Perhaps more than any single technology introduction, artificial intelligence has demonstrated its impact in a short space of time across nearly every key element of the enterprise computing platform. At the heart of this transformation for Dell Technologies Inc. is its AI Factory, an end-to-end solution designed to harness the power of AI to drive outcomes using customer data.

Apps and data are just the start. AI has become an integral part of cloud, data center, edge, silicon and storage solutions. It is this evolving dynamic that has led Dell Technologies Inc. to build its AI strategy around the realization that customers will need a portfolio of services to directly address how they implement AI in delivering tangible business results.

“AI is not a standalone,” said Doug Schmitt, president of Dell Technologies Services, in an interview with theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. “We’re seeing AI components across the portfolio, multi-cloud, resiliency and security. It’s touching everything. So, as we think through our portfolio of services around professional services, around consult, manage, education services, residency, it’s cutting across all of that, not just from AI but those other transformation areas.”

What this transformation will mean for enterprises and the future of AI innovation will be the focus of “Making AI Real With Data,” a joint event with Dell and Nvidia Corp. on October 15 at 12:00 p.m. ET. And don’t miss our encore Asia-Pacific broadcast on October 16. Company executives will discuss how cutting-edge storage and data management solutions are transforming vision into reality, and they will provide an early look at how Dell’s upcoming innovations are set to propel generative AI initiatives forward. (* Disclosure below.)

Check out what’s in store for theCUBE’s coverage of “Making AI Real With Data”:

AI Factory produces outcomes

A cornerstone of Dell’s deployment strategy involves the AI Factory. First introduced in March as an end-to-end solution for training, tuning and running AI models, the AI Factory is fueled by the “raw material” of customer data to produce outcomes using Dell’s validated solutions.

“We still know 70%, 80% of all information is still on-prem or at the edge, and it’s stabilized now,” according to Sam Grocott, senior vice president of product marketing at Dell, in an interview with theCUBE. “A third of use cases are going to be in the cloud; two thirds are going to be on-prem. AI is putting even more pressure on ‘why do on-prem,’ because that’s where your most valuable asset, the fuel of what we call the AI Factory — is. It’s your data. It’s how you’re going to differentiate.”

This differentiation will require an infrastructure – servers, storage, data protection and networking – that can support diverse AI requirements within desktop, data center and cloud environments. Dell has designed its AI Factory, in partnership with Nvidia, to automate workflows and simplify development across the stack.

“You’re taking raw materials, you’re turning them into a finished product that comes out the other side,” said Greg Findlen, senior vice president of product management at Dell, in a recent appearance on theCUBE. “Only now, we’re using raw data from an enterprise customer’s data set to generate new outcomes that they couldn’t have generated before — huge new set of use cases for our customers. We talk about the infrastructure layer … whether it’s high-speed servers, performance storage or edge devices to deliver that outcome.”

Nvidia SuperPOD solution powers throughput

Dell’s collaboration with Nvidia on the AI Factory highlights the growing synergy between chipmakers and infrastructure service providers. Through their latest initiatives, Nvidia and Dell are seeking to address data access bottlenecks which have limited the throughput and scalability of compute-intensive workloads.

In March, Dell PowerScale became the first Ethernet-based storage solution to be certified on the Nvidia DGX SuperPOD platform. The certification means that users can leverage PowerScale and ubiquitous Ethernet technology to enable AI training, checkpointing and inferencing.

Dell’s embrace of Ethernet marks a significant step for the networking technology. It has emerged as the preferred backbone for AI fabrics, with attractive capabilities for enabling high-performance and interoperable architectures. Dell’s use of Ethernet in the Nvidia platform will be part of the discussion during theCUBE’s coverage on October 15.

“It’s no surprise that Ethernet is predominant across all data centers today,” said Darren Miller, director of vertical industry solutions, unstructured data storage, at Dell, during an interview with theCUBE in advance of the October event. “We believe as AI workflows increase and become the predominant workflow throughout the data centers, customers are going to need this high bandwidth. The DGX SuperPOD design with PowerScale was designed so that we would offer and bring to our customers the first Ethernet-based storage fabric for DGX SuperPOD.”

TheCUBE event livestream

Don’t miss theCUBE’s coverage of the “Making AI Real With Data,”  event on Oct. 15. And don’t miss our encore Asia-Pacific broadcast on October 16. 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 the “Making AI Real With Data” event, 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 the “Making AI Real With Data” event, theCUBE analysts will talk with industry experts about how Dell’s cutting-edge storage and data management solutions are not just supporting Al, but are the catalysts transforming it from a vision to reality.

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

Image: SiliconANGLE