In 2020 at the dawn of the new decade, Dell introduced Apex, its pay-per-use offering that gives customers the option to consume infrastructure as a service. Shannon Champion is Dell's VP of Product Marketing and we're here to talk about the future of multi-cloud and what's new in Dell's Apex portfolio. Shannon, great to see you. Nice to see you. So before we get into it, how would you describe Apex multi-cloud? So our Apex multi-cloud strategy as you mentioned has evolved, right? We started from a subscription as a service perspective and over the past several years have been doing a lot of listening to our customers and what we know is that customers are telling us that they're in various stages of their spectrum. Some customers are in the public cloud, often multiple public cloud, some customers are on-prem with a hybrid cloud but increasingly looking for that bridge between the public cloud experience to come on-prem and other customers are looking to define or redefine what their multi-cloud strategy is. So that's where Apex comes in. Apex is really designed to solve for both modern consumption and modern cloud experiences and to meet customers where they are. So whether they are in the public clouds, we're looking for options to enrich that public cloud experience. If they need a bridge from the public cloud to on-prem, we have options there and if they're looking for cloud experiences, regardless of where their IT landscape is, with subscription or as a service offers, we have that too. So our Apex strategy is very comprehensive and intended to respond to what we're hearing from our customers. And there's no question the rush to cloud has caused and multi-cloud has caused complexities. We're definitely seeing sort of an equilibrium now in terms of customers trying to balance out sort of where they place workloads. So how can Dell technologies help? Where does Apex fit in and addressing some of these challenges? Yeah, so we hear from our customers a range of challenges with implementing a multi-cloud strategy. So security is an imperative, but when you have disparate landscape of multi-cloud, limited visibility results and not having confidence that you have that secure posture that you're looking for. Unpredictable cost is something we've been talking about for years as it relates to multi-cloud and cost management is super important. People need to know where their spend is going to go. Also lack of the right skill sets, making sure that you're able to attract and retain the right talent to meet your business needs and also workload mobility. As your business needs change, our customers are telling us they need the flexibility to put those applications and data wherever they need them. And in order to do that, they need data mobility. So of course we were at Dell Tech World in May and you announced the Apex Cloud platforms as part of your overall Apex strategy. Can you just for the audience summarize what was announced and what's new, any updates? Sure, yeah, so like I said, customers are looking for kind of a range of spectrum as it relates to multi-cloud and Dell Technologies World was a whirlwind. We delivered the broadest payload of Apex portfolio options across that full spectrum of the Apex strategy that I laid out. We unveiled our Apex storage for public cloud offers which really solves the challenge of helping customers enrich their public cloud experience and go from ground to cloud. We unveiled new subscription and as a service options for customers. And we also unveiled our Apex Cloud platform, a brand new category, a new family in the Apex portfolio specifically to solve for that cloud to ground experience and helping extend the cloud operating environment that our customers choose and that experience and bring that on-prem. So what are Apex Cloud platforms and what exactly do you mean by cloud to ground? So Apex Cloud platforms are turnkey on-prem infrastructure platforms that are designed to deliver that multi-cloud by design approach, right? To extend the cloud ecosystem of our customer's choice to the data center or their edge locations and they're designed with simplicity in mind. They're built collaboratively with our ecosystem partners and currently that's Microsoft, Red Hat and VMware. And importantly, these platforms are leveraging Dell's unique proven IP in a range of areas. One is from our HCI portfolio, we built a best in class integration software and we're leveraging the IP from that combined with our proven enterprise class software to find storage together with our power edge next generation infrastructure platform altogether in what we're referring to as a new generation of infrastructure to solve for multi-cloud on-prem. Okay, new generation. Can you maybe double click on that? What do you mean by new generation? A lot of times people talk about next generation, you're calling it new generation. Add some color to that if you could. Sure, and I think an easy place to start is to think about something that people know, right? People know HCI, HCI is known for simplicity. Dell has been a leader in this space for years. We have delivered a differentiated experience with our software-driven innovation in that space. So higher levels of integration, automation, life cycle management, that's what people love about VxRail but that was designed specifically with one partner stock in mind, VMware's. And what the Apex Cloud platforms are about are designing for those same differentiated outcomes but with more consistency and control regardless of the partner stack that our customers are choosing. So we're giving them that commonality and consistency which gives them the flexibility, has a range of benefits in terms of operational savings and really drives consistency. To what extent are you working, Shannon, with in conjunction with partners? Is this product work? Does it include engineering? What does it entail? Yeah, so I mentioned Microsoft, Red Hat and VMware are current partnerships for Apex Cloud platforms. These are not new partners to Dell. We've been working with these partners for decades to deliver value for our customers but what's different here is the level of partnership required to pack in as much value as we are in these Apex Cloud platforms with those partners. Not just from a product and engineering perspective but all parts of go-to-market. So we're working with these partners to align in the field and how we show up together for our joint customers. We are working together with our channel partners to help them understand the value of our partnership and enable them to be a route to market for these. So it's across the board. But one example specifically on the product and engineering side, I mentioned the HCI integration software and for the Apex Cloud platforms we're calling that automated M&O software, the Apex Cloud platform foundation software, right? The software that connects the foundation of the infrastructure into the cloud operating stacks and based upon the continuous development and testing that we're doing specifically on that vertically integrated software stack, we're able to deliver new patches, updates, new releases of software versions that come directly from our partner in as quick as four hours. So I don't know if customers are going to be ready for it that quickly. You know, like these are, when we talk about time to value and how quickly we're going to enable you to be ready with the latest capabilities and feature sets, it's pretty unprecedented. Yeah, so you're creating this sort of cloud like, this cloud native, if I can call it that experience with Apex customers are using frameworks in different ways of thinking about which workloads go where. What are some of the use cases that you're seeing with Apex? Is it sort of the more mission critical stuff that we've always known on-prem? Is it actually seeping into some new innovation? What are the use cases that you're seeing? We're seeing customers really think about how they might use the Apex Cloud platforms in three different kind of bigger buckets. One is just simplifying multi-cloud operations. I say just, but like that's a big task, right? So we've been talking about that, you know, customers want to utilize multiple public clouds. They want their clouds to be on-prem, but they want those experiences to be common and simple and with data mobility and work everywhere. So that's one use case for customers. The second is really accelerating application delivery, right? So more and more organizations are looking to adopt that modern containerized application approach using Kubernetes, it's complex. So when you have something like the Apex Cloud platform that can bring together VMs and containers in a single platform support a range of Kubernetes distributions, whether it's Azure Kubernetes stack or it's Red Hat OpenShift and provide commonality that I talked about across these, there's a lot of value and helps our customers go faster to deliver the application. So that's the second kind of use case. And the third would be really generally optimizing workload placement, right? Like having a tool that's at their disposal when their business needs change and evolve based upon cost or performance or security or compliance requirements. As those ebb and flow, they have the ability to put their workloads in the right place. Well, you know we're big on the common experience across clouds, especially, you know, given the mandate for greater business resilience, people certainly during the pandemic, you know, were forced to rethink the way that they're able to respond to different market conditions. Well, thank you, Shannon, any sort of last words or thoughts you want to leave the audience with? Yeah, one of the things I didn't go into a ton of detail with that I just want to hit on is really the value of that common storage layer and really that software defined storage architecture that is the basis of these cloud platforms, highly scalable, resilient, high performance, software defined storage. And that being a common element across these platforms makes it easier for migrations and all of that, but it's also the same storage architecture that we're putting in the public cloud. So that's helping to enable that mobility. So it's a key element of this I just wanted to emphasize that. But overall for the Apex Cloud Platform family, we're ready. We are excited and starting today, we will be offering these to customers. So we're just really excited to see how this revolutionizes and multi-cloud for them in a new way. Well, it's exciting to see it come together. I remember, you know, Project Alpine and turns into the common storage layer, CSL, actually project turns into product. So congratulations on that execution and thanks for your time. Thank you very much. Okay, now it's time to hear more about the first offer to market, the Apex Cloud Platform from Microsoft Azure. So stay with us. Dean Perrone, who's partner director from Microsoft joins our Caitlin Gordon. She's the VP of Product Management at Dell. Dig in to all the new features and explain why this is the first offer in the new premier solutions from Microsoft Azure Stack, HCI, my colleague analyst, Rob Streche, hosts this next segment. Over to you, Rob. Hello and welcome to future of multi-cloud lands now, a discussion with Dell and Microsoft. We just heard from Dave Vellante and with Shannon Champion, VP of Product Marketing at Dell, where they were discussing the Apex Cloud Platform family. Now we're going to take it down another level here, really delve into that family, the Apex family, and we're going to go into the Apex Cloud Platform from Microsoft Azure. Let me welcome two guests who really know their stuff about this and are really going to help us unpack it a little bit more. We have Caitlin Gordon, who's the vice president of Product Management, multi-cloud and dev ops at Dell, and Dean Perrone, executive director of Product Management, Azure Edge at Microsoft. Let's jump in and really unpack this and understand the market and what's going on today. I understand that today's a really exciting day for both of you, that Apex Cloud Platform from Microsoft Azure has become available to customers to purchase today. So Caitlin, let's get an update and understand what are the customers saying about this? You know, we've been talking to a lot of different customers, all shapes and sizes all over the world for a long time. And there's a lot of key themes, right? They're struggling with being able to innovate fast enough, being able to really keep up with the pace of business, getting the visibility into things, keeping things as simple as possible so they have the resources to do what they need to. And what we've heard loud and clear from our customers, which is really exciting, is that they are so happy to hear that our continued partner with Microsoft is coming to the next level now with this new platform and that we're really coming together to simplify hybrid cloud operations with Microsoft Azure.  So I think that makes a lot of sense. Dean, you know, what are you hearing from the Microsoft side and your customers? Yeah, thanks. We're hearing really similar things. I mean, you know, they say that in this industry change is constant, but we live in really interesting unique times, whether it's changes that have been brought to the society writ large because of the pandemic or the emergence of new technologies like machine learning. What we're hearing from customers across different industries is they're really being asked to innovate more quickly than ever. And we're hearing they're really excited about this new platform because it gives them a simple, easy to use, easy to deploy platform and it helps them really unlock some new capabilities in the cloud and bring them out into the real world, into their edge locations, into their data centers and lets them unlock just enough power of the cloud to enable new capabilities for them. No, that's super interesting. I think from the customers we talk about, it's really about bringing it to the edge. And I think it's really super exciting that you guys have partnered up for this and I really want to delve a little bit further and deeper. Can you kind of give us an idea of what's new? What this new platform is about? Why is it different? And what have you been seeing from Dell and Microsoft in the past? Why is this different? Why is this different from what you've brought out before? Caitlin, why don't we start with you? Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's really exciting because this is a new on-premises appliance. It is jointly engineered and it's really all about bringing the best of what Microsoft has in their edge and data center technology with what now Dell has brought together with that, with kind of the Azure Stack HCI software. And the whole magic of this is that we have integrated the full stack from the firmware all the way up to the Microsoft software and that's fully automated. So that really the secret sauce from Dell is of course the combination of our compute, but it's really our automated management and orchestration really making that a seamless and simple experience from top to bottom. And though what's really exciting is that besides the fact that Dean and I talk all the time now as proof of our partnership, we've actually now are the first partner in Microsoft's new premier category for Azure Stack HCI. Being able to partner to a level where we can bring such meaningful innovation to customers and really being able to be the first one in this new category of Microsoft I think is really representative of the level of partnership here. I think we'll unpack that in a minute because I think that's super interesting. But Dean, what does it mean for this from a Microsoft perspective as well?  I started at Microsoft in the mid to late 90s and some of the first product lines I worked on were Windows NT and back office server. And those were collaborations between Microsoft and Dell. So we've got a long history over decades of working together to bring new products to market. What's different about this particular solution is really how far we've pushed the envelope on the integration, the things that Caitlin mentioned, and also that it's a hybrid product, right? We've really taken the best of Dell technologies on hardware, on storage, on operations and married it with the best of Microsoft cloud technologies from Azure. And Azure Arc enabled services like Azure Stack HCI, Azure machine learning, Azure data services and really brought that together into one real cohesive deeply integrated product that's really easy for customers to use. To get there just required a tremendous amount of collaboration between Microsoft and Dell. We had to do things like align our vision and our strategy and our roadmap and get the teams we joke internally that the teams have been working like one big joint engineering team to make that happen. And that's why I'm so excited to have Dell here as one of the first partners in this solution. Yeah, I think for the customers we talked to, I think you've nailed it, right? I think you have to be simple. It has to be that cloud experience. I think cloud used to mean somewhere else or somewhere but now it means all the way to the edge and everywhere and it has to be just simple. But let's kind of dig into what it means and go a little deeper what it means into being a premier solution for Azure Stack HCI. Dean, can you provide us some background on why Microsoft created this new category and what the benefits are to the customer? Yeah, so the Azure Stack HCI OEM partner ecosystem is categorized into tiers that each cater to a different segment of the market. And this new category that we're announcing today, the premier solutions tier, really represents our best and deepest integration with our top OEM partners like Dell. And just to give you some examples of what that means, when you get one of the Dell Apex Cloud Platform for Azure Systems and you plug it in and you turn it on, there's a whole bunch of stuff that needs to be set up between Dell stuff and Microsoft stuff, all of that happens through one deeply well-integrated end-to-end experience across the entire stack. Once it's up and running, you have to update the system. We have integrated updates that not only do the software on the box and the cloud services, but they go down into the box itself and they'll upgrade the drivers for the drivers and the firmware for the system as well. And then if you think about what customers are looking for, they're really looking about extending some of these concepts that we've gotten in the cloud where you've got this great reliability and you can just count on these resources to always be available. These systems, we have running in Dell Labs, we have running in Microsoft Labs, there's this huge integration between the teams and they're continuously validated so that we can get these systems to have a reliability profile that is as close as possible to what we've got in the cloud. It's really exciting to have Dell as the first partner in this tier of solutions. Yeah, no, I think that's pretty, it's a huge undertaking and I think again, the simplicity can't be overstated that how hard it is to get that to really happen. I think that the engineering effort that goes into it is pretty massive. So congratulations, Caitlin. I think that being the first to be able to bring this new, first one in this new category, I think that it must have taken just a ton to pull this off. What was that like? It did, it took a lot of work. In a lot of ways, it's decades in the making, right? Everything starts with our customers and we really needed to help our customers accelerate their application deployment, simplify operation, meet increasingly stringent security and governance requirements, but be able to do so in a way that actually offers simplicity that meets the reality of what their skills are in their data center today. And that's really what forced us and encouraged us to come together as two big companies to yes, take a partnership we already have, but really go to the next level with that. And how did the engineering teams work to ensure that Apex Cloud Platform was really aligned with premier solutions for Azure Stack HCI? It really comes down to what we call the Apex Cloud Platform Foundation Software. That's that magic automated management orchestration software in the platform. And it does incredibly powerful things that really make that time to value in an unprecedented way. Specifically, you can now reduce the steps required to deploy Azure Stack HCI down by 88%. Which I mean, it's like there's barely anything left, right? At that point. So you have that really great automated, really simple deployment compared to what you have before with previous kind of integrated systems when Dean was talking about the tiers of products. That's why we have a whole new level of offer. But that's day one, right? That happens once. So it's great that it gives you that value, but the day two operations benefits is even more important. Our engineering teams, as Dean said, really have been operating as one. It's been really amazing to see these companies come together and collaborate. And that doesn't stop when the product starts shipping. That continues. So we're continuously working together to validate that software stack we have in this product, what we call a continuously validated state, which ensures that whole software stack firmware up through the operating system is all validated to work together. But even better, when there's an update, when there's a patch, you don't have to go and search for it. You don't have to wait.  That's huge because I think everybody knows and gets the CISA updates and things of that nature and security and we just heard what happened to major casino and things of that nature. This is super huge and it's a huge lift as well. And I think that's a big piece of it. So there was a piece in it that I wanted to dig into. You kind of included your software defined storage as part of the Apex Cloud platforms. Why did you go down that route? Well, it comes down to two things. One, what are our customers asking for? And two, how do we have a consistent experience? Now, Shannon talked about this as really a family, which is an exciting thing to introduce a family and one of the tenants of that family is consistency. So to have that consistency, we wanted to make sure that we had that same scale, linear scale, high performance software defined storage in our Microsoft offer, just as we do in the rest of the family. The reason for bringing that though is to give our customers choice. So we have storage spaces direct in the platform and then by adding our own software defined storage, which is built off of the PowerFlex technology, we can really support model these data intensive workloads, be able to scale the compute and storage separately and really give our customers a choice of using the native integrated Microsoft or leveraging this storage from Dell, that software defined storage from Dell that can give you that better linear scalability. And that really ultimately unlocks new workloads and even more transformation for our customers data centers. That's gotta be exciting for the customers at the edge to be able to have that opportunity to bring new use cases and new workloads. But Dean, Katelyn just discussed a number of the unique capabilities with Apex Cloud Platform. What do these unique capabilities mean for Microsoft customers? Yeah, I mean, when I look at this from the Microsoft customer perspective, this release is really all about extending the power of the cloud, the operational constructs of the cloud, the simplicity of the cloud and bringing those outside of our Azure regions out into the physical world, where customers are expecting and demanding, frankly, those same sorts of experiences. And so all the things that Katelyn mentioned plug right into that, right? So we're thinking about how easy it is to plug the box in, get it set up, the 88% reduction in the number of steps required to do that, the simplicity in things like updates and ongoing validation. Really, that's about just letting customers operate where they wanna operate, which is up the stack. They wanna worry as much about solving their business problems as they go forward, as you think back to what we heard from customers. And so the other part of that is really, how do you bring the power of cloud services to bear on solving some of these modern problems that customers are looking to solve? And through Azure and Azure Arc-enabled services like storage and data services and combining that with things like the Dell storage, customers are really enabled to just harness the power of all the data that they've got and really start to unlock just a new level of solution and value that they've got out in the real world. It's a really, really exciting collaboration. No, that's huge. I mean, time to value is everything for these organizations, especially, and I think also doing more with less people because we all know the budgets really have been tight in that personnel part. But everybody likes that really ease of cloud, ease of deployment. So what they also like is being able to get the product. And I think Dell recently announced that you're moving to more of a partner-led, go-to-market motion. What does that really mean for customers and for partners when you think about that with the Apex Cloud platform? Our partners are really excited about this. I was just with one of our partners yesterday talking about this new cloud platform, and it's very exciting now that we can talk about it as shipping. And, you know, they're really excited because it takes what they can already offer their customers to the next level. One of our joint partners, both strategic, both to Dell and to Microsoft is Kindrel. And actually with this announcement, they're expanding their solutions to support this new platform and this new family because they already see the demand from customers and they're excited to offer their services portfolio with this offer as well. No, I think I can understand that. And I think it totally makes sense where they're the front line for these customers, helping them with these new workloads and are both partners of both of you. So it totally makes sense. So, you know, as we get to the end of this, you know, where can people find out more information? Caitlin, why don't you kind of give us a little plug for where they can find it? Yeah, absolutely. So easiest thing to do is really to go to dell.com slash Azure or you can of course reach out to your Dell representative or partner representative for more information. And Dean, from the Microsoft side, where can people find out more information about this? Yeah, two places I'd ask folks to take a look. One is we've got a blog post up today on the azure.com blog that discusses the new Premier Solutions category. And then two, I'd ask folks to check out the new HCI catalog where you can learn more about the Dell Apex Cloud Platform Solutions for Azure. Now, that's great. And I want to thank you both, Caitlin and Dean, for sharing this exciting news. It sounds like it's going to be a huge opportunity for your customers and partners alike. Again, thanks for coming on with me to announce this. And, you know, we're really excited to hear more about it in the near future. And with that, I also want to remind you that those resources that you were talking about, there's a tab below called the Resources tab. Funny enough, we've actually updated it with all of that information so you can go right there and it'll take you right to where you need to from a Dell or a Microsoft perspective. We really thank you and look forward to helping you understand how this evolves and how this product set evolves in this market and bring simplicity to customers in the future. Thank you and join us again. Hello and welcome to this Analyst Brief where we're discussing Dell's Apex Cloud Platform and Apex Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure announcements. I'm Dave Vellante and Rob Strecci and I will unpack the market for cloud computing and what the Dell Microsoft announcement means to customers. First, let's take a look at cloud usage and the movement between public and private cloud, which continues, but looking at the data, we're seeing the market is becoming much more balanced. This chart from ETR shows the percent of usage of public clouds relative to private clouds, specifically within the S&P 500. Now that portion of the market represents a very large sector of spending, well over half of IT spent. As generally considered to Bellwether, the data shows that about 43% usage of public cloud today in this sector growing to 55% by January 2026. Now note that that 2026 figure is down from just 10 months ago, implying that the market is reaching a more balanced state, i.e. many workloads are where they belong and the steep momentum to migrate off-prem has stabilized Rob. What do you make of this data? Yeah, I think it really makes a lot of sense and is really not even, would have been counterintuitive 10 months ago, but I think what we see today is that cloud is an operating model, it's not a place. And I think that companies and organizations that we talk to are really taking a hard look at where they place their applications going forward, not just going cloud first or cloud only, they've backed way off of that strategy and it's cloud went right and they're looking at Kolo and a lot of on-prem again, is becoming more in vogue for those cloud native apps. And they can get that agility on-prem that they're so used to in the cloud. Maybe if you need like massive scale and unlimited resources, then you maybe put those in the cloud, but it really is much more of a balanced picture. Absolutely. All right, let's take a look at another set of data. This time we isolated in the global 2000, which is another Bellwether. By 2026, as you can see in that dotted red area, only 11% of global 2000 customers expect to be all in in the public cloud. So nearly 90% of global 2000 customers think they're gonna remain hybrid by the 2026 timeframe. Now, Rob and I recently talked to Shannon Champion, Odell and discussed the Apex Cloud Platform family. Then you Rob spoke with Caitlin Gordon of Dell and Dean Perron of Microsoft about the Apex Cloud Platform from Microsoft Azure. Now, Dell recently announced the Apex Cloud Platform and Apex Cloud Platform from Microsoft Azure. So Rob, what are the relevant customer requirements that people need to know in this space? I think like we've been hearing from organizations, companies are not all in on cloud anymore. There isn't that cloud first. It's again, we're going to be balanced in where we develop especially. And a lot of that's being developed. All of these cloud native apps are being developed on premise. I think what they're looking at it is that they're not necessarily repatriating from cloud, but they're taking a balanced look at where they deploy, how they deploy. And it's more about, can I get the development environment that I really wanted? So if they're, for instance, using Azure, they're looking for the Azure tooling that they're so used to when using Azure. The requirements are again, how do I have that cloud native experience and cloud native build? So they want to be able to have those requirements of getting up to speed really quickly. So how fast can my developers really start developing? Instantly has to be there. So you have to have that native environment to keep the devs happy. Applications are going to be places that cloud native really hasn't been before. We're talking about edge. We're talking about smaller footprints. So it makes sense to be actually developing for those apps in those places or off the cloud. And then there's also a huge part of the puzzle is there's a lack of skills in how you run cloud native. So they're looking for automation and a lot of management and that day two type of operations to help them. And often it's also lack of skills and security. So they're looking for security to be built in from the start. And that's really the key requirements that they're looking at. So we saw from the previous data that the world is kind of reaching this state of equilibrium. It's clearly a hybrid world. How does this announcement address these changing customer requirements? Yeah, I think what Dell and Microsoft and Dell in general with the Apex announcements they've made, they also made announcement around Apex storage for public cloud. They're bringing consistency, a cloud experience across on-premise and across cloud deployed storage requirements. And that brings mobility and it helps them with multi-cloud deployments where you're using the same kit in both places. Second, Apex cloud platform family really helps with that consistency. And especially when you look at Microsoft, Apex cloud for Microsoft Azure, you're getting a consistency if you're using those Azure tooling. It helps you in given that Azure is one of the fastest growing hyperscalers that you've talked about before. I think that operating model and having that Azure operating model on-premise is really helping them. And we're also seeing it in Colo as well. Third, Microsoft has created the solution or their part of this is by bringing certifications and new tiers of certifications. This helps customers understand that these products are really in line with that Azure experience. And in fact, the Dell Apex provided solution is a Microsoft Premier solution for Azure Stack HCI and it's the first one out there. So they have the confidence, those customers have the confidence that this is all gonna work together. And I think that's the important because it gets that skill set, the security and keeps that momentum going. You know, the early instantiations, Rob, of Azure Stack had this vision, but it didn't quite have that sort of common experience that we're now seeing. Well, let's get into the announcements. What specifically did Dell and Microsoft announce and why should customers be interested? Yeah, I think, you know, when I broke this apart and took a look at it, I looked at it and said, okay, what's different? And it's not really a rehashed HCI announcement. It's not your typical HCI. It really is about the operating model. And HCI for the audience is hyper-converged infrastructure. Yes, yes. Software-led infrastructure. Right, and you know, Dell's been a leader in that market for quite some time now. I think when you start to see what they've learned over the years, along with what they've been partnered very deeply with Microsoft and brought to the cloud platform, the Apex Cloud Platform is really taking advantage of those Azure frameworks. So they're being able to integrate with Azure Arc, for instance. And that Arc experience or Azure Arc, which is a management system developed by Microsoft, it's heavily integrated with Dell's management stack. So you get a consistency of getting up and running really quickly, you know, within four hours and underneath that and some instances instantly for bringing up new applications, that really helps. And that Arc service also ties into other Azure services such as AKS, which is Azure Kubernetes service. And it ties in with Azure and Dell data services so you can get virtual machines or containers in the Kubernetes service up and running really quickly. And beyond that, and what's, you know, beyond the typical, it's not the same platform underneath. No matter what you're looking at, they bring a consistency of platform, Dell does, to all of their families. So as they roll out more, and this is the first one, you'll start to see that they have, for instance, their software defined storage layer underneath all of the platforms to give consistency of operations as well. So it starts to blur the lines between the public and private. And this is, we've been looking forward to this day, Rob, for a long time, haven't we? Oh yeah, absolutely. And I think also it helps when the companies are really, I would say well aligned with each other. And to the point where it's a powerful partnership where Dell, Apex, platform users are able to get within four hours actual Microsoft code that has been released.  This is key to being able to be security aware and frontline with security. That's critical because it used to be, you know, patch Tuesday was just an alert to the hackers to go, you know, hacking on Wednesday. And now it's zero day, Tuesday. So the faster that you can compress that time, the shorter you can compress that time, the safer people will be. Rob, thanks so much for unpacking these analysis with me, I really appreciate it. Thank you. All right, and thank you for watching this Analyst Brief. This is Dave Vellante and we'll see you next time.


Can you imagine if I just like went on YouTube and like told people that I was doing 52 paintings and I didn't do 52 paintings? I would be the laughing stock of YouTube. I can't let that happen It's Rebecca from art resin and I'm here with a little update for you. If you recall I had this goal I was gonna paint 52 paintings in 2022. We call that 52 in 22. I have 52 paintings To do in 2022. What's gonna happen if I don't get this goal besides shame? And so far the goal is not going so well, but don't worry I'm not giving up and I just wanted to give you an update. So really what happened is well life happens, right? Like life happens. It's really easy to put other things first But what is the point of a goal? The goal is meant to keep you on track regardless of what life throws at you. So basically we moved and that's a whole lot of Destruction, of course who likes moving nobody, but the good thing about it is that we have a new studio So this is my update check out the studio. We have plenty of paintings We have plenty of empty canvases We have plenty of canvases that are basically half complete almost there And then we have like the stack of art that we haven't hung up around the house This is the stack of Stuff that is ready to be worked on either this that is half done or this that is nothing touched yet and I hope that by the time this video goes live I will have a couple of these things that are just like They're done like for example like like see this. I Want you to edit this together. Okay, Jeff like this right now It's blank, but just like that and what else let's just pick a few. Okay. Oh, I mean like why is this done yet? Why this should be so simple like that like just like I mean if I just like take care of this Then it'll be almost there and then I'll resin it and then it'll look amazing this one This is the I already did this background So this was supposed to be kind of like a landscape, but this is the background and then all I got to do is Everything else But through the magic of editing They thank you for coming on my studio tour And I'm really excited for all the art that I will get to do in this studio that I will share with you And of course I will resin it with our resin the best result on the market and Yeah, stick around because clearly I have a lot of work to do between now and the end of the year But I am gonna do it and if you do one and a half ish paintings every week between now and New Year's Eve Yes, yeah, what if I do more than 52? Hmm so far I'm not doing very well. Thanks for coming in. I'll see you soon


I tried to make this unlike most gaming creepypastas, so I hope there's very few cliches here. This is also my first creepypasta, so please be nice. There was a male, 16-year-old gamer named Zack, who recently became a fan of Mario after playing a couple of Wii-I and Wii U Mario games. He was interested into new Super Mario Bros. U, and waited for the release date to come. When it finally did, he made it to the store called John's Game Castle, and all the kids knew and loved John. Zack was also good friends with him. When John held out the game inside the case, there wasn't anything suspicious or wrong with it.  After this flash screen ended, it faded to black longer for 10 seconds, and within this, the game flashed a realistic picture of Bowser. It made Zack jump a little, but he moved in. There was no intro. It just skipped to the level selection screen. Upon entering World 1-1, there was no HUD. No enemies, no coins, no blocks. Not even music, a side of faint, monstrous deep breathing. It was just Mario with a normal backdrop. There wasn't any changes in the level design. When Mario was halfway done with the level, there was a dark red pipe. Zack made Mario go down the pipe, and it was Bowser's corridor. Fortunately, there was power-ups. When Mario made it to Bowser, he was slightly bigger. He also had a more threatening look on his face, and said, in a deep, terrifying voice, My revenge has finally come. He did his roar, only extremely loud. Zack was very scared by this point, but still moved in and fought Bowser. The Koopa King was also far stronger and way faster. There was no bridge ax or button. The fire flower didn't hurt him. Eventually Mario died, and Zack heard deep laughter. It sounded so clear that it sounded like Bowser was behind him. The game then froze. Zack then restarted the game, and the title screen was different. The backdrop was World 8, and Bowser was in the title screen.  The music sounded like Jadus. Instead of New Super Mario Brothers. Phew, the title said Bowser's vengeance. Zack was very horrified by this point, but continued. World 1-1's title was now called No Escape. Mario looked horrified and broke the fourth wall, begging to get out of this mess. The backdrop was World 8 again, and Jadus' music was playing again. Blocks and coins were rare and there was onslaught of enemies. It was extremely difficult level for Zack. After a while he finally beat the level. The flagpole was color inverted. After Mario slid down the flagpole, there was no castle. Those are then suddenly appeared and broke Mario's neck, with, sorry, mutiver, but, small drips of blood leaking out of the poor plumber's mouth. It wasn't hyperalistic, it was designed like the rest of the game, with bad graphics. Those are then through Mario out of the screen and horrific gory sounds were heard, although not seem. Mario was heard screaming. When it stopped, Bowser looked at Zack, and said, You couldn't win. Then a picture appeared. It was Bowser standing above the mushroom kingdom, except that it was full of fire. Faint screams were heard and Bowser was heard chuckling with a manical smile in his face. The screen then faded to black and it showed game over. Zack was horrified and was about to turn off the Wii U, until the same picture of Bowser after the splash screen appeared, only color inverted, shaking horribly and Bowser's loud roar from the battle was heard, only even louder. It was so violent that the TV screen exploded, with shards flying into Zack's body, one into his heart. It also knocked Zack against the wall. The last thing Zack saw was Bowser's shadow about him. Then he was gone. His family, neighbors and doctors thought that he died from a heart attack. They couldn't see the glass or the glass wounds, they were invisible to them. Zack was then greenated, which his ashes planned to be kept. From the crackling fire it was almost, as if everyone who was there saw a flash of Bowser's shadow and heard demonically deep laughter. The end. I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope I didn't add too many cliches or blood. I had fun making this. And once again, this is my first creepypasta, so please be constructive.


This is Gary Null. He's been described as the nation's leading promoter of dubious treatments for serious disease, or in my term, the granddaddy of all quacks, vying for that title with Kevin Trudeau. There is no craziness he does not subscribe to. A brief listing. He's an HIV-AIDS denialist. He's anti-vaccine. He sleeps two hours a night and advocates reduced sleep cycles. He believes big pharma and doctors are intentionally allowing people to get cancer and other chronic disease. He's in favor of homeopathy, chiropractic, acupuncture, herbalism, Reiki, chelation therapy for autism, and megavitamin therapy for, well, everything. He believes that aging is the result of depleted enzymes and can be stopped and reversed with B-pollen because it's loaded with enzymes. In short, there's little he won't believe in. It occurs to me that he is, and here's a comparison that makes me smile, he is the Kent Hovind of alternative medicine. They both revel in their ignorance and lack of logic and, as I will show, they both play fast and loose with their qualifications. Gary Null on his website claims a PhD in human nutrition and public health science. We'll come back to that, but first he completed an associate degree in business administration at Mountain State College, a junior college in Beckley, West Virginia. Then he completed a BS at Edison State College, a college started in the 1970s in downtown Trenton that offers self-directed and distance learning programs for adults. Then he acquired his PhD at the College Without Walls, which is now called Union Institute. The Union Institute was an experiment between colleges started in the 60s to offer nontraditional studies outside a college campus. The focus is online courses, distance learning, and the students and campuses are located across the country, similar to the University of Phoenix. Now, what surprises me is that Union Institute does not currently offer a PhD program in human nutrition and public health science. They do offer an interdisciplinary degree in humanities. Current examples are ethical and creative leadership, public policy and social change, and humanities and culture. They're accredited for these degrees, but as stated on their website, they do not grant PhDs in the sciences. Stephen Barrett of QuackWatch reports that Gary's doctoral dissertation was on the physiological effects of caffeine. The way the study was done was about as complicated as taking a survey and measuring blood pressure. While this might be an interesting subject for a high school level biology lab, it doesn't constitute serious research and certainly nothing worth submitting as a dissertation. I'm reminded of Hoven's dissertation on creationism. I imagine Gary's dissertation also began. Hello, I'm Gary Knoll. Gary Knoll is also a licensed dietitian. The minimum requirements for this in New York are a two-year degree and experience in some capacity in food or nutrition, as well as passing a multiple choice test on food safety and nutrition. Once licensed, they're allowed to choose balanced menus for school lunches to interview people and advise a healthy diet, but they aren't clinicians. They aren't trained in even the most basic diagnosis of disease or abnormality. Gary Knoll has about as much clinical qualification as the lunch lady at the local high school. What about his prestigious titles? Here's a list of what research and administration positions he claims on his current website. Research Fellow of the Institute of Applied Biology, Nutrition Research Division Director for the National Hypoglycemia Association, Researcher of Agricultural Sciences at the Fertile Earth Farm Project, Director of Nutrition for the Nutrition Institute of America, Founder of the National Health Resources Council. Let's see what strict Google searches turn up on these institutions. The Institute of Applied Biology returns only two kinds of hits of any interest, neither an institutional web page. One is a biography of Emanuel Ravisi, the physician suspended for quackery, and the other is one of Gary Knoll's resumes. Next is the National Hypoglycemia Association. There were some hits, but this is apparently a front for publishing Gary Knoll books. The only address given is a PO box near Gary Knoll's home. The Fertile Earth Farm Project as a strict search has exactly two hits. Both are Gary Knoll's resume. That's got to be nearly a record. Nutrition Institute of America does have a website. Here it is. The other major hits were from Gary Knoll's resume and a donations page on his main website. The National Health Resources Council is perhaps one of the worst. Every hit I found, hundreds of them, was a Gary Knoll resume reference. There is one hit for researcher Knoll, G, in Medline. It is the Medical Uses of Garlic, Fact and Fiction in American Pharmacology, published in 1982. Gary is the second of three authors, and therefore the least important. It doesn't appear to have been cited by any other papers. The only place I can find his published work is Penthouse. Not that I was looking. I don't read it for the articles. Gary is primarily a radio personality with his own show, Natural Living with Gary Knoll. He brags about winning 21 Silver Microphone Awards, which sounds very prestigious. It is, but the award is given for the best local or regional radio commercial. I'm not clear if they're saying his program is a commercial, or if he made a really terrific commercial for his products. He's also written over 70 books on, and this is directly from his website, Nutrition, Self-Empowerment and Public Health Issues, including his most recent, Power Aging. You can conveniently purchase all your supplies directly from Gary. He dispenses advice and makes millions of dollars selling the cure as well. In short, Gary is the Kent Hovind of Alternative Medicine. His resume is riddled with shady honors and misinformation about his qualifications. None of it stands up to scrutiny. He's made no contribution to the field of science, and the only person who was clearly benefiting from his work seems to be Gary Knoll. Recently, Gary has been in the news a lot. It seems he fell ill after eating some of the product that he sells on his websites. The manufacturer, a large industrial vitamin factory, that he trusts to make his product, had put 1,000 times the requested amount of vitamin D3 in the red stuff supplement. Gary was taking the product and became quite ill. He was fatigued, had to cancel his activities and lay in bed, and his feet and hands began cracking and bleeding. He hoped that by, wait for it, that by taking more of the product, that it would make him better. Of course, it didn't work. He was rushed to a real doctor who diagnosed and treated him for kidney damage. He's recovering well. His doctor reports that if he had waited just one more day, he might be dead now. He's currently suing the company that makes the product for him, and a full recall has been issued. Good news, though. For the next month only, the product is available too for the price of one. Get your orders in now. All kidding aside, will Gary come out of this with a different perspective on the megadoses of vitamins that he advocates and profits from? My money is on, no. I don't think he's that smart. Thanks for watching.


You don't need to sign up for people to sign up for people to sign up for people in order to become profitable in forex. All those seminars are all gimmicks. Same thing with signal providers, all of them are jokers. Guys, I know some of you have tried them before and you know what I'm saying is true. Why should I need to sign up for people to sign up for people before I can become a profitable forex trader? It does not work that way. If you want to know how to trade forex the right way, it's so simple. All you need to do is learn what they call price action. And when I talk about price action, there's a method to this and it's not even complex. It's so simple. All you need to do guys is go on higher timeframes, anticipate about 1500 pips into the future and then scale to lower timeframes and trade in that direction. It's so simple. I'll take it again. Go on higher timeframes like Google Maps. You can Google Maps. If you zoom out, you can see where you're going to, right? Simple. So just zoom out by going on a higher time frame and seeing the destination. Once you can see maybe the euro wants to go 1800 pips, then you can come on your lower time frame and trade in that direction. So simple, so easy and so straightforward. Just imagine guys, your ability to risk only 50 pips to make 1000 pips. Yes, this is the kind of opportunities I'm talking about. So guys, if you want to learn how to do this in the most realistic and profitable way possible, I've put together a free training whereby I just show you guys how I trade what I'm talking about for 15 minutes. Only 15 minutes. Click the link below and come and learn guys so that you can stop attending all those seminars, all those things don't work man. Attend this very short free training, listen to what I have to say and if you feel what I have to say doesn't make sense, you're free to go. But I can guarantee you that what I say in that free training will ultimately change your training for the better. Once again guys, my name is Dapo Wallace. I've been training the Forex market for nine years and guys, allow me show you the way in the Forex market. Take it easy and I'll see you guys on the inside. Peace out.


Welcome to the Hindu News Analysis by Shankar IA's Academy for the day 31st of May 2020. The list of news articles taken up for today's analysis along with the page numbers of five different editions is given here for your reference. The handwritten notes in PDF format and the time stamping of all the news articles taken up for today's analysis is available in the description section and also in the comment section in the best interest of the viewers. Let us now begin our analysis. This FAQ article is with reference to reasons for desert locus surge in India this year. So far the outbreaks of the insect attack have been reported from seven states. Now this FAQ article notes that it could become even worse because of three reasons. The first reason is chain of climate events. The second being administrative laxity in several countries that is poor administration and number three the difficult circumstances imposed by COVID-19. So experts have warned of huge crop losses if the swarms are not stopped by June 2020. And if you remember we have seen in detail about locusts in our previous analysis. Today we will mainly focus on the climate link to the desert locust infestation. The syllabus that is relevant to the analysis of this news article is given here for your reference. Coming to the climate link the author of this FAQ article notes that the pattern of warming in the Indian Ocean might be a possible trigger for the overall development of locus swarms. Here the author describes about Indian Ocean Dipole. See Indian Ocean Dipole refers to the difference in sea surface temperatures between two areas. One the tropical western Indian Ocean area and the other being the tropical southeastern Indian Ocean area. The Indian Ocean Dipole mode involves oscillation of the sea surface temperatures between positive and negative phases. Here positive phase means cooling of waters in the eastern Indian Ocean that is the western pole is warmer and the eastern pole is cooler. Now this leads to droughts in Indonesia region but if you see it brings heavy rainfall in India and East Africa. Here the author notes that the positive Indian Ocean Dipole last year has resulted into extended rainfall in several parts of West Asia, Oman, Yemen and in the Horn of Africa. This extended rainfall has facilitated the formation of several locus swarms. Now let us see how rainfall plays a role in the development of desert locus. See for the desert locus there are three favorable conditions for breeding. One the presence of moist sandy soil to depths of 10 to 15 centimeter below the surface. Generally if you see the female will not lay eggs if the soil is not moist at about 5 centimeter to 15 centimeter below the surface. When egg laying the female will often probe the soil by inserting the tip of her abdomen to determine if there is enough moisture. This is because moist soil allows the eggs to absorb sufficient moisture to complete their development. So this is one condition. The second condition is that some bad areas for egg laying is required and the third condition is that green vegetation shall be present for the locus development. It is said that often favorable conditions may exist in desert areas. Now for soil to have moisture rainfall plays a crucial role as well. Also if an outbreak is not controlled then it can evolve into an upsurge. If widespread or unusually heavy rainfall occurs in the adjacent areas. This rainfall can create favorable breeding conditions. This is where the authors points are relevant. Why because since positive Indian Ocean Dipole event is associated with bringing heavy rains to India and East Africa. So the author expresses concerns over this matter. But note that as per the IOD bulletin issued by IMD for May 2020 positive IOD is not observed over Indian Ocean. But if you take last year neutral IOD conditions were observed from Jan 2019 till May 2019. But there was positive IOD over Indian Ocean from June 2019 till the weakening in January 2020. So if such a thing happens this year as well from June month onwards then it will be favorable for local swamps to multiply their numbers. We saw that rainfall is an important parameter for soil moisture so that the locus will lay eggs. Also if you see favorable winds will also help the locus swamps to fly and breed in their traditional grounds in countries such as Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. FAO issues desert locus situation update as per the recent update adults are forming groups and small swamps in their breeding areas in Iran and Pakistan. These infestations will move to their summer breeding areas along India-Pakistan border from Chodistan and Taparka. If not controlled then these swamps will move into India. Now so far within India if you see the movements of desert locus were based on strong westerly winds associated with Cyclone Ampan. So here you can understand that the regional atmospheric weather systems also play a very important role. So right now India spacing, severe locus attack, several successive waves of invasions can be expected in Rajasthan until the month of July and these locus swamps may move eastward across North India as far as Bihar and Odisha. This is expected to be followed by westward movements and return to Rajasthan once the winds associated with the monsoon changes its direction. And know that swamps are less likely to reach South India, Nepal and Bangladesh. So this is all about the discussion of this FAQ article. To summarize we have seen the reasons for desert locus surge in India with main focus on the climate link to the desert locus infestation. Now have a look at this practice question. Let us move on to the next news article. This news article is about the standoff between India and China at the line of actual control. See as we always insist current affairs is a sequence of events. We have been seeing many news articles and editorials related to the standoff between India and China along the line of actual control. This news article tells that the Union Defense Minister who is also a member of the Cabinet Committee on Security as shared his comments on this standoff between India and China for the first time. So in the context of this news article, let us focus on Cabinet Committee on Security from prelims perspective. Before that let us discuss about the Cabinet Committees. See the Cabinet Committees are not mentioned in the Constitution. Under this fact the Government of India Transaction of Business Rules 1961 provide for the establishment of Cabinet Committees. These rules have been framed as per article 77 clause 3 of Indian Constitution. Article 77 deals with the conduct of business of the Government of India. All the executive action of the Government of India shall be taken in the name of the President. So the President shall make the rules for the more convenient transaction of business of the Government of India. So based on this only we have these 1961 transaction of business rules of the Government of India and based on these rules the Cabinet Committees are established. As per these rules there are two types of Cabinet Committees, Standing Cabinet Committees and Ad hoc Cabinet Committees. As the name indicates standing committees are permanent in nature and ad hoc cabinet committees are temporary in nature. The ad hoc committees are constituted from time to time to deal with specific problems and they are disbanded after the task is completed. Know that Cabinet Committees are set up by the Prime Minister according to the exigencies of that particular time and as per the requirement of that particular situation. So if you see the Norman pleasure that is the name of the Cabinet Committees and even the composition of the Cabinet Committees vary from time to time. Usually if you see Cabinet Ministers form a part of this Cabinet Committee but sometimes non-Cabinet Ministers are also members of certain Cabinet Committees. And if you see the Cabinet Committees are mostly headed by the Prime Minister but sometimes other Cabinet Ministers particularly the Home Minister or the Finance Minister also acts as the chairperson of any particular Cabinet Committee. If at all the Prime Minister is a member of any particular Cabinet Committee then he or she invariably presides over that particular Cabinet Committee. So what the Cabinet Committees do? Maybe they not only sort out issues and formulate proposals for the consideration of the Cabinet but they also take decisions but the final authority is with the Cabinet which can review the decisions of the Cabinet Committees. So basically these Cabinet Committees are devised to reduce the workload of the Cabinet and they help in facilitating in-depth examination of the policies of the Government and its effective coordination. So this is in brief about the Cabinet Committees. Now as of 2019 there are 8 Cabinet Committees. The number of the Cabinet Committees vary from time to time. So at present we have 8 Cabinet Committees and these are the list of 8 Cabinet Committees. Out of these 8 the last 2 Cabinet Committee on Investment and Growth and Cabinet Committee on Employment and Skill Development have been newly set up. Now let us see about the Cabinet Committee on Security which is mentioned in this news article. See this Cabinet Committee plays a very important role in the decision making of internal security as well as external security of India. It deals with all defence related issues and issues relating to law and order which forms the internal security of India. And it also deals with matters concerning the foreign affairs on security related issues. Then if you see it also deals with economic and political issues that have a stake on national security. Also if you see this Cabinet Committee reviews the manpower requirements relating to national security and also this Cabinet Committee on Security deals with all matters relating to atomic energy. So remember this as well. Next coming to the composition of this Cabinet Committee on Security. We saw initially that the composition also varies from time to time. At present if you see the Cabinet Committee on Security consists of the Prime Minister, then the Defence Minister, then the Home Minister, then the Finance Minister and finally the Minister of External Affairs. So remember the composition is subject to change. At present they are the members of this Cabinet Committee on Security. So this is in brief about the Cabinet Committees, their functions and also about the Cabinet Committee on Security. Now have a look at this practice question. Let us move on to the next news article. This question is based on this news article which mentions that the German Chancellor Angela Merkel will not attend an in-person G7 summit which is to be held in the United States of America. So from exam perspective try to know about this G7 grouping. See initially a virtual meet was scheduled to be held at the end of June but if you see the United States President Donald Trump suggested that he could hold an in-person summit but this has now been declined by the German Chancellor Angela Merkel. So this is the news in brief. Now let us look about G7. See this group of seven or G7 is an informal block of industrialized countries that include Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. Here also know that the European Union takes part in the G7 summit. It is a unique supranational organization that is it is not a sovereign member state. So the name of this grouping remains group of seven. So it is a non-enuminated member and it does not assume the rotating G7 presidency because if you see the presidency of G7 grouping is rotated amongst only the seven members. They meet annually to discuss issues such as global economic governance, then international security and energy policy. See the initial group of six countries first met in the year 1975 to basically exchange ideas on possible solutions to a global economic crisis. And if you see in the year 1976 Canada joined this grouping and hence this grouping came to be known as G7. Now if you see collectively this G7 grouping represents 40% of the global GDP and 10% of the world's population. And one more fact you need to know with regards to this G7 grouping, Russia belong to this grouping from 1998 till 2014 when the block was known as the group of eight. But if you see Russia was suspended following its annexation of Crimea from the country of Ukraine. So this is all that you need to know about G7 grouping. Now with this information look at this question which of the following countries are part of G7 group Canada, Japan, France, India and Russia. Here know that India is not a part of G7 grouping. So if you are able to eliminate the fourth item which is India you can easily arrive at the answer which is option A, 1, 2 and 3 only. Now let us move on to the next news article. This question is framed with reference to this news article which talks about RTA application on PM Cares Fund. We know that PM Cares Fund stands for Prime Ministers, Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund. See an RTA application was made on this fund that is operating under the ambit of Prime Minister's Office. The RTA application asked to provide the trust deed of the fund and all government orders, notifications and circulars relating to the creation and operation of this PM Cares Fund. Here know that the Prime Minister is the ex-officer, chairperson of this fund and the Union Ministers of Defense, Home Affairs and Finance are ex-officer trustees of this fund and this fund receives both domestic and foreign donations. In this scenario the PMO has refused to give the requested information saying that the fund is not a public authority under the ambit of section 2H of the RTA Act of 2005. So in this context it is important to know about this section from RTA Act of 2005 from problem's perspective. See this section 2H defines the term public authority. So who are public authority? As per this act public authority means any authority or any body or any institution of self-government that is established or constituted by the constitution or under the constitution or by any other law made by the parliament or by any other law made by the state legislature or by notification issued or any order made by the appropriate government. Also the term public authority includes anybody that is owned, controlled by the appropriate government or substantially financed by funds provided by the appropriate government. Then it also includes even the non-government organizations that are substantially financed either directly or indirectly by the funds provided by the appropriate government. Now if you read the preamble of RTA Act it states that the act provides for the right to information for citizens to secure access to information under the control of public authorities in order to promote transparency and accountability in the working of every public authority. So just have an idea about this preamble. Now with respect to this RTA application the matter will now be moved to the first appeal then the second appeal before the Central Information Commission. Most probably this matter will require the adjudication of the Supreme Court if the first or second appellate authorities issue orders to give the information and if PMO does not adhere to such order. So from this analysis try to know the definition of public authority from exam point of view. Now whether this PM CARES fund is a public authority or not is a current affairs. Till before the exam just update yourself because there might be court orders or appellate authority orders where it can declare this PM CARES funds as a public authority or not. As of now it is not a public authority as declared by the Prime Minister's office. Now with this information let us look at this question. Two statements are given and you need to choose those statement or statements which are correct. Look at the first statement it tells that the Right to Information Act of 2005 defines the term public authority. Yes this statement is correct. Section 2H of this Act defines the term public authority. Now look at the second statement it tells that under the Act a non-government organization substantially financed indirectly by funds provided by an appropriate government is not a public authority. This statement is incorrect because we saw any non-government organization that is substantially financed either directly or indirectly by funds that is provided by the appropriate government is also a public authority. So here the correct answer is option A, one one B since you need to choose those statement or statements which are correct and here the second statement is incorrect. Now let us move on to the next news article. Now let us look at this question which is framed based on this news article which tells that the Indian Council of Medical Research has advised the states to conduct zero service to measure the coronavirus exposure among the population using IgG ELISA test. So what is this IgG ELISA test? Let us look at this now. First let us see what do we mean by ELISA? ELISA stands for Enzyme-linked Immunosorbent Acid. See it is a laboratory technique that is used for the detection of antibodies that are produced by the body. See whenever a human gets an infection so immediately antibodies will be developed in the body to fight against the antigens or the foreign substances. So what this ELISA test will do is that it will detect these antibodies. So it will indicate if a person is having some sort of infection or not. Know that ELISA tests are blood based tests and these have high sensitivity and specificity. Here the sensitivity of a test refers to the percentage of results that will correctly find out the presence of infection in a person and specificity refers to the percentage of results that will correctly find out whether a person is infected or not. So this test involves drawing the blood of the person who is to be tested and the sample will be placed in small wells of an ELISA plate and these plates are coated with the antigen or the inactivated form of the virus. Now if the blood contains antibodies it binds to the antigen that is present in the well and after which substrate solution is added to the well. So all this reaction will produce a color change. So if there is a color change it detects that antibodies are present which means some infection is present. If there is no color change there are no antibodies so there is no infection. So this is how ELISA works. So whenever you come across such tests that frequently appear in the news article try to know the simple science behind that particular test. For example in the previous year there was a question on Cas9 protein which is a molecular scissor. So try to know the basic science behind a particular terminology. Now coming back to this ELISA test know that these tests can be done manually or in a semi-automatic or in an automatic way. Now if you look at this news article it mentions that the serous survey that has been advised by ICMR would be conducted using an IgG ELISA kit. And it also tells that scientists at the ICMR National Institute of Virology Pune have developed and validated an indigenous IgG ELISA test for antibody detection for the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Know that this test is also called as COVID-CoV-2 ELISA. As the name indicates it is an IgG ELISA based test. So what is this IgG? It means that this test will be done to detect the immunoglobulin G antibody. See normally the human body produces immunoglobulins. Out of the immunoglobulins immunoglobulin M and immunoglobulin G antibodies fight against a pathogen. If you see the immunoglobulin M antibodies are produced in four to seven days after the pathogens enter the body. Whereas the immunoglobulin G antibodies are produced between 10 to 14 days approximately after the pathogens enter the body. So if the immunoglobulin G antibodies detected, that is if IgG antibodies detected then it can be concluded that the person has been exposed to COVID-19 infection. So this is how this IgG ELISA based test works. And as per this news article this indigenously developed test kit has undergone intense validation in three stages and has found to have high sensitivity and specificity. So this is all that you need to know about IgG ELISA test and the basic science behind ELISA test. But remember this IgG ELISA test is used only for surveillance purpose. It means the authorities can know if a person is having some sort of infection or not. Now if the infected person who has been tested positive using the ELISA test are again tested with RT-PCR tests. Know that RT-PCR stands for reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction. These tests are considered as the standard test for confirming the presence of SARS-CoV-2 virus. And also know that this RT-PCR is a time consuming process and it is a lab based test. And it involves collection of throat swaps and nasal swaps. So it is not a blood based test. So remember this difference between RT-PCR test and the ELISA test. So ELISA test is used only for surveillance purpose. Whereas RT-PCR test is the confirmatory test to know if a person is infected with SARS-CoV-2 virus or not. So this is all about the discussion of this news article. With this information, let us look at this question. It is a three statement question and you need to choose those statements which are incorrect. Now look at the first statement. It tells that IgG ELISA test is not a blood based test. This statement is incorrect because we saw that it is a blood based test. Collection of blood samples is a prerequisite. Now look at the second statement. It tells that this test detects the immunoglobulin G antibody produced by the body to fight against antigen or foreign substances. Yes, this statement is correct. Now if the second statement is correct, you can easily arrive at the answer which is option B1 and 3 only. Which means that the third statement is also an incorrect statement. Know that IgG ELISA test is not regarded as the standard test for confirming the presence of SARS-CoV-2 virus. It is RT-PCR test. So here the correct answer is option B1 and 3 only. This question is based on this news article which talks about World Health Organization. This news article tells that USA has cut its ties with World Health Organization. If you remember few weeks back, the United States stopped its funding to this World Health Organization. So far, US is the biggest contributor of WHO. And we all know that in the past few months, there were multiple accusations on the World Health Organization and its director general for mishandling the COVID-19 pandemic and also their alleged bias towards China. On all these allegations, President Trump has severed the ties of United States with World Health Organization. It means WHO will no longer get funding from United States. Now in this context, what you need to know from problem's perspective is about the World Health Organization. You know that it is a coordinating authority on international health within the United Nations system. Its constitution was adopted in 1946 at International Health Conference. And it came into force on 7th of April 1948. Since then, if you see the World Health Organization has continued to coordinate global health. This date, the day WHO's constitution came into force is being celebrated as World Health Day every year. And know that the headquarters of WHO is at Geneva in Switzerland. The WHO has two important governing bodies. One is the World Health Assembly and the second is the Executive Board. First, let us look at World Health Assembly. It is the decision-making body of World Health Organization. It is attended by delegations from all WHO member states and it focuses on a specific health agenda prepared by the Executive Board. The main functions of the World Health Assembly are to determine the policies of the organization, then to appoint the director general of WHO, then supervise the financial policies of WHO, etc. And the World Health Assembly is held annually at Geneva in Switzerland. Next, coming to the Executive Board, it is a technically qualified team, which works upon the agenda for the World Health Assembly and the resolutions that are to be considered by World Health Assembly. Currently, if you see, India holds the chair of this Executive Board of World Health Organization. So, remember this fact, 22nd of May there was a news that the Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare, Dr. Shwartan has been elected as the chair of this Executive Board. So, from all this, you can infer that India is a member state of this World Health Organization. So, this is in brief about the World Health Organization and the two important governing bodies of this World Health Organization. With this information, let us look at this question. It is a two statement question and you need to choose those statements or statements which are correct. Look at the first statement. It tells that WHO is the coordinating authority on international health within the United Nations system. Yes, this statement is correct. The second statement is also correct. The day the WHO's constitution came into force is celebrated as World Health Day, which is 7th April. So, the correct answer to this question is option C, both one and two. Now, let us move on to the next news article. Now, let us look at this news article, which tells that the Rajya Sabha Secretariat has denied permission for the members of the Standing Committee on Home Affairs to join a meeting of this panel through video conferencing. If you remember during our 26th May, the Hindu News Analysis, we discussed about the events surrounding this news article. Because on that day, the chairperson of this Standing Committee on Home Affairs requested the Rajya Sabha to conduct the meeting through video conferencing. And now in today's news article, the Rajya Sabha Secretariat has denied the permission. In this context, what you need to know is about the parliamentary committees and its types, that is the Standing Committees and the Ad-Doc Committees. Now here, do not confuse these Standing Committees and Ad-Doc Committees. With those Standing and Ad-Doc Committees of the Cabinet Committees, both are different. So, this news article gives you an opportunity to distinguish between the Parliamentary Committees and the Cabinet Committees. So, try to compare the nature of the Parliamentary Committees and the Cabinet Committees in terms of their composition, etc. To know more on Parliamentary Committees, refer to our 26th May, Hindu News Analysis. Now, why the Rajya Sabha Secretariat has denied permission for conducting meetings through video conferencing? Because it would violate the principle of confidentiality. Because the Rajya Sabha Secretariat feels that there is no guarantee that the member of Rajya Sabha would be sitting alone during video conferencing. So, it violates the principle of confidentiality. So, this is in brief about this news article. Now, if you look at this news article, the High Court has questioned the appointment of the State Election Commissioner. The Andhra Pradesh High Court has termed the appointment of Justice V. Kanakaraj as State Election Commissioner of Andhra Pradesh as an objectionable one. This news article tells that the appointment was done merely on the basis of the bio-data given by the retired justice. And the court has advised that the State Government of Andhra Pradesh should take a decision in accordance with the spirit of the Constitution. To know more on this issue, we request the viewers to refer to our yesterday's analysis. We have discussed in detail regarding the appointment of State Election Commissioner and the issue surrounding behind the appointment of the State Election Commissioner of Andhra Pradesh in this regard. Now, let us look at this news article about draft e-commerce policy. This news article tells that the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade will very soon release a draft e-commerce policy in the public domain wherein it will seek the views and comments. Know that India is not having an e-commerce policy as of now. So, this Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade is coming up with a draft e-commerce policy. Now, from this news article, try to have an idea that this department comes under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry and try to know in brief about what can be expected in this e-commerce policy. If you see this news article, there are some points mentioned like the e-commerce policy should lay down a very clear policy on what is data, that is the definition of data and what kind of data the e-commerce companies can use and how the right of privacy of citizens can be protected and how the e-commerce data can be leveraged for other purposes, etc., etc. Now, these are some of the potential points for writing the main answers. So, you are expected to get more news articles and editorials on this draft e-commerce policy in the coming days. In this regard, try to have an idea about the Personal Data Protection Bill of 2019 which was introduced in Lok Sabha in the month of December 2019. See, on the same day, a joint parliamentary committee was constituted to examine the provisions of this Personal Data Protection Bill of 2019. Now, this bill also deals with the definition of data and also related to the right of privacy of citizens in managing their personal data. So, you can expect news articles on both these topics in the coming days. Now, let us move on to the Practice Questions Discussion Session. Look at this prelims question about Indian Ocean Dipole which was asked in 2017. The question is with reference to Indian Ocean Dipole sometimes mentioned in the news while forecasting Indian Monsoon which of the following statements is are correct. Two statements are given and you need to choose those statements which are correct. Here the first statement is incorrect because it tells that IOD phenomenon is characterized by a difference in sea surface temperature between tropical western Indian Ocean and tropical eastern Pacific Ocean. It should have been eastern Indian Ocean. So, it is basically the difference in sea surface temperatures between the tropical western Indian Ocean and the tropical eastern Indian Ocean to be specific the southeastern Indian Ocean as we saw during our analysis. And here the second statement is correct and IOD phenomenon can influence an El Nino's impact on the monsoon. Because a positive IOD leads to a greater monsoonal rainfall and more active monsoon whereas a negative IOD leads to less rainfall. So, the Indian Ocean Dipole can influence El Nino's impact on monsoon. So, here the correct answer is option B2 only. So, whenever you are studying about any geographical phenomenon that is related to Indian monsoons try to know about the features of such geographical phenomena. Now, let us look at this question which is on Cabinet Committee on Security. Two statements are given and you need to choose those statements which are correct. Look at the first statement. It tells that this Cabinet Committee on Security is an ad hoc committee set up recently to deal with the matters on internal and external security. Know that it is a standing committee and not an ad hoc committee. So, here the first statement goes incorrect. And look at the second statement. It tells that it is headed by the Minister of Defense. This statement is also incorrect because during our discussion we saw that in those Cabinet committees where Prime Minister is a member he is the chairperson of those committees. And know that the composition of the Cabinet committees vary from time to time. At present the Cabinet Committee on Security consists of Prime Minister, the Defense Minister, the Home Minister, the Finance Minister and the Minister of External Affairs. So, here the Prime Minister is the chairperson not the Minister of Defense. So, the second statement is also incorrect. Hence, the correct answer to this question is option D neither one nor two. With this we come to the end of the analysis of all the news articles taken up for today's discussion and also the practice questions discussion session. If you like the video, press the like button, comment and share and do subscribe to Shankar IAS Academy YouTube channel for latest videos and updates. Stay focused and motivated friends. Thank you.


This is stock number 10147A. We are here at Summit Automotive in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. You're new and used Jeep headquarters. Today we are checking out this insanely clean 2013 Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo. This vehicle has the award-winning 3.6-liter Pentastar V6 motor. Black forest green. One of my favorite colors is the color on this one. And we shoot all of our videos in 1080p so if you have HD capabilities on your computer tablet or a smartphone device, turn them on right now because it is like you're right here looking at the vehicle with me. And definitely your best way to check out the ride before you see it in person. Factory painted alloy rims. Goodyear Wrangler 245 70R 17 tires with I'd say 90% of the tread left. Very new tires on here. Didn't see any scuffs or scrims, scrapes on that rim. Factory fog lights. The front bumper is absolutely perfect. No dents, dings, scratches or anything like that. Passenger side fender is absolutely perfect as well. And the passenger side rim. No scuffs, no scrapes on that. As you go down this side of the Jeep you can see just how clean the body is, how reflective and mirror like that paint is. We take these HD videos so if you are far away or even if you're close by and just cannot make the trip down you can still see the vehicle, hear the vehicle and have confidence in what you're looking at before you even get here. And I would highly recommend this Jeep from a quality and condition standpoint. You don't find too many 2013's in this nicest shape especially with these miles. Back rims, excellent condition.  One of the reasons this one has mud flaps keeps your body looking good on your vehicle. Mud flaps are always a smart choice. Rear bumper is an excellent shape. It does have a towing package which includes a receiver hitch, 4 pin and 7 pin wiring. The rear gate is an excellent shape. You can really see that metal flake in that dark forest green when it's in the sunlight. Manual raised rear gate back storage area is super clean as well and it does come with a spare tire and jack tools. Those seats do fold down for extra storage and as you go down this side of the Jeep just as clean as that passenger side and for full disclosure this back rim is an excellent shape as well. You can see just how mirror like that paint is enter and go system. Inside the Laredo package gives you the black cloth interior. There are no rips or tears in the seats, side curtain airbags, power driver's seat, lumbar, factory floor mats throughout, power windows, power locks, power mirrors, wood grain trim, auto headlamps and as we hop inside the vehicle you can see this one has 42,431 miles. You get a digital speedometer as well as an outside temperature and compass display. Instrument cluster is extremely clean. It has the leather wrapped steering wheel that's an excellent shape. Cruise controls on the right, information center controls on the left, audio controls on the back of the steering wheel. This one does have AM, FM and serious satellite radio capabilities, auxiliary input, dual climate control and stability control, automatic transmission. This is the Quadra Track 1 system so it's the automatic four-wheel drive system, passenger seat, no rips or tears on that and you can see the headliner is in excellent condition as well. Up here you have your map lights and we'll take a quick look at the back seats and then check out under the hood back seats much more of the same very very clean no rips no tears latch child safety system four-year car seats factory floor mats are out back here and rear air vents these seats do fold down almost completely flat which is nice if you got a haul a bunch of extra stuff we definitely have the room to do so but very very clean inside very clean outside like I said I'd highly recommend this Jeep to anyone I knew under the hood we have the 3.6 liter pentastar v6 motor engine bays very clean runs very smooth this Jeep has been fully safety and inspected by our service shop has a fresh oil and filter change all the fluids have been checked and topped off and this one is 100% ready to go see more pictures of this Jeep or one of our other 450 new and used cars trucks SUVs minivans Wranglers half tons recorder tons one tons you name it we got to go to our website summitauto.com full pictures and descriptions of every single vehicle from two locations all at summitauto.com and if you'd like to check out more HD videos you can go to youtube.com slash summit auto remember to like subscribe and share on this video and all the videos that you see there in fact a second you will see a link to subscribe to our YouTube channel on your left a link to more used inventory videos like this one on right if you have not been to our website on the bottom link to this vehicle on our website click those check us out and we really look forward to help you with this super clean 2013 Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo thanks again