Dell Technologies World 2026 featured many high-profile AI infrastructure announcements. Among them, trillion-parameter models, liquid-cooled AI racks drawing enough power to make data center operators sweat, and enough NVIDIA references to keep its CEO Jensen Huang smiling for weeks.
For MSPs and SMB-focused IT providers, hyperscale AI factories or sovereign infrastructure projects aren’t everyday opportunities. Thankfully, there were practical takeaways for the channel centered around the idea that, “Intelligence is becoming infrastructure,” Dell CEO Michael Dell said during the opening keynote.
“Just as electricity transformed the world when it left the power plant, AI will transform the world when it leaves the screen.”
That concept shaped nearly every keynote, product announcement and executive discussion throughout the four-day event. Dell executives repeatedly emphasized that AI is rapidly moving beyond experimentation and into operational deployment. They made it clear they expect businesses of all sizes to eventually run AI workloads the same way they run servers, storage, virtualization and networking today.
For channel partners, that could mean a major new services opportunity is coming.
From AI Assistant to AI Operator
If there was a buzzword bingo card for Dell Technologies World 2026, “agentic AI” would’ve been the free space. Unlike traditional generative AI tools that simply answer questions or summarize information, agentic AI systems are designed to act. Agents can operate semi-autonomously, execute workflows and interact with business systems.
“AI went from an advisor to an operator,” Dell COO Jeff Clarke said during the May 19 keynote. This referenced Michael Dell’s description of AI agents as “digital workers” capable of planning, reasoning and acting on behalf of organizations.
Agentic AI fundamentally changes the infrastructure conversation. Chatbots are relatively easy to experiment with. Operational AI systems that connect to ERP software, customer databases, ticketing systems, financial applications and internal workflows are something else entirely.
According to Dell executives, businesses that simply bolt AI onto existing processes may struggle compared to those willing to build around AI capabilities.
“The companies that redesign their work around AI are going to compound advantages faster than at any time in history,” Michael Dell said. “Every leader in this room feels that pressure right now. It’s exciting; it’s exhilarating. It’s sometimes exhausting, but it’s also unavoidable.”
For MSPs, that creates opportunities well beyond selling hardware. AI governance, workflow integration, observability, compliance and security all surfaced throughout the event as critical pieces of enterprise AI deployments. As luck would have it, all that sounds less like a futuristic AI conversation and more like the beginning of a managed services discussion.
Dell Wants AI Closer to the Data
Another major theme throughout the week was Dell’s push for hybrid and localized AI deployments. While public cloud AI still is important, Dell executives spent plenty of time talking about the limits of cloud-only AI strategies, particularly around cost, latency, governance and security.
“The most efficient token is the one generated closest to where your data is,” Michael Dell said during his keynote.
Clarke simplified the message even further during the May 19 keynote, stating, “Don’t move the data to the AI. Move AI to the data.”
That philosophy underpins much of Dell’s current AI strategy, including:
- Its AI Factory portfolio
- On-prem AI partnerships with companies like Google and OpenAI
- A growing emphasis on edge and deskside AI systems
It also aligns with the realities many SMB-focused providers deal with every day. Smaller organizations tend to be uncomfortable sending sensitive financial, healthcare, legal or customer data into public AI platforms. Others simply want more predictable costs than token-based cloud pricing can provide.
Dell argued that local AI inference — whether at the edge, in the data center or even on AI-capable workstations — will become more common as organizations operationalize AI workloads. That could eventually turn AI infrastructure into a refresh cycle opportunity for partners much the same way virtualization, hyperconverged infrastructure and cybersecurity once did.
The PC Is Now Part of the AI Stack
Perhaps the clearest example of Dell’s “AI everywhere” strategy was its push around AI-enabled PCs and workstations.
“The PC is part of the AI stack,” Clarke said, echoing similar sentiments from 2025’s Dell Technologies World conference. “Power at the desk side matters because workloads like software development and media workflows have all moved to the endpoint.”
To that effect, Dell showcased several NVIDIA-powered deskside AI systems during the event. That included the Dell GB10 and GB300 platforms aimed at local AI development and inference workloads. While some of the systems demonstrated were clearly enterprise-class hardware, the broader message was that Dell sees AI workloads moving from centralized cloud environments toward local systems and endpoints.
One keynote demo highlighted that point by comparing cloud AI token costs against local inference running on a workstation. “One developer with a team of 10 agents burned through 1 billion tokens in a 24-hour period,” Clarke recalled. “In the cloud, that would be a $3,400 bill. On a local workstation, it’s a free token generator at your fingertips.”
Storage, Networking and Security Aren’t Going Away
Despite all the AI excitement, Dell reminded attendees that traditional infrastructure matters now more than ever.
Storage, in particular, was a recurring topic throughout the event. Dell executives emphasized that AI systems are only as effective as the data available to them.
“The vast majority of enterprise data resides on-prem,” said Arthur Lewis, president of Dell’s Infrastructure Solutions Group. “This data is your strategic advantage, yet no frontier model has seen it.”
That explains why Dell devoted significant attention to storage modernization, data orchestration, networking and cyber resilience announcements during the conference. It introduced updates to PowerStore, PowerProtect, its Dell AI Data Platform and more.
Notably for MSPs, AI adoption is unlikely to reduce the importance of core infrastructure management anytime soon. If anything, Dell is betting the opposite will happen.
The Bigger Opportunity for the Channel
The overwhelming majority of SMBs aren’t building sovereign AI environments or deploying massive GPU clusters anytime soon. Instead, they are exploring AI-enabled workflows, local AI tools and operational AI use cases. That’s where Dell sees the next major opportunity for the channel.
The company throughout the event argued that businesses are entering what executives called the “AI-native” era. This was loosely defined as the period where AI becomes embedded into everyday operations rather than isolated pilot projects.
“The AI-native enterprise isn’t a vision anymore,” Clarke said. “It’s a blueprint.”
For MSPs, the blueprint may ultimately matter less than the business opportunity it creates. Whether SMB customers are ready for AI-native infrastructure today is debatable, but vendors like Dell are already preparing the channel for it.
As ChannelPro’s online director and tech editor for over a decade, Matt Whitlock has spent years blending sharp tech insight with digital know-how. He brings more than 25 years’ experience working in the technology industry to his reviews, analysis, and general musings about all things gadget and gear.
Images: Dell
