services lineup.

In May, Dell announced plans to develop integrated AI services in partnership with Nvidia. That service has come to fruition with this portfolio, dubbed Dell Generative AI Solutions. As part of the program, the company announced validated designs with Nvidia that are aimed at helping enterprises deploy AI workloads on premises. The new offerings also include professional services to help enterprises determine where and how to best use generative AI services.

Typically, Nvidia GPUs go into servers for AI functions. But Dell's news isn't limited to servers. Dell is also announcing Precision workstations with expanded Nvidia GPU configurations to help users accelerate generative AI workloads locally on their devices.

Plus, Dell Optimizer, Dell’s built-in AI software, can now allow mobile workstation users to Strengthen performance for the application in-use while minimizing impact to battery runtime. 

One of the main challenges of traditional inferencing approaches has been to scale and support LLMs for real-time results. Dell says its solutions help customers generate higher quality, faster time-to-value predictions and decisions with their own data.

Dell Generative AI Solutions are certified to run on Dell PowerEdge servers, Dell PowerScale scale-out storage, Dell ECS enterprise object storage, and a broad set of services, delivering generative AI solutions from desktops to core data centers, edge locations and public clouds. The portfolio also comes with Dell Validated Designs, a series of pre-tested, proven configurations to power generative AI inferencing on Dell infrastructure,

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