Since the Dell Technologies Inc. community gathered in Las Vegas for the computer giant’s annual conference one year ago, the artificial intelligence bandwagon has picked up significant speed. Dell has been writing its own AI story through partnerships, most notably with Nvidia Inc., and product enhancements to meet growing customer demand.

What Dell’s Chief Operating Officer Jeff Clarke described as the “long-term tailwind” of AI has boosted Dell’s operating revenues. It has also fueled customer interest across its portfolio as organizations looked for servers capable of storing and managing massive amounts of data required by generative AI technology.

How is Dell making AI real? TheCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, will be on the ground at Dell Technologies World in Las Vegas, from May 20-22, to answer this and other key questions. Don’t miss our interview with Dell Chief Executive Officer Michael Dell, as well as other industry experts, analysts and investors to discuss the continuing saga of AI adoption in the enterprise, from the ground to the cloud. (* Disclosure below.)

“The key things we’ll be watching at Dell Tech World are how last year’s AI projects are turning into products, the timing of AI PCs and the Windows upgrade cycle, and how Dell is bottling AI momentum and spreading it around its ecosystem to enable partners to participate in its newfound tailwind,” said theCUBE Research chief analyst Dave Vellante.

Check out what’s in store for theCUBE’s coverage of Dell Technologies World:

Server sales and robust use cases expand for Dell Technologies

Dell’s earnings report in late February provided evidence that AI training will not be primarily confined to the cloud. The company reported that orders for AI-optimized servers rose 40% compared to the previous quarter. The firm also noted that it booked $800 million of AI server sales and had another $2.9 billion in order backlogs. The data tidal wave and Dell’s own moves to increase performance for its PowerEdge servers and PowerScale storage systems have positioned it for growth.

“A lot of training is being done with rich data sets, and as we move into enterprise, that lends itself to a growing storage opportunity for us,” said Dell’s Clarke in a recent interview with SiliconANGLE. “We’ve increased performance around latency-sensitive workloads, which is aligned with needs in the enterprise as customers move from training to inference.”

Use cases for AI are becoming more plentiful. The University of Limerick and Dell announced a joint project in September to develop an AI platform that will power predictive and diagnostic research in oncology. CyberAgent, a Japanese digital advertising company, is using Dell PowerEdge XE9680 servers with eight Nvidia H100 Tensor Core GPUs to improve performance for the firm’s large language models.

Growing partnership with Nvidia fuels AI processing

Dell’s relationship with AI processor powerhouse Nvidia has expanded over the past year. In November, the company joined two other firms in a joint initiative to integrate Nvidia Spectrum-X Ethernet networking technologies into its server lineup to speed generative AI workloads. This was followed in March by news of an expansion for Dell’s PowerEdge XE9860 servers to include the Nvidia B200 Tensor Core GPU.

Dell’s PowerScale portfolio of network-attached storage appliances also became the first line of Ethernet systems validated for use with clusters of DGX H100 offerings. The goal is to not only make it easier to store data, but also manage it for AI applications.

“Dell has suddenly found itself smack dab in the middle of the generative AI wave,” Vellante said. “Coming out of Nvidia GTC, Dell got a giant tailwind from [CEO] Jensen Huang’s declaration that they are the best at end-to-end systems.”

Enhancements focus on distributed data

Behind Dell’s extensive activity with Nvidia and AI platforms can be found a central focus on distributed data ecosystems for the company’s enterprise strategy.

“You need data, because if you have no data, you have no AI. If you have bad data, you have bad AI,” said Michael Dell, chairman and chief executive officer of Dell Technologies, in an exclusive interview on theCUBE earlier this year. “The fuel for these systems is enormous amounts of data. That’s a topic we know a lot about and spend a lot of time on at Dell Technologies.”

Data is on the move, either in the cloud, on-premises or at the edge. Dell’s announcements over the past year illustrate how important it will be to build an infrastructure that can accommodate simplified access to data across multiple platforms.

Expansion of the Dell APEX Cloud Platform to include Red Hat OpenShift in February underscores this approach. The solution presents a cloud operating model on top of Dell hardware and Red Hat software that offers consistent and centralized data management across a comprehensive set of services. The data experience matters in the evolving world of hybrid computing, and this will be a key message to watch for at Dell Technologies World.

“The Dell perspective is that this is far more than an operating system on a bare metal server. It’s about creating an experience,” according to Rob Strechay, managing director and principal analyst at theCUBE Research, in his recent analysis of the Dell/Red Hat partnership. “The market is becoming more stable as workloads are being distributed more evenly between public and private clouds.”

TheCUBE event livestream

Don’t miss theCUBE’s coverage of the Dell Technologies World from May 20-22. Plus, you can watch theCUBE’s event coverage on-demand after the live event.

How to watch theCUBE interviews

We offer you various ways to watch theCUBE’s coverage of Dell Technologies World, including theCUBE’s dedicated website and YouTube channel. You can also get all the coverage from this year’s events on SiliconANGLE.

TheCUBE Insights podcast

SiliconANGLE also has podcasts available of archived interview sessions, available on iTunes, Stitcher and Spotify, which you can enjoy while on the go.

SiliconANGLE also has analyst deep dives in our Breaking Analysis podcast, available on iTunes, Stitcher and Spotify.

Guests

During Dell Technologies World, theCUBE will provide on-site reporting and exclusive interviews with experts, practitioners, analysts and investors about the latest developments driving AI adoption in enterprises. Discover how Dell is advancing AI with its hyperconverged efforts, taking AI from the ground to the cloud across its ecosystem.

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Dell Technologies World. Neither Dell Technologies, the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Image: SiliconANGLE