Combining Dell infrastructure and services with NVIDIA GPUs and software, operators can bring gen AI to bear across OSS, BSS, core and RAN
Operators have access to a wealth of highly-contextualized data that, with the right approach, could be leveraged for a range of internal-facing optimizations and automations, and customer-facing value-add services. With generative artificial intelligence (gen AI) set to deliver trillions of dollars of economic impact, the right strategy can help operators unlock the latent value of all that data and realize outcomes that cut costs while establishing new lines of revenue.
To help operators navigate the complexity of integrating gen AI into their businesses, Dell Technologies and NVIDIA have joined forces to combine the former’s expertise in infrastructure and service with the latter’s industry-leading full-stack of accelerated computing solutions for gen AI.
“To harness the full benefits of generative AI, businesses must first understand their data and goals,” NVIDIA Global Head of Business Development for Telco Chris Penrose said in a statement. The goal of the partnership, he said, is to “help telecommunications customers more easily move from proof of concept to full-scale deployment of their generative AI-powered data center solutions.”
In terms of the solution set, Dell Technologies brings AI-optimized PowerEdge servers featuring the latest NVIDIA GPUs that can handle model training, optimization and inferencing. Dell’s scalable Unstructured Data Solutions support the demanding storage needs of AI model processing. And a range of low-latency networking products make all of these operations possible in data centers. On the services side, operators have to hand advisory, consulting, implementation and managed services meant to help align their gen AI strategic vision with priority business outcomes. Operators can also tap NVIDIA’s broad cloud-native AI software platform to develop, deploy and operationalize large language models.
Dell’s Gautam Bhagra, writing in a recent blog post, made the point that getting AI right isn’t just a hardware play but rather the result of “a holistic focus on business transformation and data value. By recognizing the centrality of data and embracing a strategic approach to AI adoption, enterprises and telecom companies can unlock new avenues of growth and competitiveness.”
Discussing the partnership between Dell and NVIDIA, Dell Vice President of Engineering Technology Manish Singh called it a “game-changer” for operators. “By leveraging NVIDIA’s cutting-edge GPUs, software and frameworks, we are empowering our customers to accelerate their generative AI, machine learning and deep learning initiatives across OSS, BSS, core and RAN.”
And there’s an even larger context here that speaks to operators pushing connectivity and compute (and gen AI) out to both the network edge and to the enterprise edge where the intersection of private cellular and localized compute is poised to open up even more avenues for latency- and bandwidth-sensitive applications, including edge AI inferencing.
In this area, and going beyond Dell and NVIDIA’s telco-specific partnership, the pair are pushing the idea of an AI Factory. As NVIDIA Founder and CEO Jensen Huang put it: “AI factories are central to creating intelligence on an industrial scale. Together, NVIDIA and Dell are helping enterprises create AI factories to turn their proprietary data into powerful insights.”
This sweeping end-to-end solution set runs the gamut from Dell compute, storage, client devices, software and services to NVIDIA AI infrastructure, software, silicon and networking fabric. Notable components include the Dell PowerEdge XE9680 with the NVIDIA B200 Tensor Core GPU, and PowerEdge servers tailored for NVIDIA’s Blackwell GPUs.
“Our enterprise customers are looking for an easy way to implement AI solutions—that is exactly what Dell Technologies and NVIDIA are delivering,” Dell Founder and CEO Michael Dell said in a statement. “Through our combined efforts, organizations can seamlessly integrate data with their own use cases and streamline the development of customized gen AI models.”
The big picture here is that operators are investing heavily in gen AI in an effort to improve network operations and enable enterprise customers to accelerate their digital transformation strategies which, in turn, can help operators generate new service-based revenues.
Simultaneously, enterprises are investing heavily in gen AI as part of larger technological and business evolutions in an effort to increase efficiency and set the stage for data-driven innovation. And across that operator-to-enterprise continuum, the partnership between Dell Technologies and NVIDIA provides the underlying hardware, software and services needed to make it all work.
