In today's fast-paced business world, organizations are constantly seeking new ways to optimize their IT strategy. Cloud computing, of course, has emerged as a powerful tool for businesses of all sizes, offering on-demand scaling, quick provisioning, and enterprise-class services. However, with the ever-expanding range of cloud providers, many IT operations teams are turning to a multi-cloud approach to meet application and business requirements. While multi-cloud has clear benefits, it also presents unique challenges. For example, according to the Dell Innovation Index, management complexity and siloed experiences are among the top five roadblocks that prevent organizations from fully embracing multi-cloud environments. So before making the leap to multi-cloud, it's important to find a solution that provides greater simplicity and scalability that's required for multi-cloud success. Dell Technologies is attempting to address these challenges with its Dell Apex Navigator for a multi-cloud solution. Now, according to Dell, it's Apex Navigator for multi-cloud, provides centralized management and eases data mobility, provides operational consistency and gives strong performance, while at the same time enabling organizations to achieve their business goals in a multi-cloud environment. So Apex Navigator for multi-cloud is a case strategy for Dell that they're pursuing to really try to unlock the potential of multi-cloud and of course compete more effectively in the market. And they're promising a consistent experience across clouds. Essentially, it's what I call Dell's silo buster strategy. In today's episode, we're going to dive deeper into Dell's new multi-cloud offerings. The CUBE research analyst, Rob Streche, is going to be joined by Allison Langen, who's the director of product marketing for Dell, along with Maggie Kapoor. She's the director of product management for multi-cloud at Dell. But first, I had the opportunity to sit down and talk with Shannon Champion, who was the VP of product marketing to discuss how Dell is addressing customer needs in this evolving and ever-changing multi-cloud world. So thanks for being here. We're going to learn how to elevate your multi-cloud experience and you can decide for yourself what Dell Apex Navigator can do for you and your business. The latest installment of our series where we're discussing Dell's multi-cloud strategy, our research and conversations with customer shows, the disparate nature of operations across multiple clouds creates significant challenges for organizations, securing and deploying apps, data portability, operational silos and other barriers create impediments to implementing a cohesive multi-cloud estate. The complexity brought on by multi-cloud deployments creates frustrating and unproductive experiences for IT pros. And today we're here to talk about some new innovations in Dell's Apex storage for public cloud family that help address these challenges and enable customers to achieve a more facile cross-cloud experience. Something Dell refers to as multi-cloud by design. Back with me in studio is Shannon Champion, Dell's VP of product marketing. Shannon, good to see you again. Always a pleasure. Likewise. All right. So Shannon is what I just said, we're going to look at what's happening with customers. So what are you seeing with customers? Maybe you can start by recapping what customers are telling you with respect to their multi-cloud initiatives, maybe some of the main challenges that you see that they faced with multiple clouds. Yeah, well that was a really great intro and we're hearing a lot of the same. I think the reality is we know that we are in a multi-cloud world and the exponentially growing data and the dispersed nature of that. We know 92% of companies really identify as multi-cloud, meaning they're in two or more public clouds and they're also investing in private cloud infrastructure. And in talking with customers, we're seeing a consistent set of challenges sort of emerge, which is like keeping them from really innovating with multi-cloud and you hit on many of them, but one that kind of rises to the top is the unpredictable cost. We hear from customers that say, you know, it's really hard to forecast my budget requirements and plan when I'm faced with these sporadic unplanned cloud costs. A big one that you hit on is management complexity. So customers are really grappling with like how to get control of their management when you have data spread across so many locations on-prem and in the public cloud. And we're also hearing from them that the cloud inconsistencies are really creating some challenges for them because each different public cloud has different security models. They offer different enterprise-class storage software, feature sets and capabilities. And all of that really exacerbates this skills gap that customers are telling us they're still dealing with, right? Like how do I make sure that my IT staff has the right skill sets and familiarity with the tools in the public clouds that we want to be in? And the last thing I would say that we hear quite a bit is this concept of limited visibility. Customers are just really struggling with getting a holistic view of everywhere their data lives, which is kind of scary and leads to security and compliance challenges. Yeah, I mean the initial allure of, hey, don't have to pay CapEx, great. But then at scale, the percentage that it fluctuates creates problems. So what are you doing to help customers with these challenges? Well, that's where Dell Apex comes in. So Apex was created to deliver multi-cloud by design, a seamless modern cloud and consumption experiences in all locations that bring simplicity, agility and control. And when you think about the Apex strategy, there's really three main elements, right? The first is how do we help our customers go from ground to cloud? And we're doing that by bringing our leading enterprise-class storage software across block file and data protection to the leading public cloud providers. And we call that Apex storage for public cloud. The second part is how we take those cloud ecosystems that our customers are choosing and bring them on-prem with consistency and control. And we're doing that across the common cloud stacks on-prem with our new turnkey Apex cloud platforms. And then the third leg of the stool, if you will, is how we're simplifying those multi-cloud experiences for our customers in a broad set of dedicated IT landscapes across the board with subscription and as-a-service offers. And when you look at that from a storage perspective, all of this together really creates that universal storage layer, this common set of software-defined storage services everywhere. Yeah, so we've been kind of waiting for this day for a while, and so really appreciate that. And we're here to really dig into some of the specific announcements related to what Dell calls this, what Shannon just talked about, ground to cloud strategy. We want to know more. I mean, can you maybe provide a little bit more detail, Apex storage for public cloud, the family, the offering, and really, I'm really interested in how Dell differentiates from all the other noise that's out there. Yeah, so the ground to cloud is delivered through the Apex storage for public cloud family, as you mentioned. So the family really consists of two parts. You have your storage endpoints in the public cloud combined with consistent and centralized management, right? So it's a comprehensive set of storage services across block, file, and data protection, which does set us apart in the comprehensive nature of the broad set of storage supported in the public cloud. All of this creates part of that universal storage layer, which is so important. And then we give customers control, visibility, and management of that universal storage layer via the SAS control plane that gives them operational consistency from on-prem to public cloud, it gives them extreme performance and scalability so that they can confidently run those mission-critical applications and workloads in the cloud that they might not have been able to do before, and all of that comes with improved TCL. We're seeing some major cost savings with these offers, and part of that includes being able to optimize your costs by leveraging pre-committed cloud spend or Dell TLA's. Okay, so, and that's the other thing I mentioned, CAPEX upfront, okay, yeah, it's alluring, but then you get all these other hidden costs, and that's what you're trying to address, but what specific cloud storage offerings are included? Yeah, so it's block, file, and protection storage, so let me just kind of unpack each of them. I'll start with Dell APEX protection storage because that's where Dell started with this game, bringing our enterprise software to the public clouds, and today we are protecting over 18 exabytes of data in the public cloud, and over 1,800 customers are really trusting Dell with their data and protecting that in the public cloud. Also, Dell APEX block storage is really a game changer. This is a highly disruptive technology, and we're really excited to see how it transforms our customers' environments. It's the most scalable cloud block storage, also the most resilient and flexible cloud storage offering. It can offer over 100 times better performance and 87% cost savings versus the native public cloud block storage services. I think what people oftentimes don't appreciate is the cloud storage is pretty basic, right? When S3 came out, it was like a nice, cheap and deep object storage, but companies like yours have had deep, deep stacks for years, experience on recovery, on whether it's the space efficiency of snapshots and the security pieces of it, so the capabilities that you're bringing to the cloud are just they're more mature and they're more substantive from a feature standpoint. Earlier you talked about the universal storage layer. So can you elaborate on that and give us sort of a double click on really what's in there? Yeah, for sure. So earlier I talked about the Dell APEX multi-cloud strategy and the universal storage layer is really how we deliver multi-cloud by design. So to have true multi-cloud capabilities, you need to start with the same storage architecture deployed everywhere, and that is universal. So that's where that word comes from. And that universal storage needs to be modern, it needs to be software defined, it needs to support VMs and containers, and it needs to be architected with standardized open APIs to support that management automation and flexibility. But it's not enough just to have that universal storage everywhere. You also need a consistent cloud ecosystem, right? You need to have the same runtime application environments in the public cloud as you do on-prem. So it's really taking that concept of common software defined storage services combined with that consistent and common cloud ecosystem environment together that we call the universal storage layer. Got it, okay.  What specifically is that all about? What's the offering there? So how do you take the universal storage layer and bring the management control and visibility to it? That's exactly what we're doing with Dell APEX Navigator. It's a SaaS control plane that delivers intelligent, automated management that really orchestrates the seamless workload mobility and improved service levels for our multi-cloud assets. Okay, so what you're building here is you're hiding all the complexity of the underlying clouds, you're making a consistent experience across those clouds, including on-prem. Like I said, this is a day we've been looking forward to for a number of years. We're hearing this more and more from customers that it's problematic, the hidden cost, different skills required. Really appreciate your time here. Any final thoughts you want to leave the audience with? Yeah, I mean, there's lots of good reasons that customers are choosing multi-clouds. Some of them are looking for the best tool for the job and the various public clouds that are offered. Some of them have stringent regulatory guidance that around where their data can be for certain times, periods of time, and some are just looking for more options and flexibility. So regardless of what the reason is, we know multi-cloud is here and with APEX Storage for Public Cloud, including the introduction of APEX Navigator, we're really helping elevate our customers multi-cloud experience and delivering improved TCO. I talked about some of those really compelling numbers. We are bringing them centralized and intuitive management, seamless data mobility, which we're hearing is really important to our customers, operational consistency across on-prem and the public cloud, and then that unparalleled performance that I talked about. So solving, hopefully, many of those challenges that you set us up with here, the one exciting thing that I did want to announce is that we are really excited to get our customers trying out this technology, and so we're offering a no-cost risk-free 90-day evaluation. So there's really no reason that they shouldn't go try it. Yeah, nice freebie, check that out. And this is a great example, as Matt Baker from Dell likes to say, it's not a zero-sum game. The meaning of the cloud is you're building on top of all this wonderful CAPEX that the cloud players have built, you're adding value on top of it, and that's just a win-win, particularly for customers. Thank you, Shannon, really appreciate your time. All right, stick around to hear from Maggie Kapoor, who's the Director of Product Management, and Allison Langen, who directs product marketing from Dell Technologies. They're going to dive deeper into these offerings with our Rob Streche, but first take a look at this cool video. Welcome back to elevate your multi-cloud experience with Dell Technologies on theCUBE. I'm Rob Streche, Managing Analyst with theCUBE Research. We just heard from my colleague Dave Vellante and Shannon Champion from Dell on an overview of APEX Storage for Public Cloud. Today we're going to talk about a new standard in multi-cloud management and operations from Dell. Let me welcome to theCUBE Maggie Kapoor, Director of Product Management for Multi-Cloud and Allison Langen, Director of Product Marketing from Dell Technologies. Welcome both. Thanks for having us here. Well, thank you for being here. I think this is a lot of fun. I think multi-cloud is really the standard. I think cloud operating models are really where it's at, and I think it's more than just a place. It's how you actually go and build it out and operate it. So I think this is a really timely discussion that we're going to have here. So let's kind of really jump into the announcements. Allison, can you share with us what was announced? Sure, so essentially we are delivering, continuing to deliver on the promise we made at Dell Technologies earlier this year, of delivering seamless management and data mobility between on-premises and public cloud, and continuing to extend our best in class storage software into the public cloud. And with that, today I'm excited to share that our first set of management and operations capabilities within the Dell Apex Navigator family are going to be generally available with the announcement of Dell Apex Navigator for multi-cloud. And with this offer, it's essentially going to deliver improved TCO, centralized management, seamless data mobility, operational consistency between on-prem and your public cloud environments, and unparalleled performance. Today specifically, what we're announcing availability of is our Dell Apex Block Storage for AWS that will support Navigator. And we are also going to be delivering our Dell Apex file storage for AWS early next year. No, this is, I think, super exciting stuff. And I think, again, it's really timely in where you can go with this and how you can get cost savings. Because I think everybody's looked at it and been stunned with their bill that they get at the end of the month from one of the big hyperscalers. So, Maggie, why don't you really kind of drill down a little bit further into some of the compelling features that are being announced in the product? Sure. Yeah, so, you know, our goal when we started to engineer and architect our product, we wanted to simply bring a centralized management tools that for our storage customers. That is not just centralized, but also provides a very secure environment for our customers, right? So, really, the key characteristics of the top things that we're bringing to market with this first release, as Allison said, it's Block Storage on AWS. And it revolves around five things. First and foremost, security. I just mentioned that, and I'm going to keep mentioning that because... You have to. Right, it is so important, right? And so we bring in that zero trust framework as we started to architect the product. And really, how do we deliver a secure way of operating in a multi-cloud environment? The second being deployment. As we're bringing our storage endpoints to the cloud, how do we easily automate the deployment process? Not just of our storage endpoint, but also the underlining public cloud infrastructure. And then the third piece, as we move on, is the management aspect of it. How do you manage securely, but also do life-cycle management on your endpoints across the board? And so doing that as a sash portal is what we're bringing. Moving on, after management, it's all about monitoring. So how do you monitor your endpoints once they are deployed in the public cloud? But I do want to call out that it's not just monitoring off your cloud endpoints, but also bringing in that on-prem aspect of it. And finally, the fifth tenant, which is data mobility, which we're super excited to bring to our customers, which is the seamless ability to move data, move workload between on-prem and the public cloud, depending on whether your business needs change or upgrade or your workloads change, right? So those are the key things that we're bringing to market. Yeah, I think it's huge to bring that together. Again, multi-cloud is, I think the standard. We have some research that says it's kind of hidden equilibrium between hyperscalers, meaning in-cloud and on-prem. And they're really, I think this is critical for people to be able to, and especially that last point about the data mobility, and we'll kind of dig in on that in a little bit. But Allison, what are some of the outcomes that customers can expect with this and from this updates? Right, so with Apex Navigator for multi-cloud, we're essentially empowering our customers to be able to unlock a new standard of excellence with multi-cloud management and operations. Through this centralized SaaS-based intuitive experience, customers are gonna be able to get up and running quickly through the self-service Apex console or through APIs. They're gonna be able to optimize workload placement more easily with purposeful data and application mobility. Maggie touched on security. You're gonna be able to reduce risk with secure operations and zero trust adoption.  And so all of this value just builds upon the value of our storage emplaints in the cloud as well, which are essentially bringing enterprise class storage capabilities into a public cloud environment. So things like thin provisioning, data reduction, encryption, you name it, these are enabling customers to power even the most demanding and mission-critical workloads in the public cloud that they weren't necessarily able to do before. Yeah, I think that's part of the key is really about how do you bring these workloads up there? Because there's still a lot of applications that are on-prem that people want to burst up or maybe modernize as they go along, but the data has weight, it has gravity, so being able to do that, let's dive a little deeper because I think it is what it is this year and cost optimization is a big thing. So what type of cost optimizations can and cost savings can organizations expect? So this is a huge value prop for these offerings. We actually completed a recent study where we benchmarked our Apex block storage for public cloud offering with Navigator against native public cloud storage just on its own and to see what the TCO is gonna look like and I'm telling you, the results were astounding. You're not even gonna believe these numbers, but essentially through this study, our Dell solution was able to deliver up to 87% cost savings compared to just a standalone native public cloud storage offering. So what we're allowing to do here, and this highlights what's possible with these offers and what thinking big of what customers can actually realize here is when you pair our offerings with their preferred public cloud provider, we're just elevating that overall public cloud experience for them. Yeah, and I think that's the key is that customers are looking to understand how does that impact themselves? So do you have a customer example that you could share with us around that that really how they saw or how they could see Apex storage for public cloud really help them bring in those savings? Yeah, absolutely. So obviously this study is showing huge, huge numbers, really big savings and even though this is a new family of offerings, we're already seeing real world examples of customers of what they can realize in specific scenarios. So for example, a large financial institution recently completed a four month proof of concept with our Apex block storage for public cloud offering and the results were incredibly compelling. It really checks the box from technical, operational as well as financial. From a technical standpoint, they were able to see a 44% peak latency reduction, 46% improvement in their data transfer speeds, 29% better data reduction. From an operational standpoint, they were able to create a universal storage layer. This concept that Shannon talked about more in the previous segment where creating that consistent common storage between their on-premises and public cloud footprint, they were able to deliver this consistent experience which creates operational simplicity as well as not having to learn new skillsets. So their IT admins are able to leverage like knowledge they already have. And it really also helps with streamlining, like maintenance costs and things like that. So finally we're talking TCO. So financial, that's the big one you're waiting for. They were able to see $14 million worth of savings over a five year TCO and are gonna be cash flow positive by year two. That's insane. Because I think when you start to look at it, I mean, a two year payback is just unheard of, especially with this. And I mean, most people are still trying to get their applications up and running in the cloud at that point in time. But we'd be remiss if we didn't dive in a little bit deeper on the security aspect of it. Security and everything security is top of mind and organizations particularly in cloud and public cloud for that matter are super hyper aware of what's going on with their security and really picking it apart. So Maggie, could you help us understand how does Apex Navigator really help customers with that? Absolutely and you're so right Rob, right? It's not just cloud, public cloud, but multiple public clouds, right? So it's so important to kind of make sure that we build that confidence in our customers. So as we were building the product, we wanted to make sure that when we're building there were two things that were absolutely important for us from a product standpoint. One was to keep security front and center and second, making sure that we're not just bringing the product from a UX perspective to our end customers but also have an API first approach to it, right? So as we were building the security tenants, you know, we wanted to make sure that we give our end customers full control but also confidence in the ability to use a SaaS portal especially because we know they're looking to manage their storage assets and to, you know, data management capabilities using a SaaS portal. So keeping that, you know, data and security in mind was extremely critical to us. The way we did, if you break it down into the Zero Trust framework, you can see that, how do you bring that? And the reality is to really give the end customers the full control over the operations that they're trying to do, right? So controls not just over the users, the roles, the permissions, the groups, certificates and the keys bringing it all in the hands of two users was very important. So if you are an IT ops user who are starting who's starting to use the multi-cloud navigator for your organization, you can then decide which users need to be added to from your organization and what roles do they need to have when they're added to this, right? So really bringing that notion along with also how those companies and organizations can bring their own identity and access management and federate that with Dell's identity, right? Which is so important and I think this was one of the hardest things for us as we were bringing the product to life because you're looking at the functionality that I'm talking about doing that functionality maybe simple enough or it might sound like but doing it with that security-centric thing in mind is extremely important to us. Yeah, I like to say yet not another SSO, not another single sign-on that I have to go and configure, it's federated in, which is I think key when you start to look at, it probably also helps them from a perspective of getting it adopted inside that organization because they don't have to go and standardize on something else. Exactly, you're absolutely right. And then when we talk about operations like data mobility, for instance, once they're in there, you're not asking users to reenter your credentials every single time. You want to probably automate those things using APIs and plugging it in with automation tools like Ansible or Terraform, and the users can just run those scripts for data mobility, for instance, and if it is federated, it just signs on and moves forward. I think that's a great, because I think the integration with those, the Terraforms are open tofu or whatever comes next in there and Ansible and stuff like that is really, I think key because I think that infrastructure as code integration is huge for anything that's going to be in public cloud or have a cloud operating model. And with that, kind of let's take it down a level and kind of look at kind of the workflows such as deployment management and monitoring and kind of give us a flavor for that as well. Absolutely, this is, it's so exciting on things that we're doing. So let's talk about deployment. Our deployment, we're extremely proud to kind of bring this, it's a very complex task of not just deploying enterprise storage in the public cloud. So you're not just deploying your storage, but also the provisioning, the underlining public cloud infrastructure that goes along with it. So our deployment is really a four step, pretty easy four step process. You know, you log into your Apex console, you find your way into the navigator please. Once you're there, you pick your storage type. Today we're talking about block storage, but as Allison mentioned, file is coming pretty quick.  What kind of storage are you looking for a balanced profile or a performance optimized profile, adding the capacity that you'd like to do. And then the other excellent part about our product is that we give an option to do not just single availability zone, but also multiple availability zone. So you get to customize your storage endpoint that you want to deploy in the cloud. Once you select those things, you basically hit deploy, you know, and it's really as simple as that to kind of just do that. And then we take care of all the magic behind the scenes of provisioning the public cloud infrastructure and deploying our software in the cloud. So that's about deployment. Moving on to once it's deployed, you are in, you know, you're ready to kind of manage and monitor your environment. And we talked about single sign-on capability. So once you have deployed and up and running, we actually have the ability to continue to manage your, using your existing storage management tools. And you have single sign-on into that capability. So, you know, we're not replacing our existing element managers. If our storage admins, IT ops folks are used to the tools that have been available, we just make them available in a much more integrated and easy manner for them to kind of go in and do their day-to-day activities. And then for monitoring, we have our tool, Cloud IQ. So it's really powered by the same capabilities of Cloud IQ, but extending it to monitor the license inventory, the health, performance, capacity off your storage end points, not just off your cloud end points, but also your on-prem systems that you may have in your environment from before, for instance, right?  Yeah, so you see the full estate, which is I think critical in being able to understand where should applications live? Where does the data need to be? And I think that to me, and I said to circle back around on this because to me it's one of the biggest pieces to the puzzle for really enabling true cloud operations is really data mobility. And I think what your core value prop that you're providing is, hey, it's all the same and it talks to each other and you have that data mobility. So why don't we kind of go another level down and kind of help us understand what's enabling that? Yeah, so one of, as we talk with our customers, we hear that when they're moving into the public clouds, there are two sets of, some are figuring out which workloads need to move to the public cloud and others are, they all started in the public cloud and probably are realizing that not all workloads belong in there, right? And then now you deal with the egress charges of bringing workloads down. But one of the things, pain points that we hear is, how do you do that in a more seamless manner? And Shannon talked about our universal storage layer, which is so important in bringing a capability like data mobility that we're talking about, right? So it's really using the native replication technology that our products have, leveraging that to have the ability to move your workloads because we do know that there can be a shift in business strategy, for instance, oh, we need to move certain workloads to the cloud or there might be that certain workloads don't belong in the public clouds and you probably need to bring it back to the on-prem world. And so it's really driven on those key pain points of our customers that we're bringing to market.  We're going to actually bring it back down, re-engineer it properly, but you still need to move the data, which is I think one of the biggest pain points that when I talked about the organizations that they have is really how do I do this in a way that my people can understand it in the tooling that they can understand it as well. So why don't we also kind of delve in a little bit, Allison, with some of the use cases that you're seeing from customers and really looking what they're trying to do to implement this type of solution. Right, so there's really I would say four high level strategic use cases that we're seeing customers implement with this family of offerings are APEC-stored for public cloud. So that's the combination of our endpoints across file block data protection as well as our management capabilities with Navigator. And so the first of those would be extending existing on-premises infrastructure to the public cloud. So taking your on-prem footprint and being able to use that same consistent operating model and extend it into the public cloud where it makes sense. We have an example of a customer who has an existing PowerFlex customer who had a significant on-premises data footprint, our storage footprint. And we're looking to move some of that out to the public cloud. And we were able to do that with our APEX block storage for public cloud offering, being able to streamline and make it really easy for them to implement disaster recovery option in the public cloud and free up some of that space on-prem and enable a true hybrid model. As Maggie mentioned, it's not an either or. There's some workloads that make sense on-prem and some in the public cloud and creating that hybrid model with the common storage is a nice seamless way to make that real. The second one is being able to run mission critical workloads in the cloud. So that's something that historically has been a challenge for some enterprises is really getting the performance, the latency that they need and just the lack of enterprise storage capabilities essentially in the cloud to power those demanding workloads. With our storage in the public cloud, they can do that. I've touched on this earlier, but the unparalleled performance, our block storage offering, for example, delivers up to 100 times the performance of native block storage from the public cloud providers by itself. So again, elevating that experience by adding our storage on there. So then, for example, we have a customer healthcare company who when they saw these performance characteristics, they were able to be confident in moving some of their clinical apps and database into the public cloud and know that they can run that. So that's an important one. And then the third is being able to integrate with public cloud services. So obviously one of the benefits or why customers like the public cloud of many reasons is the plethora of data services and application services available. And we are able to make it easier for customers to get their data into the cloud to leverage those and marry them. So that's the third. And then finally, it all comes back to optimizing costs. So I already talked a lot about the TCO. Again, I don't mind saying those numbers. Again, I love them. Up to 87% cost savings they can realize from a TCO perspective, but it's not just that. It's also ways to optimize their costs. So if customers have pre-committed cloud spend with their preferred public cloud provider or they have an existing, their existing Dell customer who has the Dell CLA, they can apply those credits to these offers and help spend down that pre-committed cloud spend. They're streamlining an optimization from that standpoint as well. Yeah, I mean, AWS customers are always looking how did they optimize their EDP and it's the same in Azure with those programs as well. Knowing those programs very well, I think it's very, I think critical for people to be able to understand how to optimize their cloud bill. Because again, staying in that cloud operating model have the same tooling, same navigation, same monitoring and management and optimization. I think that's really key to them.  What's, why don't we start with you? What's next on your to-do list here? Well, you know, really excited about today's announcement, but this is really just the first step, right? We're going to, you know, we have Block on AWS supported with Navigator today. As I mentioned file coming early next year and we're just gonna continue to expand from there to more, you know, supporting more endpoints, more public clouds. We're just gonna continue to grow our ecosystem and as well as new flavors of our management capabilities. So for example, you know, today we're talking about our Navigator for Multicloud, but coming on the heels of that, which we also talked about at Dell Tech World last year, will be our Navigator for Kubernetes. So essentially that's gonna be the next flavor we're looking at there. Absolutely, but from your point, I mean, what do you have on the roadmap there that's coming next, what are you excited about? There's a ton. I talked to my engineering team saying there's no limit to our backlog. But in it, you know, in terms of what capabilities we're gonna build, the capabilities, you know, expand those five that I talked about and add more capabilities to the functionality itself.  We want to know, we know this is new, right? And we do want to build that confidence with our customers. So the ability to go and try it out before having to really commit and buying the product is important. So my thing would be, go check out what we're building. We're super excited about it to bring to market.  Yeah, and to that effect, I think, you know, for where they should go next, we'll put a link to that right in the description here so that they can go and find it very easily and you know, don't have to go searching around. It'll be right there in the description. So I want to thank you both for coming on board today. You know, welcome to theCUBE and being on here. It's been fun. I mean, I know how huge this is and having been at a hyperscalar myself that getting that layer stack right and making it look the same for multi-cloud is huge. It's a lot of effort. So thank you for coming on board. Thanks for having us. Thank you. And thank you all for watching this episode of Apex Storage for Public Cloud on theCUBE, the leader in high tech enterprise analysis and coverage. Thanks very much. Thank you.


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Hi, my name is Leon Roe currency trader and trading coach at trading 180 calm and welcome to this week's supply and demand fundamental and technical Forex and gold analysis if you're new a warm welcome to you and an equally warm welcome to you if you are Returning don't forget to like subscribe and share with your fellow trading colleagues if you find the Information I provide every week of use so I just wanted to also say as well To the people that turned up to the webinar. I hope you found a lot of value in the fundamental analysis webinar that I Did and also as well mark Chapman's, you know market maker footprints of the market maker as well some really really Great value there and should keep you on in good stead and hopefully, you know will improve go some ways to improving You know, you're trading and looking at the market from a totally different perspective as to what is really kind of peddled online anyways let's get into the some some weekly news and Trading economics Zooming in some investors braced for another roller coaster week So a standoff between Russia and Ukraine will dominate again The markets with Moscow changing the atomic rhetoric on a daily basis and the US continuing to give warnings of an impending invasion So again risk off sentiment risk off meaning that there's a lot of fear uncertainty a doubt money tends to float into and out of safe haven assets and away from You know higher yielding assets, I guess so so yeah, you know, again It's it's maybe a bit of more of a difficult week to trade But there will be some sort of resolution at some point and when there is and there's a bit more clarity in the market You know, there's it's going to be I think a lot more opportunity. I tend to Want to prefer to trade, you know risk off. Sorry risk on assets meaning that I'm looking for higher yielding commodity currencies for example and Basically where central banks are looking to, you know, high crates over central banks that are not right So there's a divergence for those of you that attended the webinar So on the data front market services and manufacturing PMIs from the US UK and Germany France Euro area in Japan will be in the spotlight in the US investors with a game We're looking for signs of whether the Federal Reserve would turn more hawkish meaning that they may start to high crates a Bit a bit sooner, right as far as I say a bit sooner, but I guess more than expected So there's that going on potentially this week So let's get into the the the charts and starting off on the dollar index so the dollar index and Looking at the dollar index, which is just a measure of dollar strength Against the major currencies like the euro the yen and the pound Really my bias is to the upside again This is not financial advice or trading advice But my bias is really to the upside and my bias is really driven by again the fundamentals on On the central bank the Fed really top Fed official You know back March lift off as consensus takes shape So what does that you know really mean is that to top Federal Reserve officials back to raising rates, right? Hiking rates is generally seen as appreciative Should appreciate the currency In March to curb the hottest inflation in 40 years and start to shrink their bloated balance sheet in coming months signaling a consensus against more more hawkish action, so The the remarks on Friday by federal Nail, I think that's a pronounced the name her name Brainard of New York Fed President John Williams as well as Chicago Fed Charles Evans showed officials eager to get tightening under way so hiking under way Rising of interest rates without seeking a super sized interest rate hike or a move before the next scheduled meeting so You know that they are on the hiking cycle was really a debate as to how much they want to really hike Right, so that really is the the topic But for me as long as the Fed are hiking rates my bias is really just understanding If prices pull back in the short term that I do want to be a buyer, right? So if prices pull down to this demand zone around here And I get some confluence on obviously some other dollar pairs that dollar yen dollar Swiss For example, and then I'm looking for buy trades on those pairs as well So just use the dollar index Really as as confluence in EC prices come down into a demand zone and prices start to turn up and also prices are in the In a demand zone for example with the dollar yen or the dollar Swiss and you want to be a buyer with a dollar against those pairs I'm not saying that you should But if you do then that just adds, you know, really some confluence so again pretty much nothing You know has changed for me anyway from that perspective if you are looking at getting sure really the best Probably a to look for any kind of short trades In the short term, I guess if prices do really come up to this area here This area of supply and then you may want to look for either, you know taking take profit Targets potentially on obviously your currency pairs because that is obviously been expensive for the dollar Right, and this is seen as a potential bargain at the moment. So highs and lows of ranges are always A prudent to take, you know some some either all total profits or partial profits, right? And a potential profit target. So for me my bias is still long dollar and Let's see what the other pairs are saying. So we're moving on to the dollar yen dollar yen So we've got really on the dollar yen a strength divergence of six. So With that being said six in case you don't know Is is really one of the highest strength divergences that you can have meaning that the dollar the US dollar is ranked strong and the The the yen is at ranked actually weak. There's the highest strength divergence is actually seven and So we've got the dollar yen has ranked as a six. So for me Again buys all the way. So looking for really kind of pullbacks now is a decent Area to look for any kind of long trades. Of course the more prices come down the cheaper, you know That exchange rate But if you do want to look for any kind of long trades right now on an intraday time frame So what you're looking at is higher time frames and looking down You can even take that on obviously the the higher time frame We could look down into a lower time frame and see if there's any You know Entries that you want to look for personally. I think probably a bit lower if prices do come a bit lower I prefer for a lower price for me to look for any kind of a long trades So let's see about that now is okay though now is fine But if prices don't hold there this week and prices do fall a little bit based off of again risk off sentiment Right risk off the Japanese yen will strengthen. Yeah, unfortunately Say unfortunately if you're long dollars, then obviously It for the short term is unfortunate But actually what risk sentiment does or risk of sentiment does is pushes prices down to where, you know You can get in for cheaper, right? Because when risk comes back on then you've got a lot more upside potential So that's the way I look at, you know risk on and risk off So for me just looking at really Buy trades and it's just a case of you know where prices may want to turn around Again, if you do want to get short on this currency pair, then you are really kind of looking I would probably say this area right here To look for any kind of short trace at any pullbacks That would be it but with rush attentions and risk off sentiment potentially Coming into the market. We could see prices come down a little bit and if so again for me I'm still looking at you know buy trades for the medium to long term Moving on to the dollar Swiss and the dollar Swiss We have again really nothing's you know changed as much as much prices have come down to a really nice area And in fact, I did actually want to get long here But I missed my entry as I was actually Having the webinar that on the Thursday night So my entry actually would have been on in this candle here, but by the time I realized in the morning Prices have moved, you know way above where I want it to get long So I'm never you know chasing price if prices do come down a bit more then I will look for potential entry in and around that zone as I am long dollars And I'm sure on the trying to sell the Swiss Frank, but again, just be cautious of Risk off sentiment and when I say be cautious more You know understand that you don't really want to put on your usual position risk size in a risk-off environment if you're trying to get long So if you normally risk for example, I don't know I would never advise anyone risk one percent But if you're you know risking one percent on a trade Maybe you want to go in at zero point five percent, you know on on your trade or zero point, you know two percent Which is really what I recommend zero point one zero point two percent on on on trades Because what was told to me was if you can't handle peanuts, then how are you gonna handle coconuts? So if you can't handle, you know, you're not profitable at larger position sizes But if you can't do it a small position sizes, then you definitely can't do it a bigger position sizes And just from the perspective of if even if you've got you know a large account What you'll find is is that? You know when the larger your account actually the smaller your position size will tend to get there's you know Trying to you know risk one percent on a on a on a you know five six figure account Isn't necessarily the best thing in the world and yeah anyways some traders do some traders don't but personally You know, I wouldn't risk one. I don't risk one percent on trades I'm all risking, you know somewhere around a zero point five zero point four percent on on each trade anyways From that perspective Yeah, for me, I'm long on this currency pair So looking for potential entry in and around here if you do want to get short on this currency pair Because you're buying into some sort of risk-off sentiment Then you're looking at that supply zone in around here for a for a short trade of prices do pull back Ultimately, I do want to get long In the round this zone here, but again, nobody knows where prices will Turn if prices don't turn around here prices could turn around down here, right? Because the cheaper you go the more undervalued you are and more bargain prices So let's see what happens Around here, but again my bias really is too to the upside moving on to the the dollar CAD and the dollar CAD again, you've got two Strong currencies and I've been saying this for for a while and again those of you who attended my webinar would understand that when you get to Central banks that are hiking rates. What should happen? or cutting rates you should get a Guess what's known as a value auction some people would know that as a sideways ranging market, right? So this is it. This is what you're seeing and it's not me saying, you know, it's not me You know saying that it's so this is what's going to happen But this is what's likely to happen and it's playing out in the market So you have to kind of adjust your strategy if you are looking at trading too strong or too weak currencies to appreciating currencies to depreciating currencies and In this case in a straight fight, you've got, you know, two central banks that are looking to hike rates Canada are looking to hike rates. So again, you're getting this value auction where buyers and sellers are in agreement where prices are Between this one to seven or one to eight really 1.28 and then 1.26 maybe, you know, five area But for me, I'm not interested in this pair But if you are then I would probably say again any short trades into that zone or any long trades into that zone Depending on which one you want to be a buyer or a seller of but for me, I'm not interested in that pair at all I'm looking for divergences Moving on to the pound Dollar instead of pound dollar again, you've got two central banks that are looking to Hike rates, you know soon. So again, the analysis really hasn't changed and you're seeing I guess more more of a Sideways moving market a value auction where prices really being accepted within this range So for me again, not really interested in this currency pale though If you're looking for a short trade, I think the best areas to look for a short trade around that one three seven area I just levels been touched several times and the more times the level is touched the weaker It becomes and if you do want to be a buyer, then you're probably looking out I'll just probably say anywhere probably down below Down to this one point three four six area for a for a long trade So that's really where Where we are with the the pound dollar and I guess looking at the pound as well there was actually Where are you now? Sorry the there we go. So we've got 1990s lesson Recession is the price of curbing UK inflation. So What's happening is and it's not just exclusive to the UK It's exclusive everywhere, right is the fact that a living living standards are being squeezed Right because of higher inflation. So UK inflation now running at hottest in three decades The the US inflation is running the hottest of four decades, right? So So it's it's inflation is a problem everywhere but what's also happening is is a horrible mix of a high covering interest rates because In order to combat inflation you need to hike interest rates So with that being said, you know, you've got higher borrowing and lending costs, which you know hurts Households if you've got you know your mortgage or a homeowner You and you've got a mortgage on your home, then you're going to be paying higher prices higher interest rates on your on your mortgage, right? And as well as just paying higher prices on energy costs and everything so central banks Unfortunately are in a very Delicate situation where they don't want to high crates too much because otherwise it actually might you know tip a recession So rising unemployment and the recession have been a have been the price that we have had to pay to get inflation down That price is well worth paying You know, that was it was made May 16th, 1991 when Norman Lamont the finance minister in John Major's conservative a government uttered his famous words as the consumer prices Index of inflation peaked at over 8% Yes, so this is just a historical context now Does that mean, you know the pound is a sell well for me? No, because at the moment the pound the economy is still is Growing right, but if you start to see GDP start to you know stagnate or decrease Then you know, there is an issue there, right? There was a massive issue there, so Let's see for now. I think the pound is still a buy as long as the data supports that narrative and let's see You know going forward what happens with the pound, but I'm you know a buyer of the pound for now So any kind of pullbacks not necessarily on the dollar, but with other currency pairs? Let's see what happens with that Moving on to the euro dollar euro dollar so last week's analysis still on here Let me just get rid of this and really the The I guess from a strong strength divergence Perspective and our fundamental analysis spreadsheet the euro dollar is actually seven that the The pound was actually three In case I didn't mention it But the pound was three which isn't necessarily the best strength divergence in the world But the euro dollar is actually strength divergence of seven which is actually one of the strongest divergences And again, just seeing what's what really happened, you know a couple of what we call so ago where you're getting you know Lower highs and lower lows, right? We've had that strength divergence there prices pulled back to a level pulled back to that level and shorten, right? So From a fundamental perspective, you know, we know which way we should really want to you know Look to trade doesn't mean that it's gonna go down every single day, right? It doesn't doesn't make any sense But if prices do pull back then you're just looking at cheaper prices ready to look for any kind of self-trades now with the euro we've got Some news so ECB officials edge towards a 2022 rate hike to stem inflation. So You know a debate about ending QE a prerequisite for liftoff has begun, of course Because inflation is a problem again not just, you know, in the US or the UK but really around everywhere and policymakers concerned about widening government bond spreads so More European central bank officials are conceding that interest rates will likely need to rise late. Sorry rates Let me read that again. Sorry more European central bank officials are conceding that interest rates We will likely need to rise late this year in the face of a stronger inflation outlook. So again They are late to the party. So although we do have I think the part for the citizens is to the downside I do think the downside is going to be capped I don't think it's going to continue, you know going down to the 110s one one 109s, etc Because the rumor now has started that they may want to start to strengthen their currency So with that being said You know, I do think the downside is potentially capped but I also think that the dollar is is well ahead when it comes to You know strengthening their currencies So we could get a pullback into the 115s even into the 116s But for me, I'm still looking at short trades at supply, you know I'm only looking at one direction. I'm looking to buy the euro against the dollar Although I am looking to buy the euro against some other currencies and weaker currencies. So From that perspective, yeah, it's just really kind of pullbacks if prices do decide to know make lower lows Then you're looking at again a pullback to this area here, which would be a supply zone And then you're looking at, you know, just some short trades there, right? If that's your bias if you want to be a buyer with a dollar and a seller of the euro, but also as well Concerning the euro is that economists are wondering is the ECB about to make a policy error, right? So the policy error the euro zone watches see undershoot of 2% goal in the next two years So some one of misstep others doubt a hike will materialize. So although there are rumors of a potential hike economists are a Bit skeptical of that. Yeah, especially if if if hiking rates is Unnecessary if inflation may naturally come back to their 2% target then, you know Hiking rates may have been a policy error or a policy misstep, but let's see, you know, what happens Like I said, I'm an I'm a seller with the euro in some cases, but against others other currencies I am actually a buyer. So let's again see what happens then in the euro dollar case I am actually a buyer of the of the dollar over the euro moving on to the Australian dollar U.S. Dollar and the Aussie dollar U.S. Dollar. I'm not really again a buyer or a seller of this currency pair not really trading this currency pair The Australian dollar I think is a buy just not against the U.S. Dollar And I think when they start to hike rates, I think pricey prices do pull back to this area here I think that might be actually a decent buy So let's see what happens there But I think again the power for this resistance should be in the short term anyway to the downside So yeah, that's pretty much it really not much to kind of discuss Around there, especially maybe in a risk-off environment in a risk-off environment The the U.S. Dollar does strengthen more than the Australian dollar The Australian dollar as a commodity currency, you know, isn't doesn't strengthen in a risk-off environment Although it is benefiting from higher commodity prices due to you know, I guess scarcity in and supply chain problems Moving on to gold finally gold gold going higher and higher right gold is broken out of this of this area here And it's really again due to more risk-off sentiment and pretty inflation worries right lots of inflation worries in The market right all around the world and gold is a hedge against inflation So when you have, you know risk-off sentiment as well as rising inflation that should you know That shouldn't I use the word should and typically usually does appreciate gold So this is what you're seeing Right now with with the price of gold going higher. So if you are, you know taking that trade idea Any pullbacks into a demand zone are you know by opportunities in that in fact that should really be Supply so so from that From that angle from that trade idea. I think this is actually a really nice buying opportunity On gold any kind of pullbacks into a nice demand zone You can probably look at the top of this area as well because you do have some horizontal horizontal Support or resistance should turn to what support but I probably prefer That area there. I think prices could maybe come down to that 1851 but again, you'd have to have the perfect mix. I guess of risk off as well as Rising inflation. Yeah, if you if risk starts to come back on Then it's it's a bit more of a difficult one to trade gold But once you start to have you know the tensions in in in the ukraine and russia start to ramp up lots of uncertainty As you've seen Then that's really what adds is a catalyst You know for gold if you are looking to short gold for whatever reason Then now I think is a decent point Decent time. We've also got a bit of an area up here, but that area I think has been touched a couple of times Let's go back a little bit. Yeah So really I think the range is more to do with the absolute all-time higher, which was 2000 And 75 dollars That's really where the range is at the moment. So So if you think prices will start to continue going higher, then that is really Where you're looking at, you know trend trading and just looking for pullbacks to kind of ride it up to You know the all-time high potentially so again inflation keeps if your inflation keeps rising the Risk remains often gold should be a buy anyways guys. That's it for this week Hope you enjoyed the analysis and until the next video. Take care


With a low MCAT score, he was debating not applying. What's up, YouTube? Today we're going to do one of my favorite type of videos, which is to talk with students directly, the ones who I've worked with so they can speak directly to you on their experience. I'm Dr. Josie. If you're new, this is right, your acceptance. I work with pre-med and pre-dental students on how to elevate their writing, be clear on how to translate their values and experiences so they stand out for the application. So let's get started. Let's hear from Ali. He's going to share his stats, a little glimpse of his application and his journey. Thank you, Ali. This is Ali, by the way. Hello, hello. Thank you so much for meeting me today and sharing your journey so far. Thank you so much. No, no, really, I know how busy you are. So to kind of give your time is much appreciated. So you just updated me. Give us your kind of current where you are right now. So this is my first year of applying to med school. This is my first cycle. And I applied to pretty much all of the O schools. And so far, it's not even the month of December of 2023 yet. And I've received seven interviews and four acceptances as of now. And it's kind of the unique situation because before I even applied, I didn't really think I was competitive enough when it came to stats or extracurriculars or anything like that. But being a part of this program, being part of this journey, it really has given me an ability to flesh out my application and be as competitive as possible and have these numerous acceptances. And I really can't thank you enough for this journey and everything. So a leading question, but how do you feel now versus how you felt before you started applying? Well, when I first started applying, I didn't think I was good enough to become a doctor, to be honest with you. I was a little bit hesitant. I was a little bit worried. And I was even, currently I'm in my gap year. So even though I've been accepted to medical school, it's still the, you know, the cycle is like a marathon and it's not over yet. And along the way, I was taking even more classes, science classes and fleshing out my application even more just in case if I had to reapply because we see a lot of people who don't get in the first cycle, who have to reapply. And I didn't think, I don't know, I had this sort of anxious mindset that, oh my God, maybe not this year, maybe some other time. But even though I've made areas of improvement along the way, I think truly what shined the most was actually expressing my desire and passion of wanting to become a physician. And while I was anxious in the beginning, I truly moved on from that. And I'm in a much better place today than I was when I started. Amazing. And so what advice would you give pre-med students kind of about to start this process, this cycle? Well, one thing I would definitely say is try to gain the most meaningful interactions as best as possible because, you know, I graduated from the University of Michigan and I think the pre-med atmosphere, it's not just University of Michigan certainly, but most schools in general, when it comes to the pre-med is that we sort of tend to compartmentalize and isolate ourselves and just solely focus on our grades or our MCAT scores. But in reality, the interactions that we can garner from our peers, our classmates, our professors and our clinical experiences and interactions, they truly shape who we are as applicants and as pre-med students. And those interactions that I've had early on, I'm so grateful. And I truly attribute those interactions the most compared to just my academics and stats to begin with. So that's the reason why always cherish the precious moments you have with other people because it truly can shape your experience to becoming a quote unquote competitive applicant or, you know, a future physician. And so this is kind of totally off the cuff, but how did you know what experiences you wanted to kind of seek out for clinical for volunteering? How did you know? It was really shaped by my curiosity being a first-gen. It was not something that I came into college right away knowing what I wanted to do. I truly had to discuss with other people, pre-med advisors, other peers of mine who are successful applicants and, you know, just my professors and other people surrounding me because I am not that kind of person to just say I know what to do because in reality, I think, I don't think any of us are perfect in this life. We always have to find a way to seek guidance and seek some mentorship. And along that way, when I first started pre-med, I was like, what will make me look like a great applicant? What do I have to do to get into medical school? That mindset shifted. What do I want to do? What do I want to do to be as spontaneous and outgoing and actually enjoying and learning this process rather than saying what will make me look like a good applicant? That mindset completely evaporated, I guess you can say from my first year pre-med to my fourth year undergrad. And it's funny, it's ironic, right? That when you kind of let yourself, kind of liberate yourself from those kind of mental shackles is when you will mostly like impress because you are really kind of being guided through your passions and kind of commitment and genuine curiosity and giving yourself that space for discovery and what you kind of really find interesting is kind of then what translates better. Exactly. And, you know, unfortunately the interactions that we may have with some of our peers closest to us as pre-med may not be the best interactions possible. I've learned that the hard way. But don't let other people define your marathon, you know, as a pre-med marathon. Let yourself, I'll be honest, I was not any better than other people. I'm not perfect by any means necessarily when it comes to academics or when it came to MCAT or any other clinical experiences. But I ran my own race. I did what I truly was passionate about and that's what matters at the end of the day. I love that. I love that. So I've had the privilege of working with you basically the entire way, right? We've done the PSRX, my program, which is more than the personal statement. You go from personal statement all the way to interview prep. How was your experience working together? And I know I'm in the, so like you got to tell me the truth. It was phenomenal because the thing about it was that I knew that I was the first person in my family to ever want to pursue this career in medicine. My mom actually happens to be a doctor but her experience is much different than I am. My mom, she went to medical school in Iran where my family is from. And it's much different as what we have to go through, you know? After high school, she takes a sort of like an MCAT or SAT and then right after high school, you go to medical school. And that's not the experience that you have here. You know, it's much different. And I was like, I'm the first person in my family to ever, you know, seek this journey. I don't really have that much guidance and tools and resources. I had great books, you know, from either Dr. Ryan Gray and I had great mentors and advisors along the way but they're not the ones to necessarily find a way to flesh out the application as best as possible because their times are limited, certainly. So, you know, to have you as my mentor, to have you as my guide for when it came to not just the personal statement, but the secondaries, the activities and all these other components when it came to the application. I knew that you had great background and you've helped so many applicants along the way that I wanted to be a part of it. And I was so grateful that I invested. I was a part of it. And I mean, it's been such a joy, right? And we continue, we continue to chat about interviews. We're still kind of in the throes of it. I do record these videos like really early just because I start to get busy. And then I kind of like, you know, then I forget them. But yeah, it's the multi-month, like we really get to know each other. We really get to know your process and your why medicine. So it's been, yeah, I mean, thank you so much for working with me. And it's been such a privilege to get to know you and to get to know just kind of a glimpse of the beginning of your career. So, so it's been great. Are we ready for the application? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, okay. So really quick, if you are watching this and you're starting to think about you're writing your personal statement, starting to feel kind of that, you know, overwhelmed that lays ahead, definitely schedule your free call to chat with me to learn more about how I worked with Ali and how I worked with so many other students on this process. The link is in the description. All right, so let's go through your stats first. Talk us through kind of like your MKAD GPA, major, all that good stuff. Absolutely, so I had a good background before I came to college and when I was in high school and when I came to college, I still kept that mindset but I also found ways to interact with people who were successful within the college setting. So I attended tutoring sessions for, you know, difficult courses like organic chemistry and biology and physics and whatnot because I was like, I'm the first person in my family to do this and I really needed that mentorship. And you know, I'm not perfect by any means. I did not have a 4.0 GPA and I was all A's. No, I had some A's and B's along the way but overall it fleshed out to be a 3.86 cumulative GPA and a overall 3.74 science GPA but one of the biggest deficiencies for me, I think stats-wise was my MKAD score. My MKAD, you know, I came from a household where we were speaking Farsi, the Persian language and I would attend public school in here in the United States and we would speak and I would have to speak English and that dual perspective, that dual cultural perspective definitely gave me a little bit of difficulty when it came to the English component, the car section. And when I was studying for the MKAD, I was reading something where if the car section is the weakest section, it really does affect your other sections because all those other sections, they're passage-based and you really need to analyze and dissect every paragraph, every sentence that you read and I struggled. I'll be honest, I struggled. My first MKAD score was not good at all, 495. And the second time I took it, I came in with a different mindset approach. I tried my best to approach cars as possible, although cars was not my biggest improvement but luckily that I overcame from 495 to 500. And like I said, they're not competitive at all. I think that MKAD by itself, a lot of pre-men's, if they were in my shoes, they would just drop the whole career completely. They wouldn't want to do it anymore. They would have low confidence, low self-esteem. And I definitely struggled, I think initially, when I had that, I was like, oh my God, my chances of becoming a doctor, they're over, it's over. But I decided to run my own race. I did not just base it off of my emotions. I base it off of my gut. And I was like, my gut says that this is your chance to become a doctor, let's work on it. And I'm glad I did that. I'm glad I did not look at just the MKAD, look at my stats itself. I looked at everything else. It makes the other pieces of your application that much more important. It makes telling your story and really fine-tuning that message, clear, compelling, but also really translating your values as to who you are beyond medicine, who you are as a person, so much more important.  You knew that was gonna be a red flag that you wanted to kind of remedy and really kind of talk through so that the AdComs knew who you were beyond the numbers. I don't really wanna do that, even for students who have very high GPA and MCATs. Like you really wanna tell your story because that's where they care about you. That's where they get to know you. That's where they care. Yeah, yeah, because at the end of the day, the patients are not gonna just basically assess you based on your knowledge.  And I've actually had that experience firsthand when I was shadowing physicians and even seeing how my mom handled patients as a physician herself, that at the end of the day, you're not defined based on your numbers. You're defined actually based on your actions, based on what you value, what you truly wanna bring to the table. And I didn't let that define who I was, the MCAT or anything like that. It's more than that. Yeah, I love that, absolutely. And it's so important to have other kind of students like hear that, right? It's so important to have other students hear this because it's not, I don't wanna give false hope. Not everyone with a 500 will get in, absolutely. I mean, it is an uphill climb, but you do wanna make sure that everything else is as strong as possible. And that's where your story kind of is super key because then you get the inverse too. You get students with very high MCAT scores who don't get interviews. And then you wonder why? You wonder what they kind of did it, what they missed or what you kind of don't get from your application that's qualitative and it kind of, it's like values driven and personal. So yeah, no, awesome. And kudos to you for putting on those blinders and just kind of running your own race, right? Like silencing that external noise, taking in mentorship and taking in guidance, but silencing kind of the, you know, negative fear driven kind of discussion. Exactly, yeah. Cause they make it, I'm telling you what, sometimes peers, they'll make it out to be like it's the end of the world. And it's not really the end of the world. The beauty of this, I guess you could say country almost is that there's so much resources to pursue your path into medicine and don't let a single thing define you, let everything holistically define you. And that is what I'm so grateful for.  Absolutely, no, awesome, awesome. So let's go through your activity section a little bit. I am of the mind and not everyone kind of, not every professional colleague in this space kind of agrees, which is okay in my opinion. I'm of the mind that you can do kind of very strategic anecdote, description, kind of sensory driven language sometimes in your activity section, like that it shouldn't only be very dry resume language, right? You want to kind of engage, you want to shift in voice and change kind of the perspective a little bit. Any favorite activity section that you kind of have that we can read through? Well, yeah, certainly. The thing about activity section was I almost initially approached it like it's just a basic job description of like, what was my role? What did I do? And that's so cookie cutter if you think about it because all of us have that same role. If we are doing, if we are all hospice volunteers, let's say, all of us are gonna go into people's homes or nursing homes and see patients. But what we gained out of that experience is what matters so much. That's what truly defines our journey as a pre-med because those interactions that you had were so meaningful. And that is what you take in as what you swallow and that's what you say. This is big green flag for why I want to become a physician. And hospice volunteering is like my, it's the activity that truly has defined who I am as a person, not even just as an applicant, just as a person because you are put in that scenario or put in that situation where you see people who are dealing with terminal illness and you see not just how their lives are being affected but their families' lives are being affected as well. And obviously I'm not a physician so I can't cure their ailments. I can't do anything out of that ordinary. But what I could do is just offer social and emotional support and just listen to them. And that's who I am as a person. I just like to listen. I like to take in and hear what people have to say and to sit there amongst not just patients but their families and hear their stories, their journey of like how their family even started where they were from, where they grew up. And all that truly was an eye-opening thing because I am first gen. If you ask my parents like historical figures or historical things in this country, they don't know. Yeah, I am learning history basically through them. They had such a unique journey, such a unique lifestyle. And I was so thankful that I got to hear from them, learn from them. That itself was a journey. And I don't only attribute that to helping my application, I truly attribute it to helping me as a person. And I love that, right? Like if you are really intentional about the experiences that you kind of seek, you are shaping not only your medical kind of candidacy and application, but you're shaping your values.  And they should be kind of not everything, right? Is going to change you kind of transform you into like a different person. But there should be these core kind of value-driven experiences that you do that really make you reflective as to kind of who you are and who you wanna be. Yeah, so let's see where that is. Okay, so this is page 11 of the application. Although I had assumed the hospice took place within healthcare settings, I quickly realized that these resources are not accessible to all. Though I was not responsible for easing the physical burdens of patients, the intimate role of listening and interacting with patients immersed me into the perspective of individuals receiving care. Mary, having been confined to in her home, shared the heartbreak of losing family members, but also the happy moments she treasured. I commit to finding the time to get to know patients beyond their diagnoses and treatments. So I really liked the way that you kind of wrote this experience because it accomplishes three things, right? So it kind of gives a realization that you had at the beginning kind of, it shows that you've really learned the context of hospice and kind of like the cross-currents, political and kind of economic cross-currents right now. Very, very brief, but that those two lines are very loaded, right? I love that you bring in Mary because you have that kind of patient-centric. And it's, when I see an anecdote, sometimes students are like, oh, but I only have 600, I only have 700 characters. That's just a sentence, right? Yeah, yeah. A sentence and a half, but it anchors this image and it anchors a patient in front of you in a way that just brings this humanistic level to the experience, which is what you want to accomplish with this one. Exactly, exactly. And here's the one thing about Ecoma's application specifically. It's so difficult to flesh out your activities because they don't offer that much opportunity to delve deep into your activities, certainly about the bulk of your experience and all that stuff. By working with you, I was able to do that because I've looked at those brief interactions that I've had, whether it be patients such as Mary. And I tried my best to say, this is what I've gained so far. This is what has led me to this value-driven identity and passion. And that's what I hope to bring to the table in the foreseeable future. And I wish Ecoma's could have fleshed out more and even AirCast certainly, they have that meaningful experience. We always want more. Yeah, we always want more, but it really helped transform everything, just working with you when it came to the activities.  Like we went back and forth a few times. This is not where it's getting there, but it's not there yet. And it's, you want that kind of conversation that meta analysis of your writing to really feel one, like you're not so isolated in this process, right? A lot of times students will know what's wrong, quote unquote, wrong with their essay or with their activity section, but they don't know how to do what they need to do to bridge that and improve it. So it's kind of like that back and forth that's super important. So let's go to page 12. It's not always stories, right? We don't always want to kind of bring in narrative. I like this page in particular because you have two activities. One is, oh, as a lifeguard. So you do start with a story. One afternoon, a child slipped on the pool deck and landed arm for sustaining a bleeding injury in an instant, I blew the whistle. So we see the child, we hear the whistle. It's a very sensory driven, but then right after it, you have the research assistant position, right? And that's more telling phrases. So it really is learning the strategy to know where you want to tell a story and bring in the reader and where you want to kind of explain what you did, how you made an impact and kind of more academic resume type language, right? Exactly, exactly. So let's see. I collaborated with sociology undergraduates conducting literature reviews regarding nursing home care within the United States. Love the fact. You had very intentional experiences where it's like your hospice care then went into research about home care. So like you really deepened in different avenues of inquiry. Which really shows intentionality. Go ahead. The one thing that sociology experience that I had as a research assistant for one year during my sophomore year actually was the guiding light to my experience as a hospice volunteer because we did learn about the systemic issues when it came to certainly not everybody being able to necessarily afford quality nursing home care for their elderly family members or just any facility care to begin with for their family members. And that experience truly shaped my exploration of wanting to learn about hospice care because without that research assistant position that I had, then I was like, oh, I wouldn't have known about hospice. I wouldn't have known about that. And then that truly helped transition that moment. So everything truly happened for a reason. That's what I say. And that's why that free med journey, it was not something I walked into knowing what I was gonna do. I really had to learn. I really had to grasp different information from others. And yeah, I'm glad that I talked about that research assistant position the way I did to help garner that idea and that understanding of hospice. And so walk us through your decision to pursue sociology as your major versus like biology or neuro or something. Yeah. So when I came into college initially, I didn't really have an idea of necessarily what I wanted to major in, but I knew that I wanted to major in something that was absolutely meaningful to me and also help give me an idea and passion and understanding of people. The one thing, I'm not saying I don't like sciences, I certainly do like sciences, but the one thing about sciences is that they're great to learn about the mechanisms that fluctuate our bodies and important factors and important facets of our life. But it really didn't just speak to me of wanting to actually get to know people. I'm a people person. I like to get to know different places, different communities. And I think it has something to do with my curiosity of being first gen. And when I took my first sociology class, my second semester freshman year, I was absolutely floored by the struggles at certain groups of individual space, whether it be in this country or around the world when it comes to systemic issues, whether it be pay within the workplace, how individuals survive working on minimum wage and how it actually has led to health inequities where they would be deficient in vitamins or essentials that us, the people who come from privilege, we take for granted, we were grateful for it, but others, they deal with that struggle. And I was like, wow, this was truly my calling. It was not my intention initially, but it was my calling. And I was like, if I'm gonna be here within the four years, I have to do something that I'm truly passionate and interested about while also being pre-med, which is to take all those rigorous science classes and that's where sociology came into my life. And I'm so grateful that I did that because it's always been that topic of every interview I've had of like, oh, your sociology made you. Tell us why you chose sociology. And I never thought that was gonna happen. I was like, oh, sociology was just for me. But then they asked me like, oh, you chose sociology instead of biology. Tell us why. It was cool. It was interesting. And I was really grateful that I did do that. Yeah, and it's funny, right? Like to fast forward to the interview, I mean, we've practiced a bunch of times. We've had mocks. We've kind of gone back and forth on content, on how to kind of like use what you have in your personal statement and secondaries to kind of mirror that, but in an oral delivery that's different, right? Strategic in a different way. And I do have, I mean, we have so much to talk about when it comes to like interview. And I'll kind of link a couple videos here on how me about yourself because we don't talk about really your major in your tell me about yourself when we're practicing your interview, but you never know what's gonna land. So it's always about making that connection. You wanna make a connection and really kind of foster that interest in who you are. So they root for you on the page in the primary and secondary application, you wanna make that connection when like you're interviewing, right? And sociology peaks. So, I mean, where are you right now? Like seven interview invites when you've done six and that's basically a fan favorite question. Yeah, out of all the interviews that I've got, the first thing they ask is like, oh, we noticed your sociology, tell us why. And they kind of bypassed a little bit of like, tell me about yourself and returning to pre-medicine or medicine and all that stuff. They completely ignored that and then just looked at sociology. And then eventually they built off of that about like, oh, why did you pursue osteopathic medicine or why did you pursue medicine in general? So I'm really grateful that I did do that. I chose sociology as my major. But like I said, everybody's experience is different. And if you truly are passionate, whether it be within the sciences or in the humanities or in social sciences, like I was, do that, but enjoy it, absolutely enjoy it.  No, no, no, do it because what do you want to do for yourself? What do you want to learn? And like I said, I'm a people person. So I have to learn about people. I can't, I couldn't see myself just sitting there and doing a lab and doing like the experiments or anything like that. I would do them for a class but I don't think I would ever enjoy and see myself within the four years of doing that. But everybody's taste is different. So definitely choose something. Okay, so let's kind of fast forward on your application to the personal statement. Thank you again. Allie's gonna be gracious enough to lend me his entire personal statement. So in the next video, so like in next week's video, I will break down his entire essay and you'll see every kind of like, you know, line and how we built it and how kind of like he goes from one point to the next. But any section in particular that you want to kind of focus on today or that gave you trouble or that you love? Well, one section that truly stood out to me was a third paragraph because I really had a difficult time starting with came to the planting the seed about my family lies experience with healthcare in that setting where my father, you know gravely fell ill when it came to H. Pylori. That was my seed. And I knew that my parents journey from Iran to here that truly shaped, you know a lot of what is my culture upbringing in my background but certainly the third paragraph about actually, you know, fleshing out what did I learn from my clinical experience interactions that was so difficult because I recall you and I we've talked many times about how that was a challenge because I felt like I was writing a giant list of what I was doing and just the activities of like oh hospice has helped me do this and hospice has helped me do that but it didn't really show any meaning to it until I brought in an actual story that I was able to journal and write down from that interaction that I had with the patient named Jane who, you know, she had such a remarkable journey from you know, she lived for till 101 years old at the time I met her and her journey was just fantastic, you know growing up from Jim Crow segregation in Mississippi till eventually living her remainder of her life in Detroit and I was so humbled by that opportunity that I actually had to gain interaction not just with her but with her family and what I could, you know, do in the foreseeable future as a future physician of wanting to listen to people and hear from them and also guide them through not just only their health outcomes but certainly their whole lifestyle and, you know, I built off of that and it was really hard at first because that third paragraph and leading on if initially when I was doing my draft I felt like it was a giant box giant activities checklist but you don't want to make it like that you actually want to flesh out what did you gain from this insight? What did you learn from it to apply in the foreseeable future as a physician? Yeah, I love that. I love the way you explain it because it truly is a balance and kind of between what you kind of want to explain and what you want to show, right? And it's the showing versus telling and it's something that it's very easy for me to say oh, show, don't tell but really it's a dance and so a lot of times students will fall in two buckets especially early on in the earlier drafts you'll have a student who naturally is kind of a more flowery writer they'll write a beautiful paragraph that's an entire story but then they won't evaluate that experience they won't express what were the takeaways? How did this impact me? How did this advance my why medicine? And then the flip side will have almost no story but we'll have only those telling examples Hospice changed my life Hospice transformed my outlook on that side manner like you'll have like that box, right? Like you're saying like that activity section kind of lists and it's really marrying the two they kind of find that right balance between showing and then not telling so much as like evaluating what this experience or the experiences like that really kind of how it advanced your why. Exactly, because you can't just write down and you can't list that it has made me compassionate it has made me do this you actually have to show what was your effort of compassion you just cannot have that giant list of reflections you have to actually have a meaningful reflection of saying like how did this shape you not just as a pre-med or not just as an applicant but as a person in general and that paragraph was a struggle because I remember your comments and your edits on that draft and we were going back and forth we were it was all of my I was kicking myself almost in the head like how the heck am I gonna flesh out what did I learn from hospice instead of right oh I gained compassion and I gained understanding no no no you have to show it and I'm thankful that I was a part of that. Yeah, it's that beautiful kind of tug of war right kind of like conversation and going back and forth and really kind of like helping like our back and forth it goes beyond editing in so many ways right it's not just moving paragraphs around or lines or this is a fragment it really is kind of a crafting your message and building that together and stitching those those reasons this has been amazing any last minute kind of piece of advice for pre-meds that you would give I would say like I said in the beginning before but don't let anybody define your journey actually gain an insight gain an understanding of medicine to begin with and actually have a reasoning why you want to be a physician and then build off into that point and actually explore different opportunities and don't compartmentalize but rather communicate and do as many things that your passion as best as possible if you look at my application completely it was not just clinical experiences or research or just scientific exploration or anything it was actually some things that I wanted to do some things like I joined club swimming even though I was a swimmer in high school I love swimming why not why not do that I joined Persian Student Association although I am Iranian I didn't necessarily have to do that it's not a research experience it's not a clinical experience but it was something I wanted to do so I always tell every pre-med do whatever you like to do don't let it define like don't keep saying to yourself what will make me look a good applicant no, no, no what am I passionate about doing because it will show it will show in interviews in admissions committee they will find reasonings why you want to do it and I wish everybody had that mind you know when I initially came in I didn't even have that mindset and it's so sad that sometimes we see pre-meds be persistent with that mindset and you want to tell people to begin with don't have that mindset don't do that find something that you can enjoy and do it and I'm so grateful that I I initially didn't start off that way but I built off that way right, right you know four years of undergrad even with the pandemic it was definitely a journey but I'm so grateful for that journey yeah Ali this has been amazing thank you so much and so thank you YouTube friends for watching I hope you took away some real inspiration I mean it's been such a privilege to work together and really one of my takeaways for these types of videos is for students to get inspired and energized about their journey right and that not everyone's journey is going to look the same I mean and you kind of painted that picture beautifully for us guys if you want to chat with me to learn about kind of how I work with students like Ali my Cali Lee link is below and I'll see you soon thank you guys thank you Ali thank you, thank you so much