Efficiency in the AI Era

How is Dell Technologies actively working towards a future where intelligence meets unprecedented efficiency?

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At the Six Five Summit, host Melody Brue is joined by Dell Technologies' JJ Davis, SVP, Corporate Affairs for a conversation on how Dell is pioneering AI adoption and shaping a future that leverages intelligence and efficiency. Discover the strategic innovations and applications that are not just driving progress but are also addressing the critical energy challenges in the AI era.

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Key takeaways include:

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🔹Dell's Groundbreaking AI Adoption: Explore Dell Technologies' pioneering approach to AI adoption across diverse industries, highlighting their commitment to leveraging intelligence for smarter solutions.

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🔹Innovating for Efficiency in the AI Era: Delve into the core strategies Dell employs to harness AI, focusing on its transformative impact on industry efficiency and overall productivity.

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🔹Overcoming AI's Energy Challenges: Understand the critical approaches to addressing and overcoming inherent energy challenges within AI technologies, ensuring sustainable and effective deployments.

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🔹Future AI Trends & Societal Impact: Gain forward-looking insights into emerging AI trends and their profound implications, not just on businesses, but on society as a whole, guiding us toward a more intelligent future.

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Learn more at Dell Technologies.

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Watch the full video at Six Five Media, and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel, so you never miss an episode.

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Or listen to the audio here:

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Melody Brue: Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Six Five Summit, AI Unleashed. I'm Melody Brue for more insights and strategy. Today, I have JJ Davis, Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs at Dell Technologies, joining us for this sustainability track opening keynote on efficiency in the AI era. Thanks for being here, JJ. So to set the stage, AI is reshaping the technology landscape from data center architecture, to the edge, and beyond. And as enterprises accelerate AI adoption, Dell's position as both technology provider and a sustainability leader becomes increasingly significant. Can you share how Dell defines this new role in the AI-driven era, and how that vision is guiding your strategy?

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JJ Davis: Sure. So we have been working with almost 100% of the Fortune 500 for a very long time, we're a big provider to the CSPs as well. As you think about AI and the opportunity for business growth and productivity gains in front of us, it's a really exciting time to be in the infrastructure business. And so we launched, more than a year ago,the Dell AI factory with Nvidia as a way to help our customers deploy on-premises AI inside their companies. And so we continue to see great adoption. And what gets exciting from where I sit is the opportunity to think about modern data centers, and what that means from an efficiency perspective. So we've long been the leader in the best performance per watt in our servers, every generation gets better, but now, efficiency becomes even more important when you think about the growing cost of energy associated with AI, how we need to make sure that all of the infrastructure is fully utilized, how you think about where the workloads run, based on what it is the end user needs to get done. And so we're factoring all of this in, with a lot of product innovations, and how we're advocating on behalf of more secure and sustainable AI with governments around the world, as we partner to really build and grow the enterprise AI market, both for the public sector and the private sector.

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Melody Brue: Yeah. I mean, I think with the AI workloads, organizations and beyond, governments and others that you mentioned, are under pressure to optimize for both performance and sustainability. So how are your customers evolving in this context? The big question is, is sustainability remaining a top priority to your customers?

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JJ Davis: Well, it absolutely is, because our customers... Customers care about it. We really think about, what can we do to create technologies that advance human progress? That is the purpose of our company, and it has been for a very long time. It's why we exist. How do we drive business and societal value at the same time? And so it's always, though, been about cost reduction and ROI. I would say that when we're talking to customers, and we get RFPs from them, 95 plus percent of RFPs have sustainability questions in them. They want sustainability criteria to factor into the decisions they make. But it's not the number one thing. It's always been about price for performance, or total cost. And I think the good news with all this focus on efficiency is, we can do both. We can drive down the cost of energy to power these modern data centers, at the same time, we're thinking about, where does the workload run, in the data center or on the end device like the AI PC? How does that help increase energy availability? We have a new rear door heat exchanger that starts to capture heat, and really drive more energy efficiency in the data center. So the good news is, the energy intensity of these data centers and AI servers are forcing even more sustainable innovation, which is good for the environment, without compromising the productivity and economic gains we really are so excited about in the AI era.

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Melody Brue: Yeah. The timing of this conversation is so great, because you've just come off of Dell Technologies World, and there was so much engagement there directly with customers who are navigating these challenges. I heard so much of what was going on there with some of the other Six Five videos. What are some of the other key themes and concerns that you heard regarding AI adoption in terms of efficiency and sustainability?

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JJ Davis: Well, it's a great question. And the number one inquiry we get from customers is around calculating their product carbon footprint, both across their PCs and their data centers, because understanding the individual product carbon footprint of every product in their enterprise helps them then calculate the total emissions of their infrastructure, so they can have that baseline and drive those emissions down. That continues to be a big topic of conversation.

As I mentioned, we launched some new liquid cooling innovation, which is core to our server portfolio. Every new generation of server is more efficient than the previous generation. So as customers are weighing, "Is it time to modernize and invest in new technology?" A lot of companies are doing that because of AI, and they can then factor in, "What is the balance of liquid cooling versus air cooling?" What do they need to be thinking about differently?

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We also launched something at Dell Technologies World called Concept Astro. So it's a pilot project that we did with the Scripps Institute at UC, San Diego, where they have so many coral reef images, huge amounts of data, a lot of data intensity, where they're trying to research and study the coral reefs around the world, so that we can drive ocean preservation. And so we installed a Dell AI factory with Nvidia in their data center.

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We've been piloting to make that data center grid-aware, because if you can make it grid-aware, and the customer can know, "What is my availability of energy? Is it sustainable energy or not? When do I run this workload at a time when more energy is available so it's cheaper? And how do I run less energy-intensive workloads at a time when we're at a peak and it's really expensive? We're not there yet, that's why we're calling it a concept. But this is really the promise of what we can do to make our data centers smarter across the board, so that customers can meet both their P&L requirements, they can uphold their fiduciary responsibility to their investors, but they can also make sure that they're meeting their own sustainability goals as it relates to their IT.

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Melody Brue: Yeah. So a lot of what you said sort of summarizes that the promise of AI is so immense, but there's all of these operational and environmental considerations, and costs, if that's not managed carefully. So Dell helping to leverage this innovation, whether that's infrastructure, edge solutions, AI platforms to help customers address this. Where would you say people need to start on addressing those efficiency challenges, without compromising on performance or sustainability? Because as you're talking, it's like these are all great solutions, but that's a lot to take on, right?

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JJ Davis:

Yeah. And customers often ask, "What do I do?"

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Melody Brue:

"Where do I start?"

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JJ Davis:

"Where I start?" 

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Melody Brue:

Yeah.

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JJ Davis: Many of our leaders are like, "You just need to start somewhere, and you need to start now." And so a big part of what we do with our customers is help them get started. So if we have reference architectures, we have an AI pursuits team that can help our customers just getting started in AI from our sales team, who are really well-educated in how to help customers get started. We also have consulting services, and in that same consulting portfolio is a sustainability offering, for example.

We have a customer advisory board of chief sustainability officers that get together that we run separately from the CIO customer advisory boards that we run. But we do encourage more direct connection between the CIOs and the CSOs, so they can make these decisions together from a cost and an emissions perspective. And so those are some of the things that are happening. And by factoring in, and buying the latest technology with the latest innovations like liquid cooling, that's going to give you a jump-start on ensuring that your data center running AI is as efficient as it can be.

I would also say, really think about your AI strategy end to end. The emissions coming off of a PC are less than what would happen inside of your data center where you're running rack servers, as an example. So running the right workload, in the right place, for the right task or use case is critically important. So we can help customers with that as well.

And not AI per se, but I can't not mention circular economy. You can't go deploy a new fleet of AI PCs to your workforce without thinking about how are you going to retire the now obsolete equipment. So what we get excited about is environmental sustainability leadership and expertise from Dell across circular economy, turning trash into treasure, if you will, connected into climate action, and how that relates to our overall innovation agenda for our customers. We do look at it holistically, and each piece plays off of each other.

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Melody Brue: So looking at that holistically, that involves more than technology, it involves people.

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JJ Davis: Yeah.

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Melody Brue: So shifting a bit to the more people-centric side of AI, this rapid evolution of AI means that there is a skills gap that could be widening, and organizations are struggling to keep pace with that. What support is Dell giving towards workforce readiness, both internally and for your customers and partners, to ensure that industries and communities can fully participate and benefit from this AI economy?

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JJ Davis: That's a great question. And it's a key part of how we drive human progress and think about human capital management and human rights across our value chain. It's a big part of our AI strategy. When we think about skilling and ethical AI, it's got to be factored into the overall innovation agenda coming out of the company.

So I think public-private partnerships are key. So for example, the White House just issued the AI Education for American Youth Executive Order. So we just submitted our response for that, with guidance to the U.S. government on what we believe needs to be done, and then also made commitments around initiatives that we currently have, or that we are growing that can be factored into what Dell is going to do actively to advance the education of American youth, to help them participate fully in this new digital economy.

I'll give you a couple of examples. So yes, we have trained with AI foundations, training all of our employees. We did that more than a year ago, and we're constantly rolling out new training across the board, or by functional area, based on whatever it is that employee needs to know. Agentic AI is coming fast to the scene, so that's going to require a new level of training and understanding as we use AI agents in service of us, the humans, to help us reduce low-level work, do more high-level work, and add real value at greater efficiency. What of that training do we turn in through our Dell Learning team to offer that to our customers and to governments? And we have active engagements across many governments as we speak, from the U.S., to Malaysia, to India, really helping them address their own strategies, and what they are going to do to advance their citizens.

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We have interview digital assistants, if you will, where we have engaged non-profits. Hopeworks out of Philadelphia is a good example, where they are starting to do interview skilling with young adults entering the workforce, who are practicing interviews with an AI assistant. So when they go in for the real interview, they're ready.

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So it's a combination of training our own workforce, working through Dell Learning to train and certify our customers. Together with our customers and partners, training the public and the communities where we live and work, and figuring out, with our philanthropic approach, both with people, dollars, and equipment, how do we get this more into the hands of our communities, so they can fully participate? So there's a lot going on in this space, and it's critically important that everyone lean in and make a contribution here, if we're going to ensure all people have access to this AI economy.

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Melody Brue: I love that message, and that's actually something that I've always taken away from my conversations with leaders at Dell. This isn't something that's like, "Look at what we're doing." It's like, "Look at what we should all be doing. So with that, is there something you want to leave as the big takeaway? What do you want people to know or do next?

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JJ Davis: Well, I think at Dell, we are AI optimists, I think it's really important to lean in and educate yourself, and factor in both the business and societal impacts of AI. How are you reducing risk? How are you building the right processes and policies, so that you can ensure responsible AI? Do that, it's responsible business, but don't let that slow down your embracing of AI, and how you can drive real innovation and results within your company, but also leave a really positive imprint on the world.

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Melody Brue: That's great. Well, thank you so much for sharing your insights with us today, JJ. It really has been such a pleasure speaking with you. And for everyone watching, thanks for joining us for this sustainability opening keynote at the Six Five Summit. Stay connected with us on social, and explore more conversations throughout the day, and the next couple of days, at sixfivemedia.com/summit. There are more insights coming up next.

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‍Disclaimer: The Six Five Summit is for information and entertainment purposes only. During the course of this webcast, we might discuss companies that are publicly traded. However, please do not consider this as investment advice. We are not investment advisors.

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