Dell NativeEdge Platform Brings GenAI To Edge Operations

‘So we have embarked on this thing that effectively created an edge cloud,’ Dell’s senior vice president of edge computing, strategy, and execution, Gil Shneorson, tells CRN. ‘And it’s still the only edge operations software that does all of those things combined. There’s nothing like that out there.’

Edge applications in retail or factory environments had AI built into them to measure and analyze data years before generative AI was popularized, Dell Technologies’ Gil Shneorson told CRN.

So the brass ring for customers now is to bridge those devices with modern generative AI solutions to optimize and analyze data, which he says Dell’s new NativeEdge platform has accomplished.

“NativeEdge connects those two dots. You can deploy the software to collect it. You can deploy the application that analyzes the data,” Shneorson told CRN. “People in industries like manufacturing or retail, for them AI has been there forever. They're not surprised by it. We just make it far simpler to deploy those workloads into those locations.”

The NativeEdge platform seeks to deliver VxRail simplicity to edge environments, Shneorson said, which led Round Rock, Texas-based Dell Technologies to combine its capabilities around secure device on boarding, touchless on-boarding, multi-cloud orchestration with an AI application catalog.

“So we have embarked on this thing that effectively creates an edge cloud,” Shneorson told CRN. “And it’s still the only edge operations software that does all of those things combined. There’s nothing like that out there ... So if you want Nvidia NIM microservices deployed at the edge so you can run an AI application, we can do that for you.”

Dell NativeEdge has a catalog of other products for edge environments like the open source Apache Spark, Apache Airflow, MLflow, and Grafana. Additionally, Dell can tie partners into Aveva Unified Operations Center, EPIC iO, which uses real-time analytics for retail operations. Dell Data Collector, which is used to collect and transfer data from sensors and IoT devices to various locations in near real-time, is also in the catalog.

The goal, Shneorson said, is to make AI application deployments scalable and make AI easy to use at the edge, he said.

Dell said its NativeEdge advancements fold into its Dell AI Factory and are made for organizations which need high availability options to provide resiliency and reliability in edge system management. The product is unique in the industry, Dell said in a statement, in its ability to deliver secure device onboarding at scale, remote management and multi-cloud application orchestration.

Shneorson said NativeEdge is a chance for Dell partners to talk with customers about the future of the edge, which can lead to talks about whether their current infrastructure is ready for what is coming. He said in edge environments such as manufacturing the buyer is thinking two to three years ahead, so the timeline is not “tomorrow” and partners have access to blueprints to deliver AI outcomes.

"Are you only going to think about what you have been running or is AI going to change what you are going to be running?” he said. “Let’s talk about how the workload is going to change. It may change in the next year. I can build for you blueprints that will be deployable to your edge endpoints. There are a lot of opportunities for partners right now to have those conversations.”

Users of the new platform now have access to multi-node high-availability clustering for NativeEdge endpoints, such as Dell PowerEdge servers, OptiPlex and Precision workstations and Dell Gateways. The endpoints can be clustered, or grouped together by NativeEdge software to act like a single system.

“It’s kind of a big deal because now you get the best of both worlds,” Shneorson said. “You've got all of the simplification of cloud management capability and a highly available environment. And more interesting, you can do it on the on the server grade machine or machines but also on a set of Optiplex PCs to reduce cost. And also on a set of Dell Gateways, the user experience is the same.”

More data is heading to the edge — with Gartner predicting more than 50 percent of enterprise managed data will be processed outside the data center or cloud by 2025. Instead, workloads and data will be run across several edge systems and locations.