© 2017 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries.
IN-DEPTH OVERVIEW: DELL EMC CUSTOMER VALUE PROGRAM WITH CUSTOMER CASE STUDIES
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
WHY THE DELL EMC CUSTOMER VALUE PROGRAM?
STRATEGIC CHOICES MAXIMIZE DIGITAL BUSINESS VALUE
ASSESS-TRANSFORM-REALIZE
CUSTOMER EXAMPLES & EXPERIENCE
SUPPORTING ENTERPRISE OBJECTIVES
Measurement tools, guidance, services, and education
ACTIONS THAT ACHIEVE SUCCESS
Executive Summary
The digital economy has energized every enterprise to search for better ways to operate, and IT transformation is at the
core of this critical effort. Executives understand the strategic benefits of converged and hyper-converged infrastructure to
achieve greater agility, simplicity, and competitive differentiation. Dell EMC has created the Customer Value Program to
help customers gain these desired business benefits. The program offers best practices that guide new thinking,
organizational change, and more efficient operational procedures. The Customer Value Program supports the mapping,
measuring, and realization of the full business value from converged and hyper-converged technologies.
While converged infrastructure can deliver significantly lower total cost of ownership, this is only about a third of the
potential business value. Desirable outcomes such as improved efficiency, agility, simplicity, innovation, competitive
differentiation, speed, scale, flexibility, reliability, and more can be assessed and quantified in order to provide a clearer
picture of the true benefits and value of converged and hyper-converged infrastructure.
Why the Dell EMC Customer Value Program?
A unique program to measure the business value of IT Transformation
Competitive pressures and dissatisfaction with legacy operating models are leading IT organizations to seek greater
agility. However, to respond quickly to changing business demands, organizations must transform dramatically. The
challenge lies in effectively delivering on a new vision which requires new thinking, organization, and operational
procedures. Dell EMC has worked with thousands of customers as they proceed with adoption of converged
infrastructure, and the Customer Value Program shares the knowledge we have gained. Customers ask about the goals
they should set and best practices to implement. They want help to define new roles and retrain/cross-train staff. And they
ask for support in mapping and measuring the value of their transformation so they can celebrate their success and
identify areas for improvement.
2 © 2017 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries.
Strategic choices maximize digital business value
Enterprise strategic objectives that motivate a digital transformation include business agility, rapid opportunity response,
operational simplicity, and reliability. Because legacy infrastructure is often too heterogeneous and siloed to meet the
challenge, the movement to public, private, and hybrid cloud, as well as converged and hyper-converged infrastructure,
has accelerated. However, operating in a cloud model means that physical systems, software, and operating systems are
procured and managed differently. Applications must also be architected, deployed and managed to deliver the benefits of
cloud operating models. Internal customers are asking for the capability to initiate and fulfill IT resource requests on-
demand via self-service functionality. Moving to a cloud operating model has substantial benefits, but many enterprises
have difficulty evaluating complex options and deciding where to start. Dell EMC has the experience, resources, and
essential converged and hyper-converged technologies to help.
The Customer Value Program helps customers build a solid business case that demonstrates how transformational
changes can produce exceptional outcomes. The aim is to show positive business value and operational efficiency as well
as savings. Budget approvals result when a verified business case demonstrates solid advantages. And the truism of IT
budgets always applies: “Do more with less.”
Assess-Transform-Realize
The Customer Value Program (CVP) helps customers move toward a cloud operating model and maximize value
throughout the business lifecycle. We have learned that to realize the full potential of converged infrastructure; customers
must transform from legacy modes of operation and organization. The Program provides detailed guidance, tools, advice
on available services, and education aimed at helping customers to get substantially more value from converged and
hyper-converged infrastructure. An essential part of this includes best practices to operate and use systems as holistic
entities versus operating compute, storage, and networking as separate resource silos.
The Customer Value Program provides support in three phases to address the continuing need to identify, measure, and
maximize value:
Assess – Establish metrics, baselines, objectives, and expectations for improvements in
business, IT and financial outcomes
Transform – Implement best practices for operations, staff roles, and organizational structure
that drive transformation
Realize – Measure value realized against baseline objectives to demonstrate successful
outcomes and areas for additional improvement
3 © 2017 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries.
Assess
Dell EMC account teams help customers to create their
initial Business Value Assessment using a detailed tool
to establish goals with their projected benefits in ten
distinct areas:
• IT operations
• IT and business innovation
• Unplanned and planned downtime
• Time to value
• Hard costs avoided
• Data migration
• Space and power
• Data protection
• System performance
• Benefits that are specific to each organization
Fig.1 Reduced Operating Burden IDC 20171
As enterprises see explosive growth in data and demand for new applications, converged infrastructure delivers faster
deployment and simplified operations while lowering expenses and improving support for business agility (Fig. 1).
Organizations surveyed in this 2017 IDC study have transformed their operations and freed IT staff to concentrate on new
value-added projects that extend services and help businesses grow. And their end-users report improved satisfaction.
“IT agility is ensured via 73% faster and automated provisioning of compute and other IT resources. One result is more efficient and effective application development efforts, with study participants reporting the delivery of new applications in 34% less time with VxBlock.”
IDC, August 2017 1
For example, a large Midwest enterprise conducted a Business Value Assessment that projected five-year benefits of
$15.4M on a $7.5M investment. Improvements included greater staff productivity; more time focused on IT and business
innovation, reduced downtime, and lower infrastructure expenses. The resulting business case and progress toward their
strategic vision began a transition to a new future and convinced executives to transform their business through IT,
moving entirely to converged infrastructure. They’re now two years into their five-year transformation journey.
Although every customer has a different value experience, sponsored in-depth IDC research# proves that converged
solutions consistently provide significant business benefits. Reduced complexity and simplified problem resolution help to
improve system management staff efficiency by as much as 79%. And standardization leads to quality improvements that
can reduce unplanned downtime as much as 91%. Some customers have seen as much as 34% faster application
development leading to faster time to market and faster revenue recognition.2
1 “Business Value of Modernizing Mission Critical Applications with Dell EMC VxBlock”, IDC August 2017
4 © 2017 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries.
Transform
Through guidance, examples, measurement tools, education, and services we help customers achieve their business
objectives. It’s assistance tempered by experience to help drive successful transformation and value. Our services teams
can help to drive early momentum to achieve faster outcomes. As customers redesign operations, organizations, and
management functions, the CVP provides validated best operating practices with examples of achieved/expected
benefits. Dell EMC assistance is available from vArchitects during pre-sales and during implementation and production
from support functions, & professional services. Consulting services are also available to help record and evaluate results
and advise on adjustments to practices and technology as needed.
Evolution from component focused roles to converged roles
Role transformation is central to the successful evolution of legacy operations to converged best practices.
Realize
The Customer Value Program uses fact-based
measures to drive transformation through a simple
and continuous improvement methodology. The
process begins with establishing a baseline, including
goals for improvement. Periodically – quarterly, semi-
annually – actual progress is measured, successes
are celebrated, and additional areas for improvement
are identified. Our direct customer experience has
identified three important Business Value Realized
(BVR) best practices that drive success:
1. Strong sponsorship from IT leadership
2. BVR program management and accountability
from key IT managers
3. Preparation for the next phase of cloud model
implementation
The movement to a cloud operating model is a
transformational opportunity. It relies upon converged
infrastructure to make the shift from managing a
collection of separate system components to
operating and managing the converged system as a
single entity where compute, storage, and network
resources blend in a reliable, predictable, resilient and
operationally efficient manner.
5 © 2017 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries.
Independent research2 shows that as CI customers change their management approach and increase automation, they
devote far less time to repetitive IT operations, break/fix and troubleshooting. Substantially more time becomes available
for strategic initiatives that accelerate business innovation and improve end user satisfaction to enable the realization of
business value far beyond, and in addition to, operational expense reduction. The contribution of the IT organization
increases in strategic business importance as IT staff take on new roles as creators of business value.
The Customer Value Program is designed to help achieve and document the benefits that converged infrastructure
delivers:
• More efficient IT operations and increased agility
• More IT time and focus on innovation with IT as a strategic participant in business growth
• Better system availability and quality of service
• Improved innovation and expanded services
Customer examples & experience
Relating the stories of established customers who’ve undergone successful transformations provides insight on the path
to business and IT value. Here are just a few examples:
Energy Future Holdings Corporation (EFH) is a privately held, Dallas-based energy company. Technology is critical to
their success in one of the world’s largest and most competitive markets. IT needed to create a competitive edge via
increased agility and accelerated response to business needs. Dell EMC converged infrastructure provides that
advantage:
“We are now able to answer and respond to business needs and deliver complete systems within as little as one hour. The real business advantage is that we have also changed the entire posture of IT from being just a cost center into a provider of real business value.”
– Paul Reyes, EFH VP of Infrastructure and Security Services
Within one day of go-live, EFH saw a 40%-50% performance improvement. Bills were generated faster, which led to a
reduction in working capital of as much as $8 million. Efficiency gains allowed them to close one of three data centers and
reduce IT costs by 25%. Kevin Chase, SVP and CIO tells of "… receiving emails that I hadn't seen in eight years as CIO,
telling us how much easier we’ve made users jobs on a day-to-day basis.”
Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center is a nationally recognized, fully integrated academic medical center and health and
health system based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Wake Forest’s IT infrastructure was aging—63% was over seven years old, and 12% was past 11 years. The environment
was costly, risky, and standing in the way of strategic priorities. There were severe impacts on uptime and stability. As
much as 70% of IT staff time was devoted to maintenance and support. There were project delays and growing space
constraints, and little ability to promptly respond to service requests.
Then they transformed.
“Our first Vblock System was launched specifically to manage our very large imaging files. We set up the entire Vblock System environment within two days – a process that had taken six weeks in the past. The implementation proved the financial case, and our board’s response was, ‘How can we speed up the rest of the deployment?’”
– Chad Eckes, formerly Executive Vice President and CFO, Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center
2 ESG April 2017
6 © 2017 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries.
Wake Forest’s benefits from migrating to Vblock were wide reaching:
• Minimized IT team’s time on break/fix support, enabling increased value-added time
• Collapsed 45 racks per data center to 15 racks per center and avoided a huge capital outlay for data center expansion
• Maintenance and support costs reduced to 10%, down from 44% of the IT budget
• Virtualization increased from 22% to 96% in under 18 months
• Simplified and streamlined backup and recovery
• Reduced storage requirements with deduplication increased from 7-1 to 30-1
• Increase in server utilization from 35% to 70%
• Reduced CPU load from 75% to 15%
• Improved latency from 8ms to 0.5ms
• Overall 30% performance improvement to end users
• Decreased storage provisioning times from 24 hrs. to under an hour
CenturyLink, a global communications, hosting, cloud, and IT services company, needed a better response to market
demands for faster infrastructure deployments at lower cost. By deploying a Dell EMC Vblock solution, they enabled
self-service resource provisioning in minutes versus weeks and accelerated application development cycles from months
to weeks. One customer saw an 81% reduction in deployment costs and accelerated developer access to resources in
just minutes.
“Cost and time to market are paramount for most customers. You can’t meet today’s expectations with a piece-parts approach. We needed to help our customers capitalize on the efficiencies of cloud computing, but in a much more streamlined way.”
– Michael Joffe, CenturyLink Director of Cloud Product Management
Supporting Enterprise Objectives through the Customer Value Program’s measurement tools, guidance,
services, and education
Dell EMC is committed to demonstrating why and how customers can transform to get the most value from their
converged and hyper-converged systems. So, significant assets, tools, and services are available to help customers
maximize and measure realized value.
Included in Customer Value Program:
• Business Value Assessment – A collaborative approach with Dell EMC account managers to quantify projected benefits
and value of CI/HCI investments
• Best Operating Practices tool
• Getting Started Guide for system administrators
• Getting the Most Value Manual for senior managers
• Coming soon – Business Value Realized – A collaborative approach to measure and drive transformation
Additional fee-based services:
• Plus, and Premier support, Residency Services, and Transformational Consulting Services
• The Release Certification Matrix (RCM) simplifies lifecycle automation of system software upgrades, reducing downtime
by 96%. The RCM is available at no charge and is designed for customers to use on their own, or Dell EMC can provide
help through optional paid services
• On-line and instructor-led education and certification programs
Day one operating services help clients get to value faster with more applications deployed, and greatly simplified
operations.
7 © 2017 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries.
Organizational Transformation Assessment and Planning
• Be ready when your new infrastructure is delivered –
o Staff cross training and skills to support more efficient IT services delivery
o New roles definition
o Basic services strategy, design, and catalog creation
o Service approvals process
o Initial cloud operational model
o Definition of key IT processes for end-to-end service delivery
• Application Profiling Services that
o Map applications to business processes
o Determine Application CI Suitability
o Recommend Optimal Application Deployment Architectures
Actions that achieve success
Transformation to a cloud operating model involves much more than capitalizing on advanced technology. Transformed IT
organizations gain the ability to align more closely with the business priorities. They can realize the benefits of a strategic
vision that includes advanced data center technologies and cloud service models. They enable end-user self-provisioning,
support agile application development, and DevOps best practices. And, critically, transformed organizations evolve
legacy IT through new skills, new roles, and new organizational structures. They encourage cross training, to develop new
ways of thinking about how IT will best contribute to business success.
Dell EMC Customer Success Testimonials for Converged Infrastructure
http://www.vce.com/customers/testimonials
Day 1 Operating Model Services for Converged Infrastructure
https://www.emc.com/collateral/service-overview/h16357-day1-operating-model-for-converged-inf-svo.pdf
Residency Services for Converged Infrastructure
https://www.emc.com/collateral/serviceoverview/residency-services-for-ci-systems-overview.pdf
Application Profiling Service Overview
https://www.emc.com/collarteral/serviceoverview/h15258-emc-application-profiling-services-svo.pdf
Deployment Services Overview
https://www.emc.com/collateral/serviceoverview/deployment-services-for-ci-portfolio-overview.pdf
Support Overview
https://www.emc.com/collateral/serviceoverview/cpd-support-overview.pdf
Education Services Overview:
https://education.emc.com/_content/_common/docs/training/converged_infrastructure_(CI)_brochure_201702.pdf
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