Becoming an AI-native company is no longer the competitive advantage it was five minutes ago. Now, it’s an empirical obligation, and Dell Technologies Inc. made that case to customers at its annual flagship event.

This message was hammered home during Dell Technologies World in Las Vegas, featuring a roster of enterprise customers that set the tone for an event fabricated around the necessity of moving from AI experimentation to full-scale deployment, according to Geraldine Tunnell (pictured), chief marketing officer of Dell Technologies. The urgency extends beyond internal workloads. It reaches into how customers research, shortlist and purchase technology in an AI-mediated environment.

“It’s not just their internal workloads they’re thinking about transforming,” Tunnell told theCUBE. “They also have to think about their very own customers. How do they buy differently? Now lots of journeys and purchases start with different AI tools.”

Tunnell spoke with theCUBE’s Gemma Allen and John Furrier at Dell Technologies World for an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed how Dell is helping customers handle the shift to AI-native operations and what that transformation demands from marketing and partnerships. (* Disclosure below.)

AI-native company readiness requires progress over perfection

For Dell’s marketing organization, the approach has been more pragmatic than cautious. Tunnell described a team philosophy of “progress over perfection while striving for excellence.” It’s a mindset that she claims will reflect the entrepreneurial spirit Michael Dell himself models. That means experimenting with new tools and workloads continuously instead of waiting for ideal conditions to present themselves.

“If you’re not transforming, you’re not going in the right direction,” Tunnell said. “It’s existential. You want to become an AI-native company because that’s the important moment right now.”

On the human side of the equation, Tunnel drew on a conversation with McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown, whose team climbed from the rear of the Formula 1 grid to back-to-back championships by combining advanced technology with elite human judgment. The analogy parallels enterprise AI, she explained. The right infrastructure and data foundation are important, but strategic decisions still require people in the driver’s seat. Dell’s role, as Tunnell framed it, is remaining close enough to customers to help them find the right solution for their business needs, supported by an ecosystem of partners that fill in the areas where internal readiness is still in development stages.

“As long as we’re keeping the customer at the center and forefront, that’s ultimately what keeps you ahead in the industry,” Tunnell said.

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Dell Technologies World event:

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

Photo: SiliconANGLE