Dell Technologies Growing Generative AI Portfolio Speeds Business Transformations

Posted on 5th October 2023

Dell Validated Design for Generative AI with NVIDIA for Model Customization helps customers more quickly and securely extract intelligence from their data
Dell Professional Services streamline GenAI strategy development, data preparation, platform development and increase operational efficiencies
Dell Technologies and Starburst offer an open, modern data lakehouse solution to tap multicloud data for AI efforts

Dell Technologies (NYSE: DELL) expands its Dell Generative AI Solutions portfolio, helping businesses transform how they work along every step of their generative AI (GenAI) journeys.

“To maximize AI efforts and support workloads across public clouds, on-premises environments and at the edge, companies need a robust data foundation with the right infrastructure, software and services,” said Jeff Boudreau, chief AI officer, Dell Technologies. “That’s what we are building with our expanded validated designs, professional services, modern data lakehouse and the world’s broadest GenAI solutions portfolio.”

Customizing GenAI models to maximize proprietary data

The Dell Validated Design for Generative AI with NVIDIA for Model Customization offers pre-trained models that extract intelligence from data without building models from scratch.

This solution provides best practices for customizing and fine-tuning GenAI models based on desired outcomes while keeping information secure and on-premises. With a scalable blueprint for customization, organizations now have multiple ways to tailor GenAI models to accomplish specific tasks with their proprietary data. Its modular and flexible design supports a wide range of computational requirements and use cases, spanning training diffusion, transfer learning and prompt tuning.

Dell Validated Designs for Generative AI now support both model tuning and inferencing, allowing users to more quickly deploy GenAI models with proven infrastructure including the Dell PowerEdge XE9680, the industry’s best performing AI server,1 or the Dell PowerEdge XE8640, with a choice of NVIDIA® Tensor Core GPUs and NVIDIA AI Enterprise software, which offers frameworks, pre-trained models and development tools, such as the NVIDIA NeMo™ framework, and Dell software. By combining compute power with storage options, such as Dell PowerScale and Dell ObjectScale, customers can rapidly feed models with multiple storage data types with the validated design. The infrastructure is also available as a subscription via Dell APEX.

“We’re implementing Dell PowerEdge XE9680 servers with NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs into the high performance computing cluster at Princeton for large language modeling to help drive new levels of discovery,” said Sanjeev Arora, the Charles C. Fitzmorris Professor in Computer Science, Princeton. “This system gives researchers in natural sciences, engineering, social sciences and humanities the opportunity to apply powerful AI models to their work in areas such as visualization, modeling and quantum computing.”

Preparing data, people and processes for GenAI

Dell is applying its process and expertise to help customers generate better, faster business results with expanded GenAI professional services capabilities:

Data Preparation Services provide customers with a clean, accurate data set in the right format enabling AI projects to move smoothly while simplifying data integration and delivering quality data output.
Dell Implementation Services establish an operational GenAI platform for inferencing and model customization, accelerating time to value. Paired with Dell Managed Services, Dell can operate the full NVIDIA-based GenAI solution, improving operational efficiency and allowing customers to focus on building their proprietary GenAI use cases.
Education Services help customers gain the critical skills to close the GenAI capabilities gap.

“Our recent study on Generative AI use in the enterprise made it clear organizations are adamant about being able to use their own data to customize key foundation models, but also need assistance in helping prep their data for that work,” said Bob O’Donnell, president and chief analyst, TECHnalysis Research. “Dell’s latest Generative AI solutions and partnerships offer a broad set of capabilities that help companies capitalize on this potential, bridging knowledge gaps and ensuring data drives discernible, impactful business results.”

Modernizing data infrastructure for AI and analytics

Dell and Starburst are strengthening their relationship to help customers accelerate AI and analytics efforts. This will culminate with an open, modern data lakehouse solution.

The solution will integrate Starburst’s analytics software with Dell’s PowerEdge compute platform, combined with Dell industry-leading storage,2 helping customers extract insights from data wherever it resides. Built with open software principles, customers will gain easy and secure access to multicloud data to get the most value for analytics and AI-driven workflows and deployments.

“Our customers have made it clear they need a robust data platform for accessing distributed data across multicloud environments to drive and operationalize AI efforts,” said Justin Borgman, CEO, Starburst. “By integrating our deep analytics capabilities with Dell’s leading infrastructure and global enterprise services, we can offer customers an open, multicloud data lakehouse solution that quickly and easily makes data available to AI workflows anywhere.”

Availability

Dell Validated Design for Generative AI: Model Customization is available globally through traditional channels and Dell APEX starting late October.
Dell Professional Services for Generative AI are available in select countries starting late October.
The Dell open, modern data lakehouse solution with Starburst has planned global availability in the first half of 2024.