During the past quarter, Dell’s datacentre sales went through the roof due to new server and networking products for AI – but storage has not shared the same dynamic
During the past quarter, Dell’s datacentre sales went through the roof due to new server and networking products for AI – but storage has not shared the same dynamic
Dell’s quarterly results show a huge growth in server sales, driven by artificial intelligence (AI) projects, but a relative lag in storage. Key reasons behind that might be that Dell’s current storage lags a little behind the curve in AI performance, while its massive parallel network-attached storage (NAS) that aims to plug that gap, Project Lightning, is in gestation.
Dell’s PC division usually massively outsells its datacentre products, but that’s not the case in its latest (second) quarterly results, which show 69% growth in sales of servers and networking equipment year-on-year. That equated to a revenue of $16.8bn for the infrastructure division that put the client services – i.e. personal equipment – into the shade with $12.5bn of sales.
Dell has benefited here from being the first to the AI market, with servers, the latest Nvidia graphics processing unit (GPUs), and switches compatible with high throughput Nvidia Spectrum-X networking and Ultra-Ethernet cards.
“In the last six months we have delivered $10bn worth of servers for AI,” said Jeff Clarke, vice-chairman and chief operating officer for Dell Technologies.
