The Dell Technologies Forum 2024 for Johannesburg took place yesterday in Kyalami, a venue the company has used in recent years. While the venue was familiar, there something new to the atmosphere, as a focus on artificial intelligence was significant for attendees.

In fact, Dell Technologies went so far as to call it the AI Edition of the Forum, as the technology has simply proved too pervasive to ignore.

It has seen the rollout of the Dell AI Factory locally, a cloud-based platform full of AI -powered solutions ready to be leveraged by local customers, but on the hardware side of things AI is playing a key role too.

We have already seen Dell, along with a number of other manufacturers revealed new AI PCs, as the next era in computing both for consumers and enterprises alike. Yesterday, Dell looked to hammer home the importance of AI PCs, as it not only looks to expand the portfolio to meet any needs that customers may have, but also emphasised how significant having access to AI-powered skills will be for many industries and workforces.

During the keynote for the event, the spectre of job losses resulting from AI was spoken about, and local representatives echoed the sentiments of Dell Technologies CEO, Michael Dell. To that end, he acknowledged that there would indeed be job losses as a result of AI adoption in the enterprise space, but he posited that it would be AI replacing people, and instead that people with AI skills would replace those without.

As such, it is an area that employees, regardless of whether there is investment at their organisation into upskilling staff, need to get familiar with.

In order to assist on this front, Dell Technologies points to its ever-growing lineup of AI PCs, most of which were on display at the Forum yesterday.

Speaking with media during a roundtable session, Haidi Nossair, senior director of Client Solutions Group for META at Dell Technologies, explains that the company’s broader strategy aims to use its AI PCs to support businesses from the desktop, to the data centre, to the cloud. 

“From running complex AI workloads on workstations to using day-to-day AI-powered applications on laptops, the AI PC will be an important investment that pays dividends in productivity and paves the way to a smarter, more efficient future. Dell’s advantage starts with offering more AI PCs across the commercial portfolio from day one, catering to South African businesses’ unique needs and giving them the ability to start futureproofing for AI today,” she outlined.

“With a new line-up of Latitude laptops and Precision mobile workstations, Dell will offer customers the broadest portfolio of commercial AI laptops and mobile workstations, from entry-level to ultra-premium laptops and workstation options. Powered by Intel Core Ultra processors with Intel vPro, Dell commercial PCs drive AI workloads and unlock new levels of productivity and efficiencies,” the company added in a release shared with Hypertext.

The capabilities, according to Dell Technologies, will include more effective collaboration, faster content creation, securer hybrid work environments, and easier access to Microsoft’s Copilot+ feature set.

The company also shared some of the new services it is planning to make available to customers. These include:

• “Maximise PC uptime and improve productivity with new self-healing capabilities through the ProSupport Suite for PCs. Customers who connect to Dell’s SupportAssist technology can leverage telemetry and AI to fix PC issues without human intervention. This lets IT activate Dell-authored scripts to autonomously correct blue screen errors, thermal issues and more across their entire fleet of PCs.
• Keep PC fleet refreshes on track and on budget with Dell’s managed services. When customers need new AI devices, Dell provides detailed planning, forecasting and supply chain management to enable timely, targeted multi-vendor device rollouts.
• Adopt and maximise GenAI investments with Digital Employee Experience Services for Gen AI. These services equip employees with the tools and technology tailored for their diverse roles.”

With the PC refresh cycle remaining flat for most of 2024, the wider availability of AI PCs is anticipated to have an upward impact next year. On that front, Dell Technologies is aiming to its AI PCs to be the ones that enterprise customers opt for.