Dell Technologies World 2025 | Srinath Alapati, Dell | Roving Reporter

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Srinath Alapati

Sr. Director, Product Marketing

Dell Technologies

play_circle_outline Importance of data in powering AI

play_circle_outline Dell's AI Data Platform and Data Lakehouse: Streamlining Data Access and Maximizing Benefits

play_circle_outline Achieving Partner Excitement: Ensuring Data Security for Handling Sensitive Information

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Srinath Alapati, Dell | Roving Reporter

Srinath Alapati

Sr. Director, Product Marketing Dell Technologies

Srinath Alapati, senior director of product marketing at Dell Technologies Inc., joins theCUBE’s Savannah Peterson at Dell Technologies World 2023 to explore the Dell AI Data Platform and its role in transforming enterprise data strategies. Their conversation highlights Dell’s approach to unlocking AI potential without costly or complex migrations.

Alapati shares how the platform enables data to be stored and processed in place, enhancing speed, access and real-time analysis across silos. Features such as Project Lightning and Metadata IQ support secur... Read more

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What issue do many enterprise customers face with their data spread across different silos in their entire organization? add

What components make up the Dell AI Factory and how does it work? add

What are some key considerations regarding data security and access within the Dell AI data platform? add

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Savannah Peterson

>> Hello AI fans, and welcome back to Fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada. We're here at Dell Tech World. My name's Savannah Peterson here for theCUBE. Day three of our live broadcast. Very excited to be having a conversation about the number one thing that powers AI, and that is data. New guest for us today. , thank you so much for taking time to hang out with me.

Srinath Alapati

>> Glad to be here.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yes, very excited. AI is nothing without data.

Srinath Alapati

>> That's right.

Savannah Peterson

>> So talk to me about what's going on. Talk to me about the announcement yesterday, data platform, big deal.

Srinath Alapati

>> Yep, absolutely. It was probably the biggest deal, I would say maybe.

Savannah Peterson

>> Ooh yeah.

Srinath Alapati

>> So, yeah, as you said, AI without data is nothing, actually bad data. If you input bad data, you get garbage.

Savannah Peterson

>> Makes it even worse.

Srinath Alapati

>> Yeah. Garbage out.

Savannah Peterson

>> Trash in, trash out.

Srinath Alapati

>> Yeah. But the problem is, when I talked to the customers in the last couple of days, a lot of enterprise customers have data spread across their entire enterprise, like the-

Savannah Peterson

>> And in so many different silos, right?

Srinath Alapati

>> Different silos, maybe 10, 20 to 50 different places, different-

Savannah Peterson

>> 50 different places is insane to think about.

Srinath Alapati

>> Yeah, yeah, lots. But they don't want to move all that data.

Savannah Peterson

>> Right.

Srinath Alapati

>> Because that's a pretty expensive proposition.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yes it is.

Srinath Alapati

>> Migration.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yes it is.

Srinath Alapati

>> And so it's not an easy task, accessing all that data.

Savannah Peterson

>> So what are they going to do now? What does this announcement enable?

Srinath Alapati

>> Exactly. So what we need, customers need is a new way of approaching data architecture. So what they need is able to access data in place and process that data, discover it, analyze it, all that-

Savannah Peterson

>> Meet it where it is.

Srinath Alapati

>> All that good stuff.

Savannah Peterson

>> Right?

Srinath Alapati

>> Exactly where it is. I think it was Michael who said that, bringing AI to the data, not data to AI. Absolutely. And that's where Dell AI data platform comes in. It's the newest member of Dell AI Factory.

Savannah Peterson

>> Which is so exciting. Last year was the announcement of the Dell AI Factory here at Dell Tech world. This is definitely a part of the evolution. So talk to me a little bit about exactly how this works and what happens.

Srinath Alapati

>> Yeah, so the Dell AI Factory has multiple components. We can dive into that. So first is the fast scalable storage that's underneath, so powered by PowerScale or ObjectScale. So first let's talk into PowerScale a little bit. So we have ideal, fast, scalable storage. It's the world's most secure storage as well, perfect for training, AI data preparation and training, ingestion and inferencing. We recently got certified for NVIDIA Cloud partner certification. And in a few months-

Savannah Peterson

>> Oh, congratulations. That's exciting.

Srinath Alapati

>> Thank you, yeah.

Savannah Peterson

>> That's fun.

Srinath Alapati

>> And for SuperPOD as well.

Savannah Peterson

>> Wow.

Srinath Alapati

>> And most recently, we also announced something called Metadata IQ, which enables customers to discover data, advanced search capabilities to power the RAG pipelines.

Savannah Peterson

>> Oh, nice. Okay, so this is really important because we think about where data is. It's everywhere. It's on premise, in the data center. It's at the edge. It's in between. It's in the cloud. So this is going to enable people to be able to manage that with one unified platform, correct?

Srinath Alapati

>> Exactly, exactly. So what customers are looking for is a fast way of storing data, but then accessing the data in place. And this is where the Dell Data Lakehouse comes in handy, right? So what it does is query the data wherever the data is and process that data in real time. And you don't have to move all that data. And that's where the Dell Data Lakehouse comes in.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah, absolutely. So this saves people time and money and also gives them a UI that makes sense, which is exciting. So you mentioned you've been having some really exciting conversations with customers this week. What's the response been like?

Srinath Alapati

>> It's amazing.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah?

Srinath Alapati

>> It's been amazing.

Savannah Peterson

>> Oh, I love to hear that.

Srinath Alapati

>> So Project Lightning was one of the hot topics as well with customers. I've had two conversations this morning actually. It's one of the components of the Dell AI data platform. And what Project Lightning brings is large-scale caching integration with NVIDIA NIXL Library, which enables this key value caching capabilities for massive, keeping hundreds of thousands of GPUs fed, which is-

Savannah Peterson

>> Casual-

Srinath Alapati

>> .

Savannah Peterson

>> Casual .

Srinath Alapati

>> Yeah, those GPUs are hungry. So we've got to feed them.

Savannah Peterson

>> Who isn't hungry after three days in Vegas?

Srinath Alapati

>> Oh yeah, that too.

Savannah Peterson

>> So when you're talking to customers, what sort of use... I mean, I can think of this across the enterprise and across businesses, but what are some of the use cases that stuck out to you in the conversations that you've had this week?

Srinath Alapati

>> Yeah, so no matter what your industry you're focused on... So this could be healthcare. It could be life sciences, media, entertainment. It doesn't matter... they all have data, right? And the amount of data is increasing. And as I said before, the desire is not to move all that data, centralize all that data and lock yourself into a single vendor. The desire is to keep the data in place. But actually they're struggling to figure out how do I take advantage of this data that I already have? Which is the most valuable asset that they have?

Savannah Peterson

>> 100%.

Srinath Alapati

>> And then how do I derive insights from it, right?

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah.

Srinath Alapati

>> And that's where the customers are struggling. And this is exactly to answer that challenge, to tackle that challenge.

Savannah Peterson

>> We're going to solve conundrums and problems we didn't even know we could solve essentially with this technology, because we'll be able to understand the data better, correct?

Srinath Alapati

>> That's exactly right. Yeah, I mean, a lot of conversations today are about GPUs or liquid cooling and all that stuff. I mean, that's great. There's nothing wrong with it, but you have to really understand your data-

Savannah Peterson

>> Yes you do.

Srinath Alapati

>> Access your data before you get to that point of running models and LLMs and all that stuff.

Savannah Peterson

>> It's not all about compute.

Srinath Alapati

>> That's right. It's actually about data.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah. It totally is. And when I talk to people a lot, everyone's talking about the latest GPU, whatever that hardware is. I love hardware. Hardware nerd at heart. However, that doesn't do anything if it doesn't have the right-

Srinath Alapati

>> Unless, unless-

Savannah Peterson

>> Data to process and to learn from them and to create that impactful result. Personal question for you. What do you hope that this AI revolution does for you and your family, your friends, your community?

Srinath Alapati

>> Well, I didn't know we're going personal here, but, yeah, let me-

Savannah Peterson

>> I'm a wild card.

Srinath Alapati

>> Yeah, apparently. I think if we can somehow... Gosh, I don't know. You took me off-

Savannah Peterson

>> That's okay. You can think about it.

Srinath Alapati

>> Yeah, I don't know.

Savannah Peterson

>> You're going to-

Srinath Alapati

>> Let me think. Personally, what does it do for me?

Savannah Peterson

>> Well, so the way that I like to... When you were talking, the reason I'm asking you is I was getting inspired, right? So we were talking to Memorial Sloan Kettering earlier this week, my love, Jess, and they have been able to do so much with cancer research, clinical trials, leveraging the Delhi Eye Factory. It's been a complete game-changer for them. So when I think about it, I'm like, wow, if I could wave a magic wand, what things would I want to solve? And there's stuff in healthcare. There's stuff in education. And I think as technologists, we think kind of linearly sometimes. Whereas it's like, wait a minute, this might... when we apply these new systems and technologies into these datasets, who knows what might come out.

Srinath Alapati

>> Personally, I think it would be great if AI can help us critically think.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah. Ooh, okay.

Srinath Alapati

>> Yeah, exactly. Critically think. Everyone has that-

Savannah Peterson

>> Oh, I like that answer a lot. That was the one thing someone told me when I was going to college. They said, "If you learn nothing else, learn how to critically think."

Srinath Alapati

>> Critically think, yeah, because then you'd learn to question everything, not believe in everything I tell you.

Savannah Peterson

>> Right. Now it's yes, but don't always believe the data in front of your face. But you're spot on there in terms of the human in the loop. I mean, AI might be helping us, but we are going to have to think and say, wait, is that real? Is that possible?

Srinath Alapati

>> Exactly.

Savannah Peterson

>> Is that.

Srinath Alapati

>> That's exactly right.

Savannah Peterson

>> Is that a thing? So how long have y'all been working on this?

Srinath Alapati

>> Probably... Well, the components have been around for a while. PowerScale has been a-

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah, I knew PowerScale was-

Srinath Alapati

>> Long-time leader in the industry.

Savannah Peterson

>> Anchor in the portfolio, yeah, for sure.

Srinath Alapati

>> A leader in the industry. ObjectScale has been around for a while. Project Lightning, which is very exciting, targeting for later this year, has been in the works for a few years. Yeah, I mean, overall I would say we saw this sort of coming, but-

Savannah Peterson

>> Love that.

Srinath Alapati

>> I think it's a matter of putting all the pieces together so that it's actually beneficial for our customers.

Savannah Peterson

>> One of the things that I've been so impressed with in our coverage of Dell and everything that y'all are doing is... And I've been saying this on the news desk for the last three years... it's going to be the ecosystem. It's not going to be that single slice of the pie.

Srinath Alapati

>> Correct.

Savannah Peterson

>> Like we've seen in a lot of these other technology revolutions, it's going to be the fabric that sews it all together so that people have an end-to-end solution-

Srinath Alapati

>> That's right.

Savannah Peterson

>> As they're scaling. Do you hear that feedback from customers, that they're getting that piece of it?

Srinath Alapati

>> Without a doubt. I mean, it's the partners being open so that you're not locked into a single one. There's silicon ecosystem. There's-

Savannah Peterson

>> I mean, you're all playing nice with everybody over there, if I'm looking at that slide correctly.

Srinath Alapati

>> Yeah, exactly. So there's that-

Savannah Peterson

>> It's a whole thing.

Srinath Alapati

>> I mean, you can look in the left-hand side where all the different data sources are. So you have to play with all of them because customers don't just have one thing. They have a variety of things. And they don't want to just get locked into one thing, whether it's Dell or someone else. So you got to be able to give them choices, being able to do what they want to do. And over time, maybe they want to streamline it to one or two or three partners, but ultimately, I think the ecosystem is really important.

Savannah Peterson

>> I know. I think you're absolutely right. And that openness, I think one of the things that's-

Srinath Alapati

>> That's right.

Savannah Peterson

>> So unique about what's happening right now, I've been in this industry for 20 years, and I've never seen the level of co-partnership and collaboration that we're seeing in the co-innovation.

Srinath Alapati

>> That's right.

Savannah Peterson

>> Everyone's looking around at their buddies. I joke about Michael and Jensen being besties with Bill McDermott, but they're looking around and saying, okay, we've got to do this together. We've got to figure this out, because it doesn't make sense from a CapEx perspective to try and leave the fight alone. What has the partner reception been like with this announcement?

Srinath Alapati

>> Oh, it's been fascinating. I think we just literally announced it. And first the immediate responses were, hey, I have all this data. This is exactly what I'm looking for. I'm not looking to move all the data. I'm not looking to do all this stuff. All I want to be able to do is access the data. By the way, the other thing we missed is security in this whole piece.

Savannah Peterson

>> Oh, critical.

Srinath Alapati

>> So because there's so much important data spread across different silos, who gets access to what data is really important? And again, if it's healthcare data, for example, like personal, private and confidential information, so sometimes you may have to mask a social security number or a patient ID or whatever may be the case.

Savannah Peterson

>> Other sensitive information, very sensitive information in that environment.

Srinath Alapati

>> So that is another big part of the Dell AI data platform, is making sure that accessing it securely and making sure that only people who need access get access. So what customers have been saying is they are super excited about this. Number two, they were like, "When can I buy this?"

Savannah Peterson

>> That's going to be music to your ears.

Srinath Alapati

>> Yeah. They can actually do it today.

Savannah Peterson

>> Great.

Srinath Alapati

>> Yeah, so I think it's been an amazing journey actually to bring this to market.

Savannah Peterson

>> Oh, yeah.

Srinath Alapati

>> And we are super excited.

Savannah Peterson

>> And it makes so much sense. It fits so well in the portfolio.

Srinath Alapati

>> Yeah. And we think we are very unique, the way we are approaching it, the openness and the flexible way-

Savannah Peterson

>> You are.

Srinath Alapati

>> Is unique.

Savannah Peterson

>> I can validate that as an analyst.

Srinath Alapati

>> All right, thank you. Thank you.

Savannah Peterson

>> I can say that you're accurate. Okay, last question for you. When we're at Dell Tech World 2026, what do you hope to be able to say then as a result of this announcement that you can't yet say today?

Srinath Alapati

>> That's a great... Gosh. One year, that's a long time.

Savannah Peterson

>> I know, a lifetime right now in this industry.

Srinath Alapati

>> I think in AI years, I don't know what that is.

Savannah Peterson

>> It's a decade.

Srinath Alapati

>> Because, I mean-

Savannah Peterson

>> Or two.

Srinath Alapati

>> It's incredible the progress that we have made in the last year. One year from now, I think I would love to be able to say that we've actually made a difference in a lot of customers' lives by just giving them access to their most valuable asset, which is data.

Savannah Peterson

>> I love that. And I can't wait. Maybe next year we'll be hanging out here in the booth, or even between now and then we can get a customer story on here and really see that impact.

Srinath Alapati

>> And I hope next year, by next year, maybe the conversation is also going to be more focused on data, right?

Savannah Peterson

>> Yes. I think we're getting there.

Srinath Alapati

>> We're getting there, yeah.

Savannah Peterson

>> The momentum is definitely happening.

Srinath Alapati

>> Yeah. This-

Savannah Peterson

>> Data's the darling at the party right now. But I agree with you that it'll be all that.

Srinath Alapati

>> It's definitely discussed more, I would say, this year than last year.

Savannah Peterson

>> 100%-

Srinath Alapati

>> So I think we would-

Savannah Peterson

>> Without question.

Srinath Alapati

>> I think we would keep seeing that, I think.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah. And perfect timing for your . Yeah, thank you-

Srinath Alapati

>> Thank you.

Savannah Peterson

>> So much for spending time with us today and sharing.

Srinath Alapati

>> Thank you. You've been great.

Savannah Peterson

>> I can't wait to follow this. It's going to be so fun.

Srinath Alapati

>> Yeah. Thank you and great having me.

Savannah Peterson

>> Thank you.

Srinath Alapati

>> All right.

Savannah Peterson

>> And thank all of you for tuning in to our three days of live coverage here in fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada. We're at Dell Tech World. My name's Savannah Peterson. You're watching theCUBE, the leading source for enterprise tech news.