Powering Your AI Future in 2025: Partner Perspectives IT Voice | IT in Depth

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Powering Your AI Future in 2025: Partner Perspectives

This week, Jeff Clarke, Vice Chairman and COO, and John Roese, Global Chief Technology Officer and Chief AI Officer at Dell Technologies, shared their insights on the top tech trends driving innovation in 2025. Both pieces are a must-read, packed with thought-provoking ideas on how AI will continue to transform our world. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend diving into Jeff’s take on emerging trends and John’s predictions for our AI-driven future. Why? As we head into 2025, your customers will look to you more than ever to cut through the complexity. This is our opportunity to help them embrace the right technologies to support the workloads that will be foundational for their long-term success.

Jeff Clarke, Vice Chairman and COO
Jeff Clarke, Vice Chairman and COO

As I reflect on these insights and the many conversations I’ve had with partners over the past few months, I’m thrilled about how these tech trends will create real opportunities for Dell’s partner ecosystem. With that in mind, here’s how I see our partner community driving value and impact in 2025 and beyond:

AI becomes real

AI is no longer a nice-to-have—it’s a must-have and will be essential for customers to deploy thoughtfully in this new world order.  The race is on to weave AI into everyday operations, from automating routine tasks to unlocking valuable insights from data. AI is poised to drive efficiency, innovation, growth and ultimately more meaningful customer outcomes.

Businesses are realizing that to truly unlock AI’s potential, they need the right strategy and infrastructure to run workloads across complex and ever-changing IT topologies. For partners, this creates a tremendous opportunity to demystify AI and make it more accessible.

Over the next year, businesses will focus on equipping themselves with the right platforms and tools to apply AI to essential processes. This shift is already happening and offers a significant opportunity for our partners to play a pivotal role in their customers’ digital transformations.

Your role as a trusted advisor has never been more important. By building robust AI practices and expert AI capabilities—and leveraging architecture like Dell AI Factory, Dell Validated Designs, AI labs, and proof of concepts (POCs)—you can empower customers to confidently execute their AI strategies and realize meaningful outcomes.

 

AI will transform the data center

AI demands a new approach to the data center and a deeper understanding of the infrastructure required to support the deployment of AI workloads effectively and at scale.

AI is forcing customers to rethink their technology strategy. Organizations must adopt a holistic approach to prepare for a highly distributed data landscape spanning on-prem, at the edge, on AI PCs and in the cloud. Currently, 78% of organizations leverage on-prem or hybrid cloud solutions for generative AI tasks. As AI workloads multiply, organizations will need to invest in infrastructure optimized to handle the immense computational demands that will consume data at rates never seen before. Navigating this evolving infrastructure landscape demands meticulous planning. This includes aligning the right data management strategies with the right workloads while carefully balancing quality, cost, security, data, and latency associated with running workloads across diverse environments while accounting for sustainability and scalability.

 

There’s also a growing shift toward disaggregated architecture where compute, storage, and networking are decoupled and treated as independent resources that can be scaled, upgraded, and managed separately. While this more optimized and highly tuned approach offers numerous benefits, it also requires a reimagining of the traditional method, and organizations that fail to adopt the right AI strategy and architecture will be at a disadvantage. This is where Dell AI Factory comes in— a framework that makes it easy to integrate, process, and deploy AI across various infrastructures.

According to Canalys, the worldwide addressable market for technology will reach $5.44 trillion in 2025 and 70.1% will be partner-delivered. A customer will typically engage with an average of 7 partners on landing a strategic decision.  Now is the time to sharpen your skills on modern infrastructure, as the real opportunity for our partners lies in bridging the gaps and stitching the seams—playing a pivotal role in weaving everything together into a cohesive solution.

 The AI PC will power the next wave of innovation

 AI PCs are not just boosting productivity—they’re redefining innovation. From streamlining workflows to enabling advanced data analytics, these devices are accelerating employee productivity like never before. With AI extending to the edge, the possibilities are limitless.

We’re entering a perfect storm of opportunity. The return-to-office trend means that employees are demanding a seamless on-site experience for new devices that empower employees with AI productivity tools like Copilot.  At the same time, we’re approaching a natural PC refresh cycle, fueled by the largest installed base ever and Microsoft ending Windows 10 support at the end of next year. With 240 million PCs unable to upgrade to Windows 11 and approximately 40% of Windows PCs over six years old, modernization is no longer optional.

The AI PC will be the cornerstone of your customers’ distributed architecture. For partners, this represents a significant opportunity to establish robust client programs. By engaging with customers ready to modernize aging PCs, define their silicon diversity strategies, and preparing for the future, you can capture the immense growth potential in 2025.

 Let’s Make It Happen Together

 AI is all about a mindset shift from avoiding what’s coming, to leaning-in and embracing it.

The future is here, and it’s going to require our collective leadership to support our joint customers in helping them realize the promise of AI. Together we have a massive opportunity to guide businesses through this transformative time, boosting their ability to innovate, optimize and succeed.  When you think about where to place your big bets for the future – think about how Dell Technologies is leading the way in AI with our strategic technology ecosystem. We’re invested in your long-term growth with a commitment to a simple partnering framework, backed by a predictable engagement model designed to reward your expertise. Together, we can drive profitable and sustainable growth, ensuring a thriving future for your business.

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