New technologies for the edge and AI highlight day two at Dell Technologies World

Generative artificial intelligence continued to be a major theme at Dell Technologies World in Las Vegas on the conference’s second day with the announcement of Project Helix, a new initiative in collaboration with Nvidia Corp.

Project Helix is designed to bring a series of full stack AI solutions to the enterprise, including technical expertise based on Dell Technologies Inc. and Nvidia infrastructure. The announcement included a pre-recorded appearance by Nvidia’s chief executive Jensen Huang who spoke with Dell vice chairman and co-chief operating officer Jeff Clarke about the significant impact this new era of AI will bring.

“Huang talked about how we are entering a new age, and it’s going to be bigger than anything we’ve seen before,” said Dave Vellante (right), industry analyst for theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. “He said datacenters are going to be renamed AI factories, which I thought was pretty interesting.”

Vellante spoke with theCUBE industry analyst Lisa Martin (left) at Dell Technologies World, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, and they discussed Tuesday’s announcements and Dell’s growing partner ecosystem. (* Disclosure below.)

AI’s significant potential

Enterprise interest in generative AI has played a role in Dell’s announcements this week, along with customer conversations over the potential plusses and minuses of the evolving technology. Users must weigh concerns raised by enormous press coverage of generative AI against how it could provide long-term benefit across multiple industries.

“With generative AI, we’ve talked (with customers) about all the positive opportunities that are coming out from it,” Martin said. “But in the news media, there is a lot of negativity around it, and fear. What we heard yesterday was about the tremendous potential.”

Tuesday’s announcements also brought the news that Dell would expand its portfolio with the launch of NativeEdge, operations software to simplify, secure and automate customer edge infrastructure. The introduction of NativeEdge stemmed from the unveiling of Dell’s Project Frontier initiative last year. The news was in addition to Monday’s introduction of new storage additions for APEX which originated as Project Alpine last year.

“We’ve now seen two projects, Project Alpine and Project Frontier, become products,” Vellante noted. “They’ve stuck their neck out and now they’re demonstrating progress. Now we want to see customer adoption.”

Dell also continues to demonstrate progress in expanding its partner relationships. In addition to the collaboration with Nvidia on generative AI, the company also announced joint initiatives involving Microsoft, Red Hat and VMware this week.

“Dell’s ecosystem continues to grow in strength and numbers,” Martin said. “That’s one of the things we’ve been hearing just in the last day and a half on the show floor.”

The firm’s growing ecosystem has manifested itself noticeably in the telecommunications business. Dell made a series of announcements around this space at Mobile World Congress in February, and it represents a fertile area for Dell in the pursuit of its edge strategy.

“We’re starting to see telco pop up,” Vellante said. “This ecosystem is growing, and the reason is, Dell has an awesome distribution channel. People want to partner with Dell because it means money.”

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

(* Disclosure: This is an unsponsored editorial segment. However, theCUBE is a paid media partner for Dell Technologies World. Dell Technologies Inc. and other sponsors of theCUBE’s event coverage have no editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE