Dell is expanding its partnership with Red Hat to enhance the deployment and management of containers. They have jointly engineered an appliance called Dell Apex Cloud Platform for Red Hat OpenShift, which combines OpenShift’s container management capabilities with Dell’s software, compute, and storage. This turnkey appliance aims to provide a consistent user experience, accelerate application delivery, and simplify on-premises deployment. The partnership demonstrates the growing complexity of vendor relationships in the ecosystem. Previously, Dell and Red Hat collaborated on bringing containers on premises as a service.
The expanded partnership is beneficial for both Dell and Red Hat. Red Hat gains an on-premises player in Dell, while Dell can bring a public cloud experience to its Apex Cloud Platforms through the integration with Red Hat OpenShift. Deployments from the Dell Apex Cloud Platform for Red Hat OpenShift can be completed in as little as 6 hours, significantly reducing the time required compared to the do-it-yourself approach. This faster deployment, along with the validated stack, helps accelerate and reduce operational costs for enterprise organizations.
While other container management players exist, such as VMware Tanzu and HPE Ezmeral, the Dell Apex Cloud Platform for Red Hat OpenShift offers a unique integrated appliance that incorporates Dell’s software-defined storage technology. It also enables a consumption-based procurement model, allowing customers to spread out the cost of growth over time and minimizing budget impacts. Overall, this partnership showcases the continued commitment of Dell to its ‘cloud-to-ground’ strategy and provides customers with a cost-effective and streamlined container management solution.