KUALA LUMPUR (Sept 26): Dell Technologies launched Dell AI for Telecom, a programme made to simplify and accelerate the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) deployments for communications service providers (CSPs) during their Dell Technologies Forum 2024 held at Hilton Hotel Kuala Lumpur on Sept 24.

This is an extension of Dell’s AI factory, a software solution made in collaboration with Nvidia that covers data, infrastructure, ecosystem, strategy and use cases for businesses, which started back in May.

The Dell AI for Telecom programme seeks to address the challenges CSPs face with AI adoption highlighted in the recent MeriTalk report, “Network Cloud Transformation — Global Insights for CSPs,” which found that 68% of telecommunication executives feel their organisations are struggling to balance evolving technologies and customer needs.

To accomplish this, Dell collaborates with its experts and partners across the AI ecosystem, developing and deploying on-premises AI solutions for CSPs that enhance network performance, improve customer services and provide greater value at the enterprise edge.

Dell’s collaboration with Nvidia in this programme focuses on co-creating and validating telecom AI solutions with CSPs through the AI factory, using Dell PowerEdge XR8000 servers that use Nvidia’s AI-ready LF4 Tensor Core GPUs and enterprise-grade AI software. 

These servers are small, compact and able to be deployed even at the network edge designed for tCSPs. With this, Dell aims to help CSPs use AI to enhance various aspects of its services, like customer care, network maintenance, call centre scripts and customer care operations among others. 

Dell has already been working with various partners to bring these use cases to CSPs. Karthik Ramalingam, senior director of South Asia and emerging markets presales at Dell Technologies, shared a few examples at the event, such as the solutions made with Simplify Networks Sdn Bhd (Simplify).

“This solution helps with preventive maintenance. These are some models that Simplify has already developed and we are deploying this on top of our AI factory, so telco customers can get a single click to deploy a model which can easily take care of their data sets,” says Karthick.

Saravanan Krishnan, country manager of Malaysia at Dell Technologies, also shared that Dell had conducted a survey earlier this year called the Innovation Catalyst Study, which sought to understand the demands and challenges of AI adoption in businesses.

Saravanan highlighted three lessons Dell took from the report. The first lesson Saravanan shared was the idea of AI being treated as a business opportunity.

“85% of Malaysians feel that [generative] AI will transform [the] industry, and I think this is also consistent with the viewpoint of the International Monetary Fund, which ranked Malaysia second position amongst all the [Association of Southeast Asian Nations] nations when it comes to AI preparedness,” says Saravanan.

Despite this, only 50% of organisations have already started their journey of AI adoption. Interested in appealing to the remaining half, Dell identified a lack of talent and available data as primary reasons why there is some hesitancy from half of business leaders.

Another reason Dell found was the increased dissonance between business and IT leaders, as 90% of business leaders tend to exclude IT leaders in talks of business strategies, something Dell sees that needs to change as technology becomes more vital to operations.
 
The second lesson was a need for a people-first approach is needed for AI adoption. Tech and AI developers need to talk with people and employees to figure out exactly what kind of AI tools are needed to augment current jobs and operations.

On an employee level, education and workplace culture need to nurture curiosity and adaptability in people so that employees will want to learn new skills while being willing to unlearn and relearn skills as technology continues to evolve and certain skills become redundant.

The final lesson highlighted is that data in an organisation is the key differentiator and a source of competitive advantage. Because AI learns from and is based on the data given, businesses need to focus on building and protecting their data before looking to adopt AI.

Because of this importance of security, Dell’s report found that 73% of IT decision-makers prefer on-premises or hybrid models to protect data instead of storing all their data over the Cloud.