Dell’s approach to realizing enterprise hybrid AI – Business

From the Tensor chips in Pixel smartphones to the recently released Microsoft Copilot+ PCs, there’s a rethinking of artificial intelligence underway that blends local, on-device computation with cloud-based solutions. For the enterprise, the same process would translate as hybrid AI.

How are innovators approaching this on-premises wave and equipping companies with the requisite components to realize it?

“Almost all of the focus has been on doing gen AI in the cloud,” said Bob O’Donnell (pictured, second from right), president and chief analyst at TECHnalysis Research LLC. “I think the story that Dell started to tell is, ‘Hey, wait a minute. Maybe we can do some of this sort of stuff on-prem.’ The basic message … is ‘Why move your data to the AI? Why not move the AI to your data?’ The vast majority of most organizations’ data is still behind their firewall, so it just makes logical sense to do that.”

O’Donnell spoke with theCUBE industry analysts Dave Vellante (left), Savannah Peterson (second from left) and Bob Laliberte (right) for theCUBE’s kickoff segment at Dell Technologies World, during an exclusive broadcast from . They discussed the hybrid AI model, which combines cloud and on-prem solutions, as a balanced approach to leveraging AI’s full potential. (* Disclosure below.)

The hybrid AI model

Generative AI for the enterprise is all the rage, yet most companies don’t know where to start on the implementation front. Enter hybrid AI, an approach that combines local compute, networking, storage and software platforms so that the AI operates in close proximity to the data source, according to O’Donnell.

“Just the same way we’ve seen hybrid cloud, there’s going to be hybrid AI and the tools are becoming more widely available,” he said. “The deals that Dell announced with Hugging Face and Meta on leveraging open-source tools, which can be run locally, are very interesting. That notion of opening up this concept of hybrid AI and making it something that a lot of organizations can consider.”

Those partnerships aim to hone open-source tools that can run locally, further supporting the hybrid AI model. The end goal is to make the model viable across sectors, offering flexibility and control over enterprise AI deployments.

A recent poll taken by Vellante on the X platform compared the rate of hybrid AI adoption to hybrid cloud. The overall temperature on the AI corner was quite tepid, with 69% of respondents believing that “cloud wins the day,” reflecting a prevalent belief in the dominance of cloud-based AI solutions. However, the on-prem vendors are now quicker to adapt, suggesting that hybrid AI might not take as long to mature.

“Hybrid AI is going to be like hybrid cloud, but it’s going to be different in that the on-prem vendors took over a decade to really get their act together to create the cloud operating model,” Vellante said. “[Hybrid AI is] not going to take that long.”

Dell Technologies Inc. is making a significant bet on AI, particularly through partnerships and strategic investments. The keynote emphasized Dell’s AI Factory, a concept that spans multiple hardware collaborations. This AI factory represents a comprehensive ecosystem designed to provide end-to-end AI solutions, from data centers to edge devices, according to Laliberte.

“There’s no one who can do it all by themselves — it’s going to be about how organizations, how these vendors can work together to provide an end-to-end solution,” he said. “I like what Dell’s doing with the AI Factory. I think it’s a little bit of a misnomer when you think about the factory, you think maybe, ‘Hey, this is a big data center thing.’ But, in reality, they are talking about extending those AI capabilities across the entire enterprise, through workstations and laptops, out to the edge and at retail.”

Here’s the complete video interview, coverage of Dell Technologies World: 

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Dell Technologies World. Neither Dell, the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, .)