Dell Is a Strong Performer Among Hosted Private Cloud Solutions Providers Excerpted from the Forrester Wave™: Hosted Private Cloud Solutions, Q4 2014 by Lauren E

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals November 12, 2014

Dell Is A Strong Performer Among Hosted Private Cloud Solutions Providers Excerpted From The Forrester Wave™: Hosted Private Cloud Solutions, Q4 2014 by Lauren E. Nelson with James Staten, William Martorelli, Sophia I. Vargas, Richard Fichera, and Michael Caputo

Dell Is A Strong Performer Among Hosted Private Cloud Solutions Providers Dell’s hosted private cloud environment bundles its Forrester Wave™: Hosted Private Cloud, Q4 ’14 Dell Cloud Dedicated Risky Strong (DCD) solution with its Bets Contenders Performers Leaders Dell Cloud Manager (DCM) Strong Dell, with a 1 Forrester score of 3.29, portal. Dell Cloud Manager is a Strong Performer in this Forrester Wave. Go to Forrester.com to (formerly Enstratius) is a download the Forrester Wave tool for more standalone heterogeneous Virtustream Dell CSC detailed product cloud management portal Joyent Datapipe evaluations, feature Rackspace HP comparisons, and that can sit atop internal or Canopy Blue Box AT&T customizable rankings. VooServers external cloud platforms Current Verizon to manage resources across offering Orange CenturyLink VMware Fujitsu environments. Its inclusion as part of Dell’s hosted private cloud portfolio adds greater private-to-public Market presence integration and a more Full vendor participation Incomplete vendor participation intuitive self-service portal. Weak

Although Dell no longer Weak Strategy Strong offers a public cloud solution, Source: Forrester Research, Inc. Unauthorized reproduction or distribution prohibited. you can use DCM to connect to a range of preintegrated cloud platforms, including AWS. Today Dell’s strengths include automation capabilities, control options, SLAs, and a large global DC footprint. Relative to other evaluated solutions, Dell has limited additional hosting options, support capabilities (not email- or portal-based support), certifications, and user permissions.

See below for more information on Dell’s current offering, strategy, and market presence.

Headquarters Forrester Research, Inc., 60 Acorn Park Drive, Cambridge, MA, 02140 USA Tel: +1 617.613.6000 • Fax: +1 617.613.5000 • www.forrester.com For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals Dell Is A Strong Performer Among Hosted Private Cloud Solutions Providers 2

Dell Evaluation Overview

CURRENT OFFERING

Self-service access Dell’s offering uses a combination of Dell Cloud Dedicated and Dell Cloud Manager, featuring user and admin dashboards with their respective control options. Dell Cloud Manager uses RESTful APIs and can integrate with Amazon EC2 APIs. Image libraries provided by DCM are flexible on a tenant basis and it is possible to create multitiers with hierarchical permissions and reporting. Dell uses Foglight for usage reporting and metering and has support for multiple VM and storage volume sizes. It also supports IPv4.

Multi-data-center With Dell’s solution, workloads can be shifted between cloud providers as options long the templates work with the cloud provider and provide the option to import templates from other providers for provisioning in the portal. Multidata center spanning across two data centers is possible and supports moving workloads between a variety of cloud providers, including AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Compute Cloud. Dell’s offering supports Chef and Puppet as well as basic and multi-VM templates.

Automation capabilities Dell automates its virtual infrastructure and allows users to use configuration scripting languages like Chef and Puppet or its Dell’s own CM script wrappers to customize VMs during provisioning. Both basic and multi-VM templates are supported (2 points). Users can create its own load balancing policies and autoscaling for resources using user-written scripts or VM performance metrics (2 points). Job scheduling is supported (1 point). During the demo, Dell showed provisioning but did not show a completed workload once provisioned, and as such does not get credit for deploying in less than 15 minutes (-1 point). Dell’s customer references stated the following deployment times: 20 minutes, “not sure”, “minutes”. Dell receives credit for a customer reference provisioning virtual resources in less than 1 hour.

Upfront infrastructure Dell’s networking options include support for MPLS, remote access VPN, configuration options and VLANs and provide virtual firewalls and load balancers. For storage, Dell features non-tiered 10G iSCSI storage as well as tiered block storage.

Customer experience Dell support comes via 24x7x365 phone availability; no email or portal support exists. There are four levels of response time guarantees as well as four levels of resolution time guarantees, and the minimum contract for this solution is one year. Capacity increases do not require a contract change.

Security and Dell customers can establish VPN, MPLS, and Wavedomestic connections monitoring capabilities between DC facilities and have the ability to set ACL, VLAN, VRFs, and VDC controls as well. Dell Cloud Dedicated is PCI and HIPAA compliant and has ISO 27001 certification.

Dell Evaluation Overview

STRATEGY

Planned enhancements Dell focuses on delivering a hybrid platform via its Dell Cloud Manager (formerly Enstratius) portal. Its Dell Cloud Dedicated offering looks to differentiate with its full management solutions that layer atop the core service and meeting various vertical requirements through various compliance requirements. Over the next year Dell plans to: 1) provide deeper integration between various deployment models and providers; 2) continued simplification of cloud service agreements to provide a better bridge with traditional hosting/ITO contracts; 3) provide performance or outcome-based contracts versus “just” standard uptime availability; 4) increase manageability for enterprise cloud brokers; 5) include standardized request management hand off to auto-provisioning and CMDB integration; 6) enhanced DR capabilities through managed services; and 7) launch its FedRAMP certified community cloud solution. Generally Forrester believes this road map is strong but Dell has a long list to accomplish within the next year. Forrester would also like to see an emphasis on improved reporting and permissions especially if Dell’s focus in looking to empower its cloud admins as brokers between multiple cloud services. Forrester also thinks that Dell must prioritize standardization and automation of its services. Overall, Forrester believes some areas of its road map are strong and that it is making progress in some of its key planned enhancements.

Additional hosting Dell offers the following additional hosted solutions: traditional hosting options (1 point) and colocation (1 point). Dell also provides managed services through its acquistion of Perot Systems (1 point) within the same DCs as its Dedicated Cloud service. Dell Cloud Dedicated does not share DCs with any public cloud solution.

Third-party ecosystem Dell Cloud Dedicated is compatible with vSphere, vCloud Director, Hyper-V, and OpenStack. Dell can utilize some third parties that interface with these products. Dell Cloud Manager, formerly Enstratius, also supports a range of third party cloud providers to provisioned out of the box. This represents an average ecosystem.

Cost Dell’s pricing for both scenarios is above average compared with the other evaluated vendors.

Dell Evaluation Overview

MARKET PRESENCE

Installed base Dell Cloud Dedicated has 126 customers with 90% of its install base having 500-plus employees. The largest client has 950 VMs.

Revenue Dell’s overall company revenue is above average compared with the other evaluated vendors, and its revenue from Dell Cloud Dedicated is below average compared to the other vendors.

Global presence Dell’s hosted private cloud is available in the following countries: the US (4), the Netherlands (1), India (1), the UK (1), Canada (1), and Australia (1). Note: Numbers in parentheses represent the number of data centers in that country.

Why Read This Report

From The Forrester Wave™: Hosted Private Cloud Solutions, Q4 2014 This emerging market Forrester Wave™ report focuses on hosted private cloud solutions. In our 25-criteria evaluation, we identified the 16 most significant providers — AT&T, Blue Box, Canopy, CenturyLink, Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC), Datapipe, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Joyent, Orange Business Services, Rackspace, Verizon, Virtustream, VMware, and VooServers — in the category and researched, analyzed, and scored them. This report details our findings on how well each vendor fulfills enterprise customer requirements to help infrastructure and operations (I&O) pros select the right partner for their hosted private cloud solution.

Endnotes 1 Although DCD can be sold separately (it typically isn’t), this evaluation scores the combined solution. Pricing assumes both products in use, and customers typically leverage both.

Forrester Research (Nasdaq: FORR) is a global research and advisory firm serving professionals in 13 key roles across three distinct client segments. Our clients face progressively complex business and technology decisions every day. To help them understand, strategize, and act upon opportunities brought by change, Forrester provides proprietary research, consumer and business data, custom consulting, events and online communities, and peer-to-peer executive programs. We guide leaders in business technology, marketing and strategy, and the technology industry through independent fact-based insight, ensuring their business success today and tomorrow. © 2014 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Forrester, Forrester Wave, RoleView, Technographics, TechRankings, and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Reproduction or sharing of this content in any form without prior written permission is strictly prohibited. To purchase reprints of this document, please email [email protected]. For additional reproduction and usage information, see Forrester’s Citation Policy located at www.forrester.com. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. 113725_Dell