Dell Technologies: AI Data Platform and Storage Portfolio for the Agentic Enterprise
At the recent Dell Technologies World in Las Vegas, Dell announced a broad expansion of its AI Data Platform and storage portfolio, centered on the general availability of the Lightning File System (formerly Project Lightning), the introduction of Exascale Storage as a unified 4-in-1 rack architecture, the refreshed ObjectScale X7700 appliance, and enhancements to the Dell AI Data Platform’s orchestration, analytics, and search layers.
Data Center Power: The Transition to 800 VDC
For the past two decades, power architecture has evolved incrementally around a familiar model: utility AC enters the facility, passes through switchgear, transformers, UPS systems, power distribution units, and rack power shelves, and is ultimately converted to low-voltage DC for CPUs, GPUs, memory, networking, and storage.
That model worked for conventional enterprise and cloud computing. It was good enough when racks consumed 10kW, 20kW, or even 50kW, but it becomes far more difficult as AI infrastructure pushes rack densities toward hundreds of kilowatts and, in some designs, beyond 1MW.
NVIDIA STX & CMX: Infrastructure for AI Context Storage (GTC 2026)
NVIDIA announced its BlueField-4 STX reference architecture at GTC 2026, introducing a modular framework for deploying accelerated storage infrastructure optimized for agentic AI workloads. The architecture addresses a specific technical challenge: as AI systems evolve from single-turn interactions to complex, multi-step agentic workflows with context windows spanning millions of tokens, existing storage hierarchies struggle to efficiently manage the growing KV cache that stores an AI agent’s working memory.
Call Notes: Q4 2025 Neocloud Market
Just before the Holiday break, I participated in an advisory session on the current state of the neocloud market, which is continuing to experience significant growth as the demand for AI infrastructure continues unabated. Can it continue?
Here I’m sharing some of the notes I used for that discussion.