It’s widely accepted that businesses must listen and react to the market to stay relevant and competitive.
But in this age of AI, these pivots may become more urgent and disruptive than ever before.
Take Dell Technologies. Founded by Michael Dell in his university dorm room back in 1984, it has long been recognised as a leading supplier of PC hardware, with infrastructure and services added over time.
Yet even this decades-old company is very different today than it was when generative AI platform ChatGPT launched at the back end of 2022.
“There has been a fundamental shift towards machines that are thinking – and helping us think,” the CEO told journalists at Dell Technologies World in Las Vegas today. “We’re reshaping the company around that.
“We’re not the same company today as we were three or four years ago… we continue to evolve.”
The shift started with the move to build out GenAI infrastructure and by 2024 it was announcing the launch of the Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA, a partnership AI solution to help enterprises quickly capitalise on AI investments.
Today that platform is used by more than 5,000 customers including Formula 1 team McLaren Racing. This week Dell announced support for agentic AI workloads alongside a host of ‘deskside’ hardware built to run AI models locally rather than in the cloud – at a far cheaper price – as well as groundbreaking products within the data centre to maximise compute power, efficiency and sustainability.
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In a keynote speech Jeff Clarke, the company’s COO, outlined 10 changes that have taken place in the last 12 months around AI, including a shift in its role from an ‘advisor’ to ‘operator’; a huge fall in model prices; and a general tripling in GenAI software spend.
And CTO John Roese explained to journalists that agents are now running in all parts of Dell’s business, while stressing the importance of data hygiene and humans in the loop.
If a company as established as Dell is reimagining its workflows and operating as a fundamentally different company within such a short space of time, others may do well to pay attention.