Customers investing in AI brings massive opportunities for partners

“We've got to get to the decision-makers. We've got to get to the business line executives and come with ideas and solutions to be able to activate their data and make all of this happen,” says Michael Dell.

For Dell Technologies, the partner ecosystem plays an important role in their growth and success. With more than half of their sales being generated by partners, ensuring partners can deliver to customers is key.

While the keynote focused on new innovations to boost AI development and deployment, Michael Dell, Chairman & CEO at Dell Technologies also took the opportunity to address partners from around the world.

Acknowledging the partner ecosystem’s role in driving nearly half of Dell’s business around the world, Dell said he appreciated the productivity from partners especially in helping customers understand the need to seize the opportunity and embrace the changes.

“We're at the beginning. A lot of customers don't really know how to get going, and they need a lot of help. And this is where I think partners can play a big role. Certainly, any way you do it, data is really important. You have to organize your data, and you have to activate your data, and increasingly, we think you're going to bring AI to where the data is. And it isn't one-size-fits-all,” said Dell.

According to Dell, customers are finding small AI models being able to work perfectly for most of their use cases. He also pointed out that organizations that have made the most of this have done it in a top-down fashion. Dell added that organizations are now looking at how this can enhance their business in the next three to five years as well as how they can do processes differently.

“The customers are going to need a lot of help. This is the fastest rate of change we've ever seen until tomorrow, when it's going to go faster. So, you want to build architectures that are flexible and agile where you can effectively put that in there. And if something else comes along, take that out, put in a different model,” explained Dell.

For Denise Millard, Chief Partner Officer at Dell Technologies, the 3000 AI factories that have been enabled is a clear indication of the growth and the need to have the right infrastructure. Millard said that the AI Factory pipelines are scaling significantly.

“I think the reason that we're winning these is that we have understood that this is a priority for customers. We've applied our engineering and innovation to the new challenges. This is not like the building systems of the past. It requires a different pace and cadence. And we do start from a good position. We are the world leader in service. We're the world leader in storage. And so, if we hadn't done this, we'd be doing it wrong. So, we recognize that. And we run to the fire. We have customers that are challenging us,” said Dell.

Dell also mentioned that the improved capabilities in the product platforms are becoming faster as the tech giant has improved as a company in everything it’s done with AI.

And that's one customer. So, this thing is just growing. And our product platforms, they're coming faster because we're improving as a company in everything we do with AI.

Partnership with Cohere

During the keynote session on the second day of DTW 2025, Jeff Clarke, Vice Chairman & Chief Operating Officer, Dell Technologies shared how they’ve partnered with Cohere to create bite-sized solutions that are easily deployed inside organizations.

The Canadian AI company focuses on building and offering LLMs and natural language processing (NLP) solutions for businesses. They provide access to their models and tools through an API, making it easier for developers and companies to integrate AI capabilities into their applications and workflows.

On the partnership with Dell, Cohere will provide customers with a secure, efficient, and easy-to-use platform that enables them to quickly scale AI agents throughout their workforce to unlock greater productivity and streamline operations. The secure AI agents platform, Cohere North, enables customers so speed time-to-value for organizations with AI applications.

Specifically, North allows any employee, regardless of technical background, to automate routine tasks with custom AI agents and focus on areas that provide the most value for their company. The North platform will be integrated with Dell’s AI-optimized PowerEdge servers and PowerScale storage for a turn-key solution that allows enterprises to quickly see ROI.

Taking the next step

As Dell Technologies provides more tools to enable AI development, Dell also mentioned that there is still a big translation layer of how companies can use all these tools. And this he believes is what partners generally do.

“A lot of you have been in this business a long time and you know that if you keep doing the same thing, you're out of business. You have to keep evolving. And so, this is the new capability that we all need to build to help our customers use this AI superpower. And we're going to apply and size it in many respects for more small and medium-sized customers. We can go to tens of thousands and millions of customers. And it isn't going to be one-size-fits-all. It is also such a big opportunity,” said Dell.

Apart from that, Dell also pointed out that more companies are figuring out that AI is not like making IT changes. Instead, it’s a total game-changer that needs to be a priority inside the organization which in turn is an opportunity for partners.