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  6. Blog

    Dell Technologies World 2025: Day Three (Distributed AI and Telco vs. IT musings)

    Author: Peter Jarich, Head of GSMA Intelligence Dell Technologies World runs for four days – from Monday through Thursday. As with many events, the last day is a great time to connect with exhibitors and take in some demos in a more relaxed setting, all while helping yourself to all the swag that companies don’t want to haul home. That’s the theory, at least. With meetings in London on Thursday afternoon, I was on a plane early Wednesday evening. No extra Dell-branded Stanley cups or mouse pads for me! Instead, I spent my last day at Dell Technologies World taking in more exhibits, doing a little presenting, and thinking about the intersection of the Telco and IT sectors. How to Think About Distributed AI. It’s no coincidence that the myriad edge AI use cases and showcases at Dell Technologies World align with work we’re doing at GSMA Intelligence; I was there, in part, to present some of our research. You can check out the deck from the red button above. A key message was simply to think about what we mean by “edge.” Where the concept can stretch from just outside a hyperscaler datacenter to the telco network, enterprise premise or even an IoT device, the term is clearly broad. That’s why it’s useful to think about “distribution” vs. “edge;” the edge is no single location.  How to Think About Monetization. From a network strategy perspective, operators are more concerned with new revenues and customer experience than with OpEx and CapEx efficiencies. We often position this as “making money” vs. “saving money.” Regardless, both are part of how new technologies are monetized. Cutting costs and delivering efficiencies may not add to top-line growth, but do contribute to profitability. In other words, AI use cases which do drive network or operational efficiencies are still part of the monetization story.Diverse Demands vs. Diverse Capabilities. Of course, if telcos (or anyone else) with distributed AI want to sell the value to customers, they need to know what the customers care about. What their use cases require. While we’ve all been trained to think edge networking is about latency, it’s also about resiliency, data sovereignty, energy efficiency, and cost containment. Most use cases will benefit from a combination. Understanding what that combination looks like is key to targeting sales and marketing efforts.  A Telco vs. IT Myth. I ran into a handful of analysts I knew this week at Dell Technologies World. I stood out, however, as the only one with a primary focus on the Telco vertical. To be fair, I could tell this positioned me as something of an odd duck at an IT focused event where servers and PCs and AI integration dominated the discussion. Of course, even if you ignore the fact that AT&T and Verizon were exhibitors at the event, the idea of a thick dividing line between the Telco and IT markets is ludicrous. Dangerous even. Telco is one of the largest verticals for IT sellers. That means operators are putting lots of IT gear into their operations. As mobile networks get increasingly virtualized and embed distributed AI, that will only accelerate. Sure, this was my first visit to Dell Technologies World, but I doubt it will be my last.   

  8. Blog

    Dell Technologies World 2025: Day Two (even more AI, sustainability, dogs, data, …)

    Author: Peter Jarich, Head of GSMA Intelligence The weatherman explained this morning that Thursday is likely to be the first day of the year when Las Vegas registers a 100 degree temperature (Fahrenheit, natch). Luckily, I’ll be on a plane home long before that; several years of living in the UK has made me allergic to balmy weather. In the meantime, the 2nd day of Dell Technologies World picked up where the first left off. What does that mean? Think extensions to show themes, things I simply missed yesterday, and a minor degree of randomness. AI – It’s the Same, But Different. You’d expect Dell to position AI as just another IT workload. It’s risen to the top of everyone’s agenda over the past few years, but Dell – or any of their competitors, for that matter – would tell you that it’s an application they can support in the same way they’ve always supported an evolving set of diverse applications. But, across sessions and conversations, there was a clear understanding (from Dell and partners) that AI is different. New silicon needs, sure. But new powering, scalability, cloud, and architecture decisions to be made. Even the silicon question isn’t so clear; some use cases may require GPUs, but many will be fine on CPUs…laptop CPUs, even. In many ways, this mirrors the AI-driven data traffic considerations operators are looking at. Whether or not AI drives a massive amount of new traffic, operators are not sure. But they are much more certain that it will drive traffic patterns. Is Data an AI Afterthought? I mentioned yesterday that Day One Dell Technologies World announcements included enhancements to its AI Data Platform. The Dell SME on the show floor was eager to talk about it. Almost too eager. Unlike servers brimming with GPUs or the flashy use case demos, the crowd around the Data Platform pod was…well, it wasn’t quite a crowd. You could, partly, blame Dell for this; the pod was somewhat awkwardly positioned between AI Factory demos vs. integrated into the middle of them. That said, we know that the importance of clean, well-managed data is often not top of mind. For example, in our work with telcos on AI maturity, only 30% claimed Data Quality and Complexity was a top three barrier to AI adoption. Amidst all of the other potential deployment challenges, this might not be surprising. Nonetheless, it’s a clear risk – for telcos and the broader market. Sustainability > Efficiency. The default sustainability message for many IT companies is straightforward: our servers are energy efficient. Energy efficiency is clearly part of being sustainable, but only one part. Packaging practices. Use of recycled materials. Product buy-back and recycling. Sustainability services. To its credit Dell’s dedicated sustainability demos had it all. Where they fell somewhat short was a limited focus on the sustainability implications of different network architectures or deployment models. Depending on the use case, some network architectures will be more energy efficient than others. Dell had plenty of stories attesting to this, stretching all the way to running AI models on powerful PCs vs. cloud resources. Quantifying or showcasing those decisions in a simple way – even as a conversation starter for their Services team – would be more powerful. Everything’s Better with Dogs. Just before you get to entrance of the Dell Technologies World Expo there’s a fenced in area. At CES, the fences are meant to contain drones. Here, they’re holding back service dogs…and lots of people coming to greet them with ginormous grins. Airports and hospitals long ago recognized that a friendly pup can help to defuse a stressful situation. Tradeshows aren’t quite as stressful, but benefit nonetheless.  Smart Cities at the Edge. Another day. Another demonstration of AI at the edge. Unlike the compelling inventory management story from Chooch on Day One, the standout on Day Two – use of AI in traffic management by the City of Bellevue, WA – involved an operator. In this case, AT&T was running AI workloads on Dell servers in its network to process video from traffic intersections in order to improve pedestrian safety. Much like the Chooch example, though, costs were a primary driver of the decision to leverage edge resources; transport costs for massive amounts of video traffic would simply make the use case untenable. 

  10. Blog

    Dell Technologies World 2025: Day One (AI, more AI, RAN and a smart telco engagement strategy)

    Author: Peter Jarich, Head of GSMA Intelligence London has been unusually warm of late, but still no match for Las Vegas this week. That said, there’s no time for outdoor activities or lounging by the pool since I’m here for Dell Technologies World 2025. Compared with massive industry get-togethers like MWC, single company events are a very different beast. You obviously get a more single-sided view of the market. But company positioning and strategies can also tell you a lot. With Day One in the books, here’s what I came away with. Keynotes, Agendas, Announcements, and AI. Conference content and sessions often get ignored in favour of non-stop meetings. At an event driven by customer engagement, you might expect this to be the case. And, if you were one of those people locked in meetings at Dell Technologies World, take solace in the fact that product and solution announcements tell you where a company is putting its attention. Not surprisingly, that attention has landed on AI, as showcased by its Dell AI Factory enhancements and new solutions with NVIDIA. Circa 2025, nearly every tech company needs shareholders and customers to know it’s focused on AI innovation. A solution ticking all the key boxes – servers, mobile workstations, data platforms, and professional services…backed by a deep partner roster – testifies to the focus. Edge AI in Practice. AI is a wide-ranging topic. An incredibly wide-ranging topic. This is good, to the extent that it means solutions are being built for a variety of diverse use cases and customer demands. It also means that putting AI to use may seem particularly daunting. For me, a showcase on AI in support of healthcare inventory management, backed by machine vision specialist Chooch, brought it down to earth with a real-world example. In the process it also highlighted the importance of edge-deployed AI (in order to address data privacy and cost concerns) as well as the reality that putting AI to use requires much more than AI applications, making system integrator, telco, and IT partner decisions key.  The Telco Suite. Executive suites for hosting meetings or demoing kit in a (less noisy) space off the show floor are not uncommon at trade shows. Dell’s Telco-focused suite at Dell Technologies World serves the same purpose. But it’s also used to host presentations and intimate discussions with partners from non-telco verticals. Where operators have been targeting digital industries as a growth opportunity since before the 5G Era, attempting to be a bridge into the enterprise is an undeniably smart strategy.  The RAN Solution you Might Not Know. One piece of kit on display in Dell’s Telco Suite is a 4T4R cellular radio. It’s not from a partner and it’s not a mock-up. It is a commercially available radio developed by Dell. It can be paired up with Dell servers running Dell’s own RAN software. Add in mobile core assets from a partner and the result is a complete miobile network. Unless you follow the company closely, you probably don’t know about this offer; it never got a press release or a flashy launch. It points to modest near-term RAN aspirations and a cautious approach to competing with current RAN partners. It also provides a reminder that as the RAN gets increasingly digitized, suppliers like Dell should be in a position to benefit.   

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