Dell Technologies announced its outlook on next year's technology trends, stating that technologies that were the subject of much discussion last year, such as generative AI, edge platforms, and zero trust, are expected to realize tangible opportunities in actual industries in 2024.

Dell Technologies announced its 2024 IT technology outlook on the 5th.

An examination of the key announcements reveals that discussions on AI are shifting from theory to implementation, and the establishment of supply chains and ecosystems for enterprise generative AI is expected to begin in earnest. Furthermore, it is predicted that a data-centric future will be realized through expansion into multi-cloud environments via edge platforms and the reinforcement of boundaries through zero trust.

In 2023, the focus was mainly on theoretical discussions such as selecting generative AI models and determining the data to use and the location of the data, but in 2024, these systems are expected to transition into actual inference and operational environments.

From an economic perspective as well, the focus shifts from training costs to operating costs. While the costs required to train or fine-tune models can be high and infrastructure requirements can be substantial, this will be a small part of the total investment in applying generative AI to enterprises.

John Roese, Global CTO of Dell Technologies, predicted that generative AI projects, which have been in a broad experimental phase for many companies, will soon become a strategic focus for top management.

The ecosystem of AI tools and services is expected to expand with greater diversity. The field of co-pilot accelerators is projected to become mainstream as developers can easily use and create various types of interfaces, ranging from new types of accelerators installed on the client side, such as PyTorch, to open-standard AI runtime frameworks used on the infrastructure side, such as ONYX.

Open and closed models and tools for implementing enterprise generative AI are also expected to continuously emerge. Jeff Clarke, Chief Operating Officer at Dell Technologies, predicted that tools and models to help securely develop generative AI systems and manage the data required for them will become more diverse, and that the trend toward openness will continue from basic models to additional tools.

Regarding the expansion into multi-cloud environments through edge platforms, Dell predicted that adopting a 'multi-cloud edge platform' approach will become commonplace in the future to securely operate and trust software-defined edge workloads located in all cloud, IoT, and IT systems.

Regarding Zero Trust, as the democratization of AI progresses and more data and intelligence move to the edge, data management is becoming increasingly critical to the security of the digital future, so the need to mandate Zero Trust is expected to rise.

CTO John Rose stated, “2023 was a year in which global cybersecurity efforts were focused on Zero Trust. In 2024, it is highly likely that Zero Trust will move beyond being a ‘buzzword’ and materialize into actual technologies and standards, or even related certifications will emerge, clearly defining what Zero Trust truly means.”

Dell plans to lead the adoption of Zero Trust across various industries by introducing a Zero Trust-configured private cloud system to the market within 2024, based on the 'Fort Zero' project, which is provided in a pre-configured form to lower the barriers to Zero Trust adoption.

Peter Marrs, President of Dell Asia Pacific, said, “The remarkable advancement of technology has all been achieved through collaboration and ecosystem ethics.” “Generative AI is a prime example of the need for greater collaboration to achieve higher performance,” he said. “This is also why we must join forces for digital cohesion. Digital-based ideas can only be realized when everyone works together. At the forefront of technology integration, Dell plans to fully support customers’ business growth opportunities by leveraging its industry-leading expertise, partner relationships, and solution portfolio.”

Kim Kyung-jin, General Manager of Dell Technologies Korea, emphasized, “AI is now on the verge of mass adoption, edge computing is the channel for applying it to the real world, and zero trust is the methodology that enables its safe use. When utilizing AI, one must keep in mind that AI and other architectures should not be considered separately. It is time to lay the groundwork for aligning vision and action from a long-term perspective.”