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Dell Technologies Inc. is expanding the foundation of its Dell AI Factory with a platform built to turn fragmented enterprise data into production-ready AI outcomes. Introduced at Dell Tech World earlier this year, the Dell AI Data Platform is now emerging as the centerpiece of the company’s data-to-AI strategy, according to Varun Chhabra (pictured), senior vice president of ISG product marketing at Dell Technologies Inc. “Over the last year, AI adoption has accelerated quickly in the enterprise,” he said. “Organizations are no longer just experimenting with AI; they’re increasingly deploying it to drive real business impact. As they do that, we hear the same challenge again and again: The success of AI projects is often limited by the ability to unlock the value of enterprise data.” Dell’s AI Data Platform is designed to simplify complex data environments by connecting and preparing data for AI use wherever it resides. The platform’s impact is already visible across sectors, from hospitals improving diagnostic speed through real-time insights to manufacturers using predictive analysis to avoid equipment failures. During a special presentation on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, Chabbra was joined by Dell’s Travis Vigil, SVP of ISC product management; Anahad Dhillon, director of product management; and Vrashank Jain, director of product management, AI Data Platform. Also joining the conversation were Kevin Deierling, SVP of networking at Nvidia Corp.; Remi Duquette, VP of industrial AI at MayaHTT; Ajay Nair, general manager of platform engineering at Elastic N.V.; and Jitender Aswani, SVP of engineering at Starburst Data Inc. They explored how Dell’s AI platform goes beyond infrastructure to serve as a strategic foundation for turning data into operational AI at scale. (* Disclosure below.) The AI platform turns data into an operational advantage The last 12 months have marked a turning point for AI. It has moved beyond only being about compute — and other infrastructural factors — and now hinges on the data coming through. Unlike traditional “store-it-all-in-one-place” approaches, Dell’s solution activates data wherever it resides, according to Vigil. “With our Dell AI Data Platform, storage engines and data engines are each optimized for what they do best, working together, but independently,” he said. “That means no bottlenecks, no lock-in, just the freedom to innovate on your terms. By separating data processing from storage, we eliminate friction and reduce solution costs.” PowerScale and ObjectScale serve as the “dual engines” driving Dell’s AI data architecture, according to Dhillon. PowerScale powers file-based, high-performance AI workloads, while ObjectScale delivers scalable, S3-native object storage for massive unstructured data sets. Together, they provide the flexibility to seamlessly handle both file and object pipelines. “What makes this even more powerful is the way Dell integrates next-generation hardware seamlessly without disruption,” Dhillon added. “That means you don’t need a forklift upgrade every time a new CPU, network fabric or media technology comes along.” Real-world impact: AI in action Maya HTT, a software development and engineering solutions company, serves as a compelling use case. By combining Dell’s PowerScale and Nvidia GPUs, the company upscaled data access for MDA Space, a Canadian satellite manufacturer. Its AI-powered M-Bot solution now rapidly surfaces critical information from massive stores of unstructured documents, dramatically accelerating satellite production, according to Duquette. “Finding the right information in that time span is accelerating the pace of production and enabling MDA Space to go from one satellite every couple of weeks to multiple satellites per day,” he said. “The AI solutions that Maya HTT is developing connect unconnected people around the globe, but also on the ocean with marine vessels moving goods in a reliable and eco-friendly fashion.” Nvidia is at the core of Dell’s partnership ecosystem. The melding of Dell’s data infrastructure assets with Nvidia’s accelerated computing and AI software stack — including NeMo Retriever micro-services, Triton Inference Server and RAPIDS for data science — supports Dell’s modular AI Data Platform. The integration of NeMo Retriever with Dell’s unstructured-data engine underpins retrieval-augmented generation workflows, giving enterprises faster access to their own data for AI-driven decision-making, according to Deierling. “Customers get peace of mind that our joint solutions have been rigorously tested, validated and performance optimized by both companies,” he said. “Dell proud to be a leader in Nvidia cloud partner certifications. And with SuperPOD certification, we’ve proven our ability to deliver Nvidia’s highest level of reference architectures for enterprise AI, including complex, multi-node, multi-GPU deployments.” Ecosystem integrations bring AI data to life Beyond infrastructure partnerships, Dell is also extending the platform’s reach through new data engine integrations designed to unify structured and unstructured information. Organizations want more than just compute — they need visibility into their data, according to Jain. “As AI adoption grows, organizations are looking beyond the infrastructure,” he said. “They want to know how to search, organize and activate data for real outcomes.” That’s where Dell’s unstructured data engine comes in, “built with Elasticsearch at its core,” Jain added. The engine provides fast, secure access to vast amounts of unstructured information and is tailored for modern AI applications such as RAG, semantic search and generative pipelines. Elastic’s collaboration with Dell brings advanced search and discovery capabilities to Dell’s AI data ecosystem, according to Nair. By embedding Elasticsearch into the Dell AI Data Platform, organizations can unify data access across multiple environments and interact with information as naturally as asking a question. The result is faster insights and more intelligent retrieval across massive volumes of unstructured data. “This integration means Dell customers can now harness Elasticsearch, not just as a vector database in the AI data platform, but for its full search capabilities, optimized for speed, scale and relevance within a single turnkey engine,” Nair said. By combining Elastic’s search technology with Dell’s architecture, the two companies are “helping organizations transform unstructured data into an AI advantage,” he added. The platform’s reach also extends to structured data, where Dell’s partnership with Starburst enables federated analytics across diverse sources. By integrating Starburst’s distributed query engine, enterprises can analyze data in place — eliminating the need to move or duplicate it across systems, according to Aswani. “With Dell and Starburst, customer queries directly on top of PowerScale and ObjectScale, no ETL, no movement, just one consistent view of the data,” he said. “Dell’s data engines unify structured and unstructured data. Starburst makes it query ready.” Stay tuned for the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Dell AI Data Platform Event: Break Through AI With Data event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Dell AI Data Platform Event. Neither Dell, the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.) Photo: SiliconANGLE
