Dell Technologies expects a more focused AI era for 2025

Agentic AI will be the biggest paradigm shift to happen in 2025 as enterprises look beyond automation, comments John Roese, Global Chief Technology Officer and Chief AI Officer for Dell Technologies.

The success of generative AI use cases in organizations will be a key focus area by enterprises in 2025. Heavy investments in AI over the past two years are also expected to continue next year, with IDC predicting AI investments in Asia Pacific to reach US$110 billion by 2028.

For Dell Technologies, being part of the enterprise AI journey is imperative. Dell has continued to innovate its products and service to ensure customers are capable of getting the best ROI from their investments. With 40% of current customer discussions being around their data strategy, Dell’s hybrid cloud and AI offerings become ever so more important.

According to Peter Marrs, President, Asia Pacific, Japan and Greater China for Dell Technologies (pictured below), every customer that Dell has is looking for a strategic partner to help them in their transformation.

“We know this when we look at Dell Technologies from the data center to the device. We're the only game in town who's going to be able to help these customers transform. And that's with our partners. But we couldn't be more excited about the opportunity ahead. And we're really excited to help our customers and partners make this happen,” said Marrs.

In conversations with customers, John Roese, Global Chief Technology Officer and Chief AI Officer for Dell Technologies (pictured above) commented that at a global level, many were still confused and trying to figure out a repeatable way to do AI.

“We have shown them a repeatable methodology to identify your primary use cases, the important places to apply it. With the AI factory model, we have given them a blueprint, a template of how to do the necessary technical work and organize the ecosystem to put it into production. Most customers this year, as we talk to them, are more comfortable about the approach and the methodology,” said Roese.

For Roese, the issue they are seeing has actually nothing much to do with technology but more towards organizational complexity. He pointed out that Dell approaches this complexity by taking a top down and strategic approach.

“A business unit cannot just create an AI project and implement it. It doesn't happen anymore. I will tell you almost every conversation, even in the most advanced companies, is they're still struggling to build the right organizational model to make sure that they have an empowered leader that they can actually make strategic decisions. The leader would also need to deal with the consequences that some people won't like those decisions, but they can't override them,” added Roese.

Building the AI era

In a media briefing, Roese highlighted the trends he believes will shape how enterprises move forward with AI in 2025. For Roese, Agentic AI will be the biggest paradigm shift to happen in 2025 as enterprises look beyond automation. He explained that the maturation of GenAI is giving rise to sophisticated AI agents capable of autonomous operation, natural language communication, and seamless collaboration with both humans and AI agents.

“Agentic AI does not replace the traditional reactive AIs that we are using today. In fact, it may interact with them very actively. But what it does do is dramatically increase the capability set that we have to build out modern AI solutions. It changes where they run, where they move, to the real world in a much more aggressive fashion. I will make a prediction for you that the word of the year next year in AI will be agentic. Because this is a very big deal, and it is a very advanced, significant advancement in AI technology. Agentic AI will be a catalyst for significant forward progress architecturally in how we do AI,” said Roese.

Roese also predicts 2025 will see the crucial need for enterprises to scale AI effectively, especially with organizations increasingly prioritizing tangible ROI and business value from their AI initiatives, given the rising success rates of GenAI pilot projects.

Roese emphasized that Scalable AI requires businesses to prioritize their most impactful processes and build a reusable, scalable AI foundation. In APJ, Marrs showcased successful AI deployments in the region with increasing regulatory diversity and privacy concerns driving enterprises toward privatized and on-premises AI adoption.

As organizations scale AI, Roese also believes that Sovereign AI will have a greater role in 2025. There are already increased efforts by countries to create localized AI ecosystems aligned with their culture, language, and data security needs. He explained that this concept focuses on a nation’s ability to generate AI value and differentiation using its own infrastructure and data, fostering ecosystems that reflect local intellectual property and priorities.

With businesses focusing on their data strategy to develop better AI use cases, the convergence of AI with other emerging technologies will also be key in 2025. Roese highlighted the synergistic potential of combining AI with advancements in areas like quantum computing, intelligent edge, Zero Trust security, 6G technologies, and digital twins.

For example, the combined power of quantum computing and AI will be a game-changer for numerous industries. It will provide the necessary computing power to apply AI to complex fields like material science, drug discovery, and optimization problems, areas where traditional computing methods face limitations.

“AI has reframed everything, including the role of almost every other technology. So for instance, we now think of quantum computing as not a separate domain. But as an environment that is being accelerated by AI. The advances in quantum are moving faster because we are using AI to do that. More importantly, we now see it as a future computing architecture that will accelerate AI. So, there is this deep relationship between quantum and AI over time,” explained Roese.

On AI PCs, Roese commented that as businesses move towards Agentic AI, there will be the need to move more of the AI processing out onto the edge device or onto the client device. AI PCs will play an important role as they are designed with NPUS and other accelerators to be a platform to run Ais and not just a platform for the user experience for an AI use case.

“The bottom line is, no matter which technology you explore today, there is now a connective tissue into the AI ecosystem. And so, AI has not only become the center of our application world, but it is also the center of the technology world. Every technology is now either enabling AI or is enabled by AI,” said Roese.

Lastly, for enterprises to have a successful AI era, having the right skills will be paramount. The evolution of AI is undoubtedly reshaping the workforce. Roese's vision for the future of work emphasizes the transformative impact of AI on the job market, requiring organizations to invest in developing their workforce's AI fluency. As AI agents handle more routine tasks, human roles will evolve to focus on higher-level strategic thinking, creative problem-solving, and complex decision-making.

The role of partners

Both Marrs and Roese also acknowledge that their partner ecosystem plays an essential role in the AI era, especially in helping businesses in making the right choices in their AI journey.

In APJ, Marrs pointed out that there are some partners that have invested heavily in AI and are building out the capabilities to work with Dell Technologies, given the vendor’s end-to-end capabilities across GenAI from the device to the data center.

“There are some partners who are ready and have capability. There’s also a lot of them who are really looking for help. And we're doing a lot of work with those partners with AI training and AI enablement. But I can't raise my hand to say there's one partner right now that's perfect at this. We're all learning. But I think our strategy and what we've built out is the thing that I would say the partners are so excited about because it helps them.

Echoing Marrs sentiments, Roese also commented that the journey of Dell Technologies’ partners are similar to the journey of the customers as they are both learning at the same time.

“We cannot help every customer in the world directly solve their AI ecosystem challenges and their opportunities. Our partners are critical of that. And so fundamentally, we are investing almost equally to help them learn and evolve and become capable just like we have to help our customers learn and evolve and become capable because the industry is the collection of us, our partners, our customers and the governments that we exist within,” said Roese.

As the world moves towards year three of GenAI, Roese believes it will be a multi-decade experience that will continue to iterate forward.

“There is no option to sit this out and wait for it to end and then do AI. Get on the bus, start working, be engaged. We're here to help. It's getting a lot easier because of AI and its development cycle. It's also going to be an exciting and interesting industry, as long as we're in it,” concluded Roese.