Unpacking Dell Technologies World: Seven Key Takeaways for Midmarket and Channel Partners Navigating the AI Era

Dell Technologies World 2025 (DTW) recently provided a comprehensive look into Dell's strategy and vision, with a particular focus on the transformative power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for businesses of all sizes. Keynotes from Michael Dell and Jeff Clarke, alongside detailed briefings on Client Solutions Group (CSG) and Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG), painted a picture of a company positioning itself as the end-to-end partner for the AI journey. While much attention often focuses on hyperscalers and large enterprises, Dell offers significant opportunities and tailored strategies for the midmarket as well as the vital channel partners who serve them.

Here are my seven key takeaways:

1. The Dell AI Factory is an End-to-End AI Framework, Not Just Hardware

Dell introduced and expanded upon the concept of the Dell AI Factory, describing it as an unmatched set of capabilities in the industry designed to help businesses get started with Generative AI and scale it. It is presented as an open, modular infrastructure with a rich ecosystem, delivering powerful GPUs, scalable storage, high-throughput networking, curated tooling, and integrated cutting-edge models, supported by deployment services. This framework covers the entire computing architecture for modern AI workloads, from PCs to data centers and the edge. Dell has helped over 3,000 businesses build their factories and launched over 200 new features since its inception a year ago. The vision is for customers to bring their own company data to the AI Factory, driving unique business outcomes.

Why this is important for Midmarket and Channel Partners: This framework provides a structured approach to AI adoption. For midmarket, it demystifies the complex landscape of AI infrastructure by offering a seemingly integrated and supported stack. They don't need to piece together disparate components or become AI experts overnight. For channel partners, the AI Factory is a complete solution portfolio to take to customers. Dell is making it easier to consume and deploy through reference architectures and packaged software. This enables partners to concentrate on delivering value and outcomes, rather than merely selling individual pieces of hardware. The concept of bringing "your own company data" to drive outcomes resonates strongly with businesses of all sizes, emphasizing that AI value is tied to their unique operations and data, which partners are often intimately familiar with.

2. AI PCs and Workstations are Positioned as the Accessible AI Starting Point

A significant theme was that the AI journey doesn't have to start with massive investments in data centers. High-performance PCs and workstations, particularly the Dell Pro Max series, are an excellent starting point for a customer's AI journey. Positioned as a way to avoid going to the cloud and getting locked in, allowing customers to run AI operations on-prem and local, keeping devices close to their data. The introduction of the Dell Pro Max laptop with the Qualcomm AI 100 PC Inference Card, a discrete enterprise-class NPU, adds a new tool for edge inference, bringing "cloud-class inference" to the local device. These high-end configurations are ideal for data scientists, researchers, and other professionals who require advanced computing capabilities. Dell is simplifying its portfolio and offering choices across NVIDIA, Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm. The new Dell Pro Max with GB300 can deliver significant performance for running and training large models (LLMs) locally. Even a smaller device, referred to as a "little tiny computer," such as a Dell Pro Max with GB10, is a "Personal Cloud" or "AI-native" supercomputer that sits next to a laptop in performance. Workstations serve as both a starting point for customers without significant data center investments and a valuable sandbox environment for AI developers to iterate and fine-tune models locally, without consuming expensive data center resources. The memory footprint on these Del Pro Max AI-ready devices is crucial for handling LLMs (up to 1 trillion parameters) with higher accuracy without significant quantization. NVIDIA also provides blueprints specifically designed to fit these Dell Pro Max AI devices, with parameters suitable for this environment.

Why this is important for Midmarket and Channel Partners: This message directly addresses the apprehension many businesses might feel about the perceived cost and complexity of AI. Starting with AI PCs and workstations represents a lower barrier to entry. It allows them to experiment with AI applications using their existing devices or a relatively smaller investment compared to a datacenter rack. Keeping AI close to the device or on-prem is appealing for SMBs concerned about data security and control, as well as cloud costs. For channel partners, this provides a tangible, familiar product category – PCs and workstations – as an entry point for AI conversations with their existing client base. They can leverage their expertise in client devices to introduce AI capabilities, focusing on the benefits of local inference and development for specific roles within a company. The emphasis on memory and accuracy for specific use cases, such as medical imaging, helps partners position these devices for vertical applications.

3. On-Premises and Edge AI are Strategic Imperatives, Driving Cost Savings and Security

A strong case was made throughout on the benefits of running AI workloads on-premises and at the edge. Advantages include avoiding cloud lock-in, keeping the device close to the data for enhanced security and performance, and significant cost savings compared to public cloud deployments, as many customers prefer on-premises or air-gapped solutions. Michael Dell pointed out that the overwhelming majority of the world's data is created in the data center or on the edge, and cost, performance, and security will keep much of that data on-premises. A compelling statistic mentioned was that running workloads can be 60% more cost-effective on-premises than in the cloud. Edge AI enables instant, secure, on-site data processing, reducing latency and facilitating real-time intelligence. Examples like micro data centers in retail stores (Lowe's) demonstrate packing significant power for low-latency, high-performance, real-time decisioning at the edge. Edge deployments are expected to become increasingly critical as agent-based technology becomes more widespread.

Why this is important for Midmarket and Channel Partners: Cloud costs and data security are perennial concerns for businesses of all sizes, but they can be particularly acute for those with limited budgets and IT staff. The explicit focus on the value of on-prem and edge AI directly addresses these concerns. Keeping data local is often a non-negotiable requirement for many businesses due to compliance or proprietary concerns. Edge deployments open up opportunities for partners to implement solutions in distributed environments, such as retail stores, manufacturing floors, or remote offices, where real-time processing is crucial. This aligns with the strengths of many partners that provide local IT support and infrastructure management.

4. Simplification is Key: Making AI Deployment and Management Easier

Dell recognizes that deploying and managing AI can be a complex process. A significant focus was placed on simplifying this process through various tools and initiatives. Dell Pro AI Studio is highlighted as a software solution designed for commercial and enterprise customers to enable new hardware and streamline AI development. It adapts to the latest acceleration technology, allowing customers to develop, securely deploy, and easily manage models across a fleet, potentially reducing the time from months to as little as six weeks. Dell is also providing validated blueprints for deploying cloud operating systems and hypervisor stacks, such as VMware, Nutanix, and Red Hat, in an automated fashion using the Dell Automation Platform. For partners, Dell is creating reference architectures for high-compute structures and complex software stacks, making the AI Factory easier to consume. The goal is to make deploying AI easy and turnkey, presenting an alternative to the public cloud option. Dell's expanding support for NVIDIA's networking gear and software platform is also aimed at providing a single point of contact for support, simplifying the customer experience.

Why this is important for Midmarket and Channel Partners: The perceived complexity of AI is a significant barrier for SMBs and midmarket companies. Dell's focus on simplification, automation, and turnkey solutions directly tackles this. Tools like Dell Pro AI Studio allow partners to accelerate the time-to-value for customers by streamlining model deployment and management, even across a fleet of AI PCs. Reference architectures provide partners with proven, pre-validated designs, reducing implementation risk and effort. This allows partners to scale their AI service offerings more easily. The centralized support for Dell and NVIDIA components through Dell simplifies the support burden for both customers and partners.

5. Disaggregated Infrastructure and Dell Private Cloud Offer Flexibility

Dell is advocating for a move towards disaggregated infrastructure as a way to address the limitations of traditional three-tier and Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) approaches, particularly in the context of AI workloads and customer desires for flexibility following the acquisition of VMware. Disaggregated architecture involves independent pools of compute, storage, and networking combined with software-driven automation to achieve simplicity akin to HCI but with greater flexibility.  Dell Private Cloud is introduced as a new offering built for this disaggregated world, allowing customers to log in to a portal, view validated blueprints, and deploy automated private cloud environments using Dell infrastructure and the Dell Automation Platform. This platform enables the installation of preferred third-party operating systems and the management of private clouds with AIOps capabilities. This approach allows for the independent scaling of compute and storage, potentially resulting in significantly higher utilization rates compared to HCI.

Why this is important for Midmarket and Channel Partners: While large enterprises drive the need for disaggregation, the benefits of flexibility and efficiency extend to midmarket customers as they scale their IT infrastructure. Dell Private Cloud offer provides a modern, flexible foundation that can accommodate a mix of traditional and new AI workloads. For partners, this is a modern data center strategy they can propose to customers looking to escape potential vendor lock-in or optimize resource utilization. The ability to deploy and manage multiple hypervisors offers customers a choice, which is increasingly important. The efficiency gains, such as consolidation ratios, provide a strong return on investment (ROI) story for modernizing infrastructure to accommodate data-hungry AI workloads.

6. Strong Partner Ecosystem and the Opportunity for Channel Partners to Lead AI Adoption

Dell is "all in" with its partners, seeing them as an extension of the Dell sales organization. Dell relies on partners for their vertical expertise and incredible customer relationships. Dell is actively investing in its partner ecosystem, providing predictive insights, improving collaboration tools, and simplifying the quoting and ordering experience through intelligent pricing and AI-guided selling. Dell is also investing in partner readiness plans and enablement, encouraging partners to develop their own AI practices and establish AI factories or solution labs to showcase outcomes and run proof-of-concepts (POCs). Success stories with partners like HCL (board operations/transportation) and SHI (retail theft prevention) demonstrate partners leading with Dell/NVIDIA solutions.

Why this is important for Midmarket and Channel Partners: This is arguably the most critical takeaway for channel partners. Dell is not just enabling partners; it is declaring its reliance on them for growth and market penetration, particularly in the midmarket and SMB segments. The investments in simplifying the partner experience (quoting, lead sharing, collaboration) are aimed at making Dell easier to do business with. The encouragement and enablement for partners to build AI practices present a significant new revenue stream. Partners are uniquely positioned, leveraging their vertical expertise and existing customer relationships, to identify and deliver AI solutions, particularly as businesses require assistance in translating general AI capabilities into specific business outcomes. The successful partner examples provide a blueprint for others in the ecosystem. Dell is actively sharing sales assets and readiness plans to help partners capitalize on market opportunities, such as the PC refresh cycle.

7. Data Readiness and Security are Fundamental to AI Success

Data is the "long pole in the tent" and the cornerstone for achieving value from AI. Treating data as a "first-class asset" involves cataloging, lineage tracking, permissioning, governance, and making data discoverable. The importance of data extends to structuring data for semantic search capabilities, moving beyond traditional keyword searches. Alongside data readiness, security is paramount, described as "pretty core" to Dell's products at the infrastructure layer, with features like Data at Rest Encryption and support for security certifications built in. Cyber resilience and data protection portfolios, such as PowerProtect Data Domain, are becoming an explicit part of the AI factory discussion. Dell Professional Services also plays a role in helping customers with their data strategy, security, and building a secure AI infrastructure.

Why this is important for Midmarket and Channel Partners: Many midmarket and SMBs lack mature data management and governance practices. Recognizing data readiness as a prerequisite for AI creates a significant service opportunity for channel partners. Partners with data management expertise can help customers organize, cleanse, and structure their data, making it AI-ready. Furthermore, security is a top concern for businesses of any size. Dell's emphasis on built-in data security features and the role of cyber resilience in the AI factory provides partners with strong talking points and solutions to offer. Partners can leverage their security service capabilities to help customers secure their AI infrastructure, addressing a critical need that CIOs consistently rank as a top priority.

Conclusion

Dell Technologies World 2025 signaled a continuing, clear, and aggressive push into the AI market, with a deliberate strategy to make AI accessible and achievable for businesses beyond the hyperscale elite. The Dell AI Factory, with AI PCs as entry points, focuses on cost-effective on-premises and edge deployments, offers simplification tools, provides flexible infrastructure, and relies deeply on channel partners. This paints a picture of immense opportunity for midmarket companies, SMBs, and the partners who serve them. Dell leadership's call to action is clear: the market is ready, the technology is here, and partners are crucial to seizing this "unprecedented opportunity". By leaning into these takeaways, partners can position themselves as essential guides for customers navigating their AI journeys, driving significant growth for themselves and helping midmarket and SMBs unlock the transformative potential of AI. As Michael Dell emphasized, the real danger is standing still; it's time to get moving.