Built for Innovation: The Full Stack Behind Dell AI Leadership

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Dell earned Market Leader recognition in ten categories and Innovation Leader recognition in eight categories in the IT Brand Pulse Enterprise AI Infrastructure Brand Leader Survey, reflecting the breadth of the Dell enterprise AI portfolio.

• The Dell AI Factory brings together compute, storage, networking, software and services in a validated approach that helps organizations move AI from pilot to production with reduced integration risk.

• Real-world deployments at organizations like The Guthrie Clinic and Flexcompute demonstrate measurable outcomes, including faster clinical workflows and 100 times faster engineering design speeds, across industries and use cases.

Built for innovation: The full stack behind Dell AI leadership

We are proud to share that Dell earned Market Leader recognition in ten categories and Innovation Leader recognition in eight categories¹ in the latest IT Brand Pulse Enterprise AI Infrastructure Brand Leader Survey. We sincerely thank IT Brand Pulse and the IT professionals who shared their perspectives.

The recognition comes at a moment when organizations are moving AI from experimentation into core business workflows. Delivering value at that scale requires more than a model or a GPU cluster. It requires infrastructure, data, software, networking, operations and services that work together in production while helping protect intellectual property and business advantage.

The Dell AI Factory brings those capabilities together with Dell expertise and an open partner ecosystem in a validated approach designed to simplify enterprise AI deployment and reduce integration risk. Foundational to the Dell AI Factory is the Dell AI Data Platform, whose data orchestration engine connects data pipelines, model workflows and human feedback loops.

Customers are already putting that approach to work across a wide range of environments. At The Guthrie Clinic, the Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA supports the Guthrie Pulse Center, where virtual nurses, electronic ICU staff and telesitters help manage patient monitoring, documentation and logistical tasks. The approach helps cut ER visit times by more than 80 minutes, reduce average ICU stays by half a day, provide systemwide visibility across 11,000 square miles and lower patient falls with injuries by 70%.²

At Flexcompute, Dell PowerEdge XE-Series servers with NVIDIA accelerated computing power AI-driven physics simulations that help engineers complete simulations in minutes instead of days. The result is 100 times faster design speeds, 10 times faster design optimization cycles and lower costs and emissions, supporting innovation across automotive and aviation.³

Guthrie and Flexcompute are just two examples among more than 6,500 Dell AI Factory customer deployments.⁴ They show how the same full-stack approach can support very different use cases, from delivering more responsive, data-driven care in rural healthcare to accelerating sustainable engineering design. The award results below show where IT professionals recognized that breadth across the enterprise AI infrastructure stack.

A complete portfolio built for intelligence

IT Brand Pulse category and recognition¹
Dell portfolio in action

Enterprise AI Factory
Market Leader; Innovation Leader
Dell AI Factory. An end-to-end approach brings together compute, networking, software, storage, orchestration, services and operating models for enterprise AI.

Scale Out File Storage for AI
Market Leader
PowerScale supports parallel access to unstructured data across the AI data lifecycle, while Dell Lightning File System is a parallel file system built for extreme-scale AI training and inferencing, with direct access to NVMe storage and ultra-low latency for demanding GPU environments. Both are also available in software-defined form via Dell Exascale Storage, bringing the same purpose-built engines to a common foundation at scale with licensed capacity that can shift between them as workload needs change.

Object Storage for AI
Market Leader; Innovation Leader
ObjectScale provides S3-native object storage for massive AI workloads, multimodal content and AI data lakes, supporting the journey from data collection and model training to high-performance AI workloads. It’s also available via Dell Exascale Storage.

Edge AI Storage Platforms
Market Leader; Innovation Leader
PowerScale and ObjectScale. Distributed storage supports edge AI inference, remote deployments and synchronized data operations. These are two key storage engines in the Dell AI Data Platform.

Enterprise AI Training Servers Market Leader; Innovation Leader
PowerEdge XE-Series. Purpose-built for accelerated computing, these platforms support AI training, fine-tuning, inferencing and HPC workloads, with flexible GPU configurations that scale from enterprise deployments to high-density rack-scale systems.

Enterprise AI Inference Servers Market Leader; Innovation Leader
PowerEdge R-Series. Powerful, scalable systems support AI and machine learning training and inferencing, advanced analytics and other enterprise workloads, with configurable processors, memory, storage and GPU options that scale as needs grow.

Enterprise Edge AI Servers
Market Leader; Innovation Leader
PowerEdge XR-Series. Ruggedized systems support distributed, low-latency AI deployments across industrial, telecom, retail, healthcare and branch environments.

AI Infrastructure Management
Market Leader; Innovation Leader
OpenManage Enterprise. Unified management helps simplify AI infrastructure deployment, monitoring, lifecycle management and operational consistency.

Primary Flash Storage for AI
Market Leader
Dell primary flash storage portfolio. High-performance flash storage supports AI training, inference and GPU acceleration workloads.

Primary Disk Storage for AI
Market Leader; Innovation Leader
Dell primary disk storage portfolio. Capacity-oriented storage supports large AI datasets, active data and cost-conscious expansion.

Three priorities for enterprise AI

While the awards above highlight Dell’s strengths across the enterprise AI stack, customers derive true value when the portfolio comes together to deliver on targeted outcomes, which is exactly what the Dell AI Factory is designed to enable. For organizations evaluating how to move from AI ambition to measurable results, three considerations are especially important:

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Turning pilots into production value. Moving a successful AI pilot into a secure, governed and measurable production workflow can be difficult when the pilot depends on disconnected compute, storage, data, networking, software and operating processes. Dell helps close that gap through the AI Factory, which combines modular infrastructure, validated software and models, data strategy, adaptable operating models and the expertise to bring them together. Dell AI Professional Services helps organizations align stakeholders, connect AI workflows to the right sources and define governance models. Early adopters have achieved up to 2.6 times return on investment in the first year of their AI Factory investments.⁶
Together, these capabilities help customers scale what works without starting over.

• Protecting sovereignty and preserving choice. As AI moves into core workflows, organizations must control where it runs, which data it can access, how outputs are governed and how costs scale. Dell AI Factory helps organizations pursue Sovereign AI, supporting on-premises, hybrid and other deployment models while helping protect the data, context, relationships and operational knowledge that differentiate each business. An open ecosystem of model providers, silicon vendors, software companies and other partners, supported by validated combinations, gives customers flexibility with less integration risk.

• Maximizing the value of enterprise data. Fragmented, difficult-to-find or poorly prepared data can limit the value of even the most capable AI infrastructure. Dell helps customers turn enterprise data into usable context through the Dell AI Data Platform. Work with NVIDIA has delivered up to 12 times faster vector indexing and 3 times faster data processing in relevant workloads.⁵ Together with Dell compute and networking, the platform helps make enterprise context available where AI workflows need it.

Continuous innovation in action

AI and business requirements continue to evolve. Dell uses lessons from customer deployments to improve its products, strengthen the Dell AI Factory and simplify the decisions involved in enterprise AI. Those learnings span technology, process, organizational alignment and data governance, turning real-world experience into practical innovation.

This is the broader story behind the 2026 IT Brand Pulse results. The awards recognize the breadth of Dell’s enterprise AI portfolio, while customer deployments and services show how Dell puts that breadth to work in practice.

Explore Dell AI solutions.

Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is the IT Brand Pulse Enterprise AI Infrastructure Brand Leader Survey?

IT Brand Pulse conducts independent surveys of IT professionals to identify which vendors are recognized as leaders across key technology categories. The Enterprise AI Infrastructure Brand Leader Survey covers a wide range of categories across the AI infrastructure stack, including servers, storage, edge AI, and AI factory platforms. Dell’s recognition across ten Market Leader and eight Innovation Leader categories in the 2026 survey reflects the perspectives of IT professionals who evaluated vendors based on real-world experience.

2. What is the Dell AI Factory?

The Dell AI Factory is Dell’s end-to-end approach to enterprise AI infrastructure. It brings together compute, networking, storage, software, orchestration, services, and operating models in a validated framework designed to simplify deployment and reduce integration risk. At its foundation is the Dell AI Data Platform, which connects data pipelines, model workflows, and human feedback loops to help organizations turn enterprise data into usable AI context.

3. How does the Dell AI Factory help organizations move from AI pilots to production?

Many organizations find that moving a successful AI pilot into a governed, scalable production workflow is one of the hardest steps in their AI journey. The Dell AI Factory addresses this by combining modular infrastructure, validated software and models, data strategy, and adaptable operating models. Dell AI Professional Services supports stakeholder alignment, data governance, and workflow connectivity. Early adopters have achieved up to 2.6 times return on investment in the first year of their AI Factory investments.

4. What are some real-world examples of the Dell AI Factory in action?

At The Guthrie Clinic, the Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA supports virtual nurses, electronic ICU staff, and telesitters. Results include ER visit times reduced by more than 80 minutes, average ICU stays shortened by half a day, and patient falls with injuries lowered by 70%. At Flexcompute, Dell PowerEdge XE-Series servers support AI-driven physics simulations, enabling 100 times faster design speeds and 10 times faster design optimization cycles across automotive and aviation engineering. These are two examples among more than 5,000 Dell AI Factory customer deployments.

5. What does Dell mean by Sovereign AI?

Sovereign AI refers to an organization’s ability to control where its AI runs, which data it can access, how outputs are governed, and how costs scale over time. The Dell AI Factory supports Sovereign AI by enabling on-premises, hybrid, and other deployment models. This helps organizations protect the proprietary data, operational knowledge, and contextual relationships that differentiate their business, rather than ceding that control to external infrastructure or third-party cloud environments.

1IT Brand Pulse: Enterprise AI Infrastructure Brand Leaders

2The Guthrie Clinic

3Flexcompute

4Dell AI Solutions

5Dell AI Data Platform with NVIDIA

6Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA delivers proven path to enterprise AI ROI