AI Pushes Private Cloud Beyond Traditional HCI, Dell Executives Say
Dell executives and analysts say AI, public cloud costs and virtualization changes are turning enterprises toward disaggregated private clouds that scale compute and storage independently while preserving HCI-like simplicity.
The shift is being driven by several pressures at once, according to the report. Organizations are examining public cloud costs more closely, seeking greater control over data and weighing how quickly infrastructure can adapt as AI workloads place new demands on compute, storage and networking. Changing virtualization strategies are also creating pressure for systems that support more than one operating environment. Rather than recreating traditional data centers, enterprises are looking for infrastructure that provides cloud-like simplicity while allowing compute and storage to scale independently.
Dave Vellante, chief analyst at theCUBE Research, said the move is about economics, control and AI sovereignty. “But to make private clouds viable in this AI era, some things have to change,” Vellante said. “There’s a massive demand for disaggregated architectures and infrastructure, but customers, they don’t want to be integrators all over again.”
Caitlin Gordon, vice president of product at Dell Technologies, said control is again a top priority for many customers, though the environment has changed substantially. “In some sense, private clouds are cool again,” Gordon said. “Having control is becoming top of mind for a lot of customers. But the environment has completely changed from what it was just a few years ago or, in some cases, just a few months ago. So, they’re dealing with a lot.”
Gordon said the most common customer concerns are cost, then openness, flexibility and simplicity. “Bringing all three of those things together is critical for our customers because, ultimately, every dollar that they’re spending on their IT budget is a decision that they’re making and a trade-off that they’re making,” she said.
That combination is contributing to interest in disaggregated architecture. Hyperconverged infrastructure simplified deployment and management by tightly integrating compute and storage, but it could also force enterprises to scale resources they did not necessarily need. A disaggregated model allows compute and storage to grow separately while retaining an integrated operational experience. Jodey Hogeland, PowerStore global evangelist at Dell, said the benefit is freedom to scale what is needed. “If all I need is to dynamically scale the compute infrastructure, I’ve got the freedom, the cost structures and the affordability to do that,” Hogeland said. “If all I need to do is scale the storage infrastructure, I’ve got the freedom, the cost-effective capabilities to be able to do that.”
Dell Private Cloud was designed around that shift toward independent scaling while keeping the simplicity associated with HCI, according to the report. The platform separates compute and storage but uses automation to manage the infrastructure as an integrated system. It also addresses changes in virtualization, as enterprises that previously standardized on one hypervisor increasingly consider multiple environments based on workload requirements. Gordon said Dell Private Cloud supports VMware, Red Hat OpenShift, Nutanix and Microsoft Azure Local, allowing organizations to deploy different operating environments on reusable infrastructure. “Dell Private Cloud gives you a disaggregated infrastructure, the ability to buy just the infrastructure you need and then scale independently,” she said. “But, importantly, it keeps the simplicity of HCI.”
The report said most current Dell Private Cloud deployments still involve VMware, but many organizations are simultaneously evaluating other options. During the event, Brian Beeler, editor of StorageReview.com, also provided an in-depth look at Dell PowerStore Elite and the automation technologies supporting the platform.
Editor's Summary
Dell executives and analysts said AI, public cloud costs and changing virtualization strategies are pushing enterprises to reconsider private cloud architectures. Dell Private Cloud separates compute and storage while using automation to preserve HCI-like simplicity, and it supports multiple operating environments including VMware, Red Hat OpenShift, Nutanix and Microsoft Azure Local. Most current deployments still use VMware, though many customers are evaluating alternatives.