Dell Technologies Accelerates Artificial Intelligence Adoption with New Dell EMC AI Experience Zones

Dell Technologies partners with Intel and launched Dell EMC AI Experience Zones in Bangalore, Seoul, Singapore, Sydney, and Tokyo. A space dedicated to knowledge sharing, the zones offer visitors an immersive AI experience, serving as a catalyst for AI understanding and adoption amongst organisations in the Asia Pacific & Japan (APJ) region.

According to Dell Technologies’ Digital Transformation Index, AI is amongst the top spending priorities for business leaders in the APJ region; one in two leaders plans to invest in AI in the next one to three years as part of their digital strategy. However, 95 percent of companies are still experiencing transformation roadblocks, one of which is lack of in-house skill sets and expertise.

Built within existing Dell EMC Customer Solution Centres, the new Dell EMC AI Experience Zones are open to customers and partners looking to gain a comprehensive understanding of AI technologies and advancements, as well as practical, hands-on AI solutions design and deployment experience. The AI Experience Zones will showcase how the Dell EMC High-Performance Computing (HPC) and AI ecosystem can be used to address business challenges and opportunities today across a wide range of industries.

The AI Experience Zones technology demonstrations, leveraging the Dell EMC HPC portfolio, will illustrate how sample data sets are processed and inferred upon and how industry-leading Dell EMC solution stacks powered by Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors come together to provide powerful AI-led experiences.

Aimed at providing access to Dell EMC’s AI expertise and technology across the region, the AI Experience Zones place a strong emphasis on simplifying AI deployments for customers. Through masterclass training, AI expert engagements, and collaboration opportunities available on-site, customers are guided through the necessary steps to kick-start AI initiatives including design, installation, maintenance and, most importantly, delivering tangible business outcomes for their organisations.

“The timely adoption of AI will create new opportunities that will deliver concrete business advantages across all industries and business functions,” says Chris Kelly, vice president, Infrastructure Solutions Group, Dell EMC, APJ. “Companies looking to thrive in a data drive era need to understand that investments in AI are no longer optional – they are business critical. Whilst complex in nature, it is imperative that companies quickly start moving from theoretical AI strategies to practical deployments to stay ahead of the curve.”

A recent IDC report shows that worldwide spending on AI systems is forecasted to reach $35.8 billion in 2019, an increase of 44 percent over the amount spent in 2018. "Significant worldwide artificial intelligence systems spend can now be seen within every industry as AI initiatives continue to optimise operations, transform the customer experience, and create new products and services", said Marianne Daquila, research manager, Customer Insights & Analysis at IDC.

“The APJ region is building intelligent organisations powered by data, with AI technology woven into their digital fabric,” said Andrew Underwood, Chief Technology Officer, High Performance Computing & Artificial Intelligence, Dell EMC, APJ. “The Dell EMC AI Experience Zones provide a unique space where customers and our partners can explore, test out, and learn about the different physical and virtual components that make up an AI ecosystem. This initiative is the focal point of our commitment to fostering knowledge sharing between CIOs, our ready team of technology experts, and industry partners to accelerate AI adoption and innovation for the region.”

All five AI Experience Zones will provide product demonstrations, training, and pilots for both Dell EMC customers and its ecosystem of partners across the region.

The AI Experience Zones will include the latest generation Dell EMC PowerEdge servers paired with several advanced, open source AI software developed by Intel such as OpenVINO toolkit as well as Dell EMC networking and storage technologies, providing AI solutions that simplify system design, speeding the path to AI with the confidence of scalable designs, proven in our labs and through customer deployments to meet workload requirements and customer outcomes.       

Lisa Spelman, vice president and general manager, Intel® Xeon® Processors and Data Centre Marketing at Intel “Intel’s latest AI technology, tuned and optimised with Dell EMC infrastructure, extends high-performance big data processing, analytics, and deep learning capabilities from the data centre to the edge. AI is poised to usher in a new era of machine intelligence, and we want to provide every data scientist, developer, and customer with access to the right tools to unlock deeper levels of knowledge and insights.”