In this in-depth analysis of services and artificial intelligence innovation at Dell Technologies World 2025, Doug Schmitt of Dell Technologies and Scott Bils discuss services innovation in the modern era of AI. Hosted by John Furrier and Dave Vellante on theCUBE, the conversation explores how Dell employs tech-driven solutions to enhance customer interactions.
In this session, Schmitt shares his experience in his dual role, emphasizing the synergy achieved by leading both IT and customer service innovations. They discuss the deployment of AI technologies, which are transforming Dell into a model organization for customer engagement improvements. As the initial implementer of its own innovations, Dell offers exemplary customer service, a theme explored by both Vellante and theCUBE Research.
Bils and Schmitt highlight AI's practical applications, including Dell's internal processes and AI governance, and the significant potential AI offers to streamline operations. According to Bils, the strategic use of AI has led to notable success in customer projects, such as collaborations with global entities like Whirly and Pure Health. These insights demonstrate how AI and efficient processes provide Dell with a competitive advantage.
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Doug Schmitt & Scott Bils, Dell Technologies
In this in-depth analysis of services and artificial intelligence innovation at Dell Technologies World 2025, Doug Schmitt of Dell Technologies and Scott Bils discuss services innovation in the modern era of AI. Hosted by John Furrier and Dave Vellante on theCUBE, the conversation explores how Dell employs tech-driven solutions to enhance customer interactions.
In this session, Schmitt shares his experience in his dual role, emphasizing the synergy achieved by leading both IT and customer service innovations. They discuss the deployment of AI technologies, which are transforming Dell into a model organization for customer engagement improvements. As the initial implementer of its own innovations, Dell offers exemplary customer service, a theme explored by both Vellante and theCUBE Research.
Bils and Schmitt highlight AI's practical applications, including Dell's internal processes and AI governance, and the significant potential AI offers to streamline operations. According to Bils, the strategic use of AI has led to notable success in customer projects, such as collaborations with global entities like Whirly and Pure Health. These insights demonstrate how AI and efficient processes provide Dell with a competitive advantage.
CIO, Dell Technologies and PresidentDell Technologies
Scott Bils
VP, Professional ServicesDell Technologies
Doug Schmitt, chief information officer and president of Dell Technologies Services, and Scott Bils, vice president and general manager of product management, professional services at Dell Technologies Inc., join theCUBE’s Dave Vellante and John Furrier at Dell Technologies World 2025 to examine how AI is transforming service delivery. The conversation centers on internal innovation and customer-facing solutions that reflect Dell’s evolving strategy.
Schmitt and Bils explore how embedding AI into operational workflows enhances efficiency and unlocks ...Read more
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What are some potential opportunities and benefits of merging technology, innovation, and customer service models in the business world?add
What are the pillars for AI that are being considered in this scenario?add
What foundational capabilities have helped Dell to quickly start using AI in its services, and how are those capabilities being translated into customer deployments?add
>> Welcome back everyone to Day 2 live CUBE coverage here at Dell Technologies World 2025. I'm John Furrier, Host of theCUBE, with Dave Vellante. Dave, our 16th year covering Dell Technology in the what now, it's an era of modern AI hitting the scene. This segment is about services innovation. Doug Schmitt is Dell CIO and President of Dell Technology. Got a dual role, we'll get into that. We'll add Chief AI Officer on there, maybe.
Dave Vellante
>> Not yet.>> Scott Bils's Vice President of Dell Technology Services on the portfolio side. Guys, CUBE alumni. This is an amazing era. I'm just joking about the Chief AI Officer, that's John Roese, but AI internally, Jeff Clarke said on the keynote just now that the internal success at Dell has been fundamental in shaping and crafting up the AI factories and all the goodness in the products. As CIO and your dual role, talk about your dual role as CIO and you're running a P&L business. With all that internal innovation, you got to have your hands in all the action. Talk about your role.
Doug Schmitt
>> As we've talked about, it is absolutely an exciting time. I mean, you think about all the innovation, the technology all coming together. Truly offers a once in a lifetime chance to really look at the business model and more specifically the customer services models that can be there and what we can do for our customers is amazing. I know we just heard Jeff talk about the incredible work we're doing inside the services side. We've talked about that in the past and what we're doing to really make it easier on our customers, but just maybe going a level above that as getting the dual role CIO and getting the privilege of leading services. When you stand back and look at that, we get to be customer zero from an IT perspective and leverage the services and learn that we're also then deploying and leveraging with our customers. That's really a value added of having those together. When we think about the pillars for AI, we think about basically in, on, for, and with. The in is the products that you're hearing Sam and Arthur talk about, great products in the technology. We have on, these are the solutions we're bringing together to help our customers. With is the ecosystem. The for is where I'm spending a great deal of time internally delivering things like the Next Best Action with a great team.
Dave Vellante
>> I got to follow up on the dual world.>> I do too.
Dave Vellante
>> I was listening to an interview with Robert Gates this weekend, CUBE alum.>> Yeah.
Dave Vellante
>> Robert Gates, the former Defense Secretary on theCUBE. Amazing, amazing guest. It was Martha I think from Face the Nation and she was asking him pressing him on Rubio, Secretary of State having multiple roles. Now he's Secretary of State, and he's national security advisor and he pointed out, Gates did, "Well, Henry Kissinger was both as well."
And he said, "But Henry was a national security advisor in absentia." He was really Secretary of State, but he had Brent Scowcroft who was an amazing national security operator. So my question is, is Scott like your Brent Scowcroft? How does that work? You split your time in between?
Doug Schmitt
>> Well, Scott does amazing work and he can talk about hearing what the customers need. I think that customer zero, and Scott, you can talk about this way more than I can, that being that customer zero, what Scott and team are developing, we're actually using on the IT side internally.
Scott Bils
>> Yeah, and that's one of the great things about working with our IT organization is when you take a look at what we're doing from a professional services standpoint, it's really to help customers on their end-to-end journey and helping them drive AI transformation. It's around helping them deploy. We provide the consulting services and manage services around it all the way from day zero to day two plus. As we go through the journey internally at Dell provides us a tremendous amount of insight that we can then take to our customers and help accelerate their journey.
Doug Schmitt
>> But remember, Jeff talked about the 800 to 900 use cases, tremendous number. It was actually our consulting and professional service side that came in and put that structure, the AI governance and the structure in place. What we learned there, we then packaged and are helping with.>> Yeah, I mean I think this is why I'm so excited about this question is it's not just about your role, it's about what we're seeing in the industry, the trend that's working and we're seeing successes this dual roles, but it's the competency of why they're selected because Jeff pointed out on stage bad process, he used a different word. I think he said shitty processes, shitty AI or bad AI. Process, you had a P&L, you have the CIO role, you guys are technical. This is the successful one we're seeing in other companies that are succeeding. It's not so much some political position, it's actually they got to know everything, and this is like where the transformation axis. Can you share more of your insights on this? Because this seems to be the winning formula where you have a CIO or technology role, but knowing the P&L on the process, you can make quicker decisions. That seems to be the insight from the keynote.
Doug Schmitt
>> Well, I do think that's right. We talk a lot about bringing the AI to the data, which is 100% true. You also have to bring your AI and your data to the process. I don't think you can just put the AI on top of it and hope for something to be outcome. We have been digitizing our processes and services for a number of years, Scott and I and the entire team. What that's allowed us to do is to really see real time where things are at when now you add AI capabilities on it, we're able to digitize those processes, AI's able to essentially to get too deep into it, but you can shrink your standard deviation and move the mean all at the same time. This is happening real time, providing real benefits to the customers. It is really amazing.>> Scott, I heard some people talking in the hallways around some of the internal Dell customer zero process decision making. Everyone's raising their hand. They have a lot of AI going on. Jeff highlighted a number. He said a lot of stuff was going on, but narrowing down those use cases to lock in is one key thing, and then the second thing we're seeing on the external market is that once people get into AI, they discover other things. Can you guys share a story of how you guys look at that from that process standpoint? Because that's where the services tend to hit first, get that beachhead and then sequence to other things.
Scott Bils
>> Yeah, there's actually a couple of interesting customer examples I could walk you through. One of them is Worley. They're a professional services engineering services firm out of Australia that focuses on the energy and chemical industry. But they face a very basic challenge of wanting to make sure their data was secure that they're using for AI, making sure that from a cost standpoint, TCO made sense for the platform they were deploying. We helped them essentially stand up that platform, migrated their workloads towards it or to that, and then provided them essentially a secure foundation to go deploy use cases for things like enterprise search, construction pathway optimization really provided that foundation for the transformation from a use case and process standpoint as well. Another one is PureHealth, which is the leading healthcare services group in the Middle East. Analogous situation where they're very concerned about securing patient data but at the same time wanted to have a platform for transformation and innovation. We help them stand up the infrastructure of the platform, helped them actually stand up a security operations center SOC to secure the data and then help them accelerate around things like diagnoses, individualized treatment, and driving overall efficiencies and from administrative standpoint.>> Doug, on your side as a leader, you're CIO, you see a lot of things there, good lay of the land. You know how the plumbing, all the software works internally, but as the leader on the business side, what's your style when you have to make the selection process, what you work on, decision making? What AI projects do we tackle first? Is there an order of operations or sequence of events?
Doug Schmitt
>> Well, you've heard us for years say we have big ears with our customers. It starts with the customer. It really does. What can we do to improve time to value for our customers, outcomes for our customers? The AI capabilities we're having around that really helped. Some examples would be think about, and we know this in the service industry, and I know you guys know this well, the complex statement of works that come in for customers putting all those deals together, how you're going to respond back to them. AI can help with that. Now look, somebody still has to look at it today and make sure it's accurate, but our volume is increasing, our accuracy is increasing. The speed to get in front of the customers better. Our outcomes are better because the projects are being managed by AI. We're able to get the data in faster, get the right team in place, leverage what we know and use that knowledge management. You think about everything from in a typical services organization, the diagnosis, the detection, and then the remediation. All of those things are being impacted at a very fast clip with AI.
Dave Vellante
>> I want to ask you a couple of things. I want to talk about GSIs. Scott, you were saying before that your relationship with GSIs has never been better. You guys, they bring you in or the customer does. You guys stand up the AI factory, GSIs bring in the process expertise, but you guys have had to go through a lot of that type of work internally. When I think of something like the initiative of Next Best Action.
Scott Bils
>> Correct.
Dave Vellante
>> You guys really had to think about your data. You had to harmonize that data, you had to think about your processes, you had to add automation in and seemingly the outcomes have been pretty amazing and you keep iterating and get more leverage out of the system. My question is where'd you get that expertise? It was because you knew your business so well? Did you bring in outsiders? Did you do it yourself? And then do you ever see pointing that externally, or is that IP that you don't want to seep outside of the company?
Doug Schmitt
>> Well, I'll take a run at this and then Scott, you can fill in and then add your color to it. Well look, I think we have some basic ingredients here that really play well to Dell's strengths. One is the customer focus. You know this, that is deeply ingrained in who we are. It is about ultimately always helping and building solutions, products and services for our customers. That's the first one. Second, we have a long history of having great direct information telemetry from our customers, working with them and knowing who they are. We're working with them directly. We have that data and that information and we're very processed. Our supply chain heritage, our ability to build that process. Discipline is in the culture. They play very nicely when you start adding AI and process discipline. We had those already going from us as a culture. Then you lead on and you say, "Okay, we want to automate and deliver our processes, digitizing the processes."
All right, great. Now we have the data, the process, the telemetry in those processes and next then, you start to add in AI, unstructured data, the LLMs, the capabilities of managing all this stuff real time. You add that in there, which is what we've done and did with Next Best Action. Then you get the closed loop process. Add that to the bottom of that. We're feeding this back to the product groups. We're talking real time, these products, these great products that Arthur and Sam are building. They're getting that data back real time so that we're actually taking steps out for the customer so they don't ever even have to deal with the services directly and Next Best Action is just a piece of that chain that feeds back in, closes the loop.>> Productivity is huge. I mean, one of the things about services that I love and I want to get your comment on this is that services with operating leverage with technology provides a huge flywheel, so I want to ask how these learnings are translating to the customer. We're covering the enterprise AI like a blanket and the things that we see are the following: platform engineering doing well, Kubernetes maturing, seeing that be nice groove, swing steady state almost. The AI factories are coming in fast and that's a whole nother level of service. There's still a lot of work going on. Can you share the learnings from Dell and how that's translating into the customer deployments and what specifically are you focused in on and optimizing around?
Scott Bils
>> Yeah, when we take a look at the customers, where we're doing a lot of work is around that platform implementation and architecture work so taking that AI factory, being able to stand that up, configure it, deploy it, and then manage it on behalf of our customers as well. You think you heard the announcement yesterday around our managed services for the AI factory with NVIDIA. There's certainly a piece of it where we've taken learning from architecting and employing the platforms internally. Another big areas around data areas like Next Best Action. Dave, you mentioned earlier, how are we able to get off to such a quick start in AI and services? A lot of it was the foundational capabilities we had around data and data consulting where we've had work we've done historically in big data analytics and machine learning, traditional AI and now gen AI. That's another big area where we're taking, and then I think the last one is specifically around things like NBA use cases, solutions that we're developing and applying internally. Figuring out the right way to architect, design those solutions and deploy them. It's taking a look, not just at the platform piece, but then also data and then use cases and taking the learnings from Dell IT and embedding that into our delivery methodology and approach for customers.>> Doug, to wrap up, Savannah asked you last year what you could say this year. I think you said taking much more data, managing data, scaling it across all use cases.
Doug Schmitt
>> Yep.>> Okay, we're here. Do you feel good about that answer?
Doug Schmitt
>> I do feel good, I mean.>> What are we going to talk about next year?
Doug Schmitt
>> I think agents and taking that autonomous self-learning of what we're doing and applying them now to the processes. We talked a lot about this. You could think how much time you could spend talking about, "Okay, we have the process, we have the data, we have the analytics. We then have now the AI around unstructured ChatGPT, LLMs." Now we're going to have the agents to that put that autonomous self-learning on top of that going to be incredible.>> I know we're out of time, but I have to ask one more final question. What are you most excited about right now in this industry, this moment in time, this Dell Tech World this year?
Doug Schmitt
>> Well, there's a lot to be. You look at the products, the solutions we have around AI, making it easy for our customers to adopt that solution and that technology. And then from a services perspective, just the incredible opportunity we have to make it so much easier for our customers. Give them the ability for a fast start into their AI and get them to realize the value of it as quickly as possible.>> Love the fast start, easy button commentary.
Doug Schmitt
>> Absolutely.>> Guys, thanks for coming on theCUBE. Great update. We'll follow up. We're have a lot of coverage this year. Thanks for coming on theCUBE here at Dell Tech World.
Doug Schmitt
>> Thanks for having us.
Scott Bils
>> Thank you.>> All right. I'm John Furrier, Dave Vellante. We'll be right back, we have more live coverage. Got a huge lineup. Stay with us, we got a whole other day tomorrow. I'm John Furrier, Dave Vellante, stay tuned.
Dave Vellante