The DIY Era of Digital Transformation Is Over

Forward-thinking businesses recognize that the do-it-yourself (DIY) approach to digital transformation no longer meets market demand for continuous innovation. And because the pace of digital transformation is accelerating, no single entity – customer or partner – can adequately address the rapidly evolving requirements. If they do try to take the DIY approach, they risk losing momentum and competitive advantage in today’s fast-moving anywhere economy.

In the fourth annual Equinix Global Tech Trends Survey (GTTS), we learned that 58% of digital leaders viewed “not being fast enough in digital transformation” as a threat to business success. Take the day-to-day management of on-premises data centers and connectivity; businesses have discovered that this approach limits their ability to optimize and scale workloads. Instead, they need to incorporate a distributed architecture combining and optimizing public cloud, hybrid deployments, edge architectures, and more. Unfortunately, this will likely put a strain on their IT resources while increasing risk as they don’t possess the necessary expertise, best practices, and time. There must be a better way.

In this article, we’ll explore another way forward for businesses, including organizations in the public sector. We believe industry leaders must collaborate to deliver solutions, processes, best practices, and skills at scale to help customers meet the ever-growing demands for innovation and digital transformation. Companies can replace DIY models with joint partnerships to deliver faster–and better–outcomes.  We’ll use the Dell Technologies and Equinix partnership as an example of how industry alliances can be instrumental in helping companies future-proof their businesses.

Today, it’s about more than just technology or infrastructure, it is about outcomes that are aligned to organizational goals for sustainability, operational effectiveness, competitive differentiation, and next-generation intelligence and automation. It’s also about using next-generation technologies, from AI/ML to digital twins to AR/VR and others. Finally, IT resources must be realigned and optimized to where demand is greatest—where data is created, where decisions are made, and where action is taken.

Instead of tackling these challenges on their own, businesses can partner with industry leaders to accelerate digital transformation and achieve targeted outcomes. One trend we’re seeing is the formation of joint partnerships among several providers to assemble solutions that combine the best products or services to support customers in achieving their target business outcomes.

Equinix and Dell Technologies have observed this industry shift in real-time. We’ve teamed up to help customers accelerate digital transformation by deploying IT capabilities that are agile, elastic, and at scale to meet the demands of today and tomorrow—while ensuring high levels of security and performance across a portfolio of workloads.

Innovation in the Dell and Equinix partnership

By combining our expertise, Dell Technologies and Equinix enable customers to move from centralized to distributed IT infrastructures that combine private and public cloud environments with optimized networks; this establishes a flexible “platform” that meets evolving customer requirements. These next-generation deployment models enable organizations to deploy their infrastructure on Dell Technologies architecture within Equinix IBX® data centers.

From there, they can dynamically connect to industry-leading cloud and network providers around the world via Equinix Fabric® software-defined interconnection on Platform Equinix®, for maximum choice, flexibility, and scale. When customers locate private infrastructure adjacent to public cloud services and leverage dedicated high-speed connections, they experience the lowest latency, best performance, and highest level of security possible.

Delivering next-generation deployment models

Equinix and Dell Technologies help enterprises free themselves from legacy, in-house data centers and limited connectivity options with these three next-generation deployment models:

• Core adjacency: Core infrastructure from Dell Technologies allows customers to optimize workloads on dedicated infrastructure. Equinix interconnection services privately connect Dell Technologies’ solutions to public cloud providers, network service providers, software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers, partners and suppliers.
• Interconnected enterprises: Dell interconnected enterprise solutions leverage Equinix’s global data center footprint to optimize proximity, aligning IT resources to organizational and user demand across major metropolitan areas throughout the globe via Equinix Fabric.
• Intelligent edge: Intelligent edge solutions combine core, public and edge data control and aggregation with big data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities provided by public cloud providers and specialized IT solution providers. By using edge architecture and innovation from Equinix and Dell Technologies, companies can align IT solutions and capabilities to demand while optimizing costs and capabilities.

How hybrid deployment models add value

These deployment models leverage any combination of Dell Technologies solutions and acquisition paths to provide customers with the flexibility to address their requirements and:

• Empower digital transformation through modernized infrastructure, deployed to dramatically reduce network costs, security vulnerabilities, and latency while improving performance
• Simplify architectural design to make moving to a hybrid multicloud architecture easy and fast
• Streamline expenses by aligning consumption models with business requirements
• Reduce time-to-deployment, which makes it possible to launch digital infrastructure solutions rapidly and achieve time-to-value more quickly

There are three main ways customers can access these deployment models:

• The Dell APEX portfolio offers a scalable, elastic consumption model for storage, protection, and private and hybrid cloud. Based on Dell Technologies’ infrastructure, APEX enables users to simplify transformation, adapt quickly to shifting conditions, and control data through cloud services.
• Dell on Equinix Metal® enables rapid data center modernization and provides support during temporary shifts in workloads. Equinix Metal dynamically scales as needed using a pay-as-you-go consumption model, with multiple options and custom configurations to control costs and accelerate time-to-value for compute, storage, backup, and hyperconverged workloads.
• Dell Technologies and Equinix work with customers and partners to create customized, next-generation architectures and service offerings that can be consumed in various ways.

Why the partnership matters

Equinix and Dell Technologies address the next generation requirements of digital transformation by combining our expertise in the data center and enterprise technology markets. This natural partnership goes beyond producing exceptional outcomes for enterprises; it’s paving the way for innovation in infrastructure, the cloud market, and digital transformation.

Equinix and Dell Technologies offer mobility, cost, and performance advantages. Dell essential infrastructure is optimally deployed using Equinix Fabric interconnection capabilities on Platform Equinix. Together, we’re helping businesses mitigate risk, optimize performance, scale with agility, and optimize IT spending to accelerate their digital transformation journeys.

Even more opportunity – expanding collaboration across the partner ecosystem

While we’re excited about the Dell and Equinix partnership, we believe there’s an opportunity to make an even greater impact with our extensive partner ecosystem. From leading systems integrators, advisories, data analytics companies, AI/ML experts and others, together we can collaborate on even greater innovation that accelerates digital transformation for our customers.

To learn more about the Dell and Equinix partnership, read our solution brief.

Also, visit Equinix Partner Central to learn more about partner opportunities.