Dell Experts Discuss the Future of Deskside AI

During Dell Technologies World 2026, much of the conversation centered on AI use amid the rapid emergence of agentic AI.

In a conversation with Marc Hammons, Senior Distinguished Engineer at Dell Technologies, and Charlie Walker, Head of Dell Pro Precision at Dell Technologies, both emphasized how unexpectedly strong the demand and experimentation around AI have become for customers.

Enterprise AI experimentation opens new on-premises conversations

While many are still in an exploratory phase – trying to understand both the possibilities and the operational realities of on-prem AI versus cloud AI – Dell is ensuring that their customers and partners are positioned to meet this new reality.

“In the last couple of months, it’s been transformational in terms of the way that people work, and I think a lot of customers are starting to experiment and experience that as a result,” notes Hammons.

Walker agreed, saying that customers are very much in the experimental phase, attempting to see the art of the possible. They’re increasingly having conversations with people about whether customers are utilizing on-prem or frontier AI models in their experimentation.

Frontier models vs local AI infrastructure

Hammons explains that large-scale reasoning workloads still require frontier-scale models, especially for analyzing massive code repositories.

“You need a frontier model and reason to be able to create a plan to take over an entire code base,” said Hammons. “And then you can take segments of that plan and have an executable. So, there’s definitely a balance between the two, and there’s still a need for frontier models.”

Meanwhile, Dell’s Deskside AI strategy is helping make local AI systems increasingly powerful. Walker said that Dell products such as the GB10 and GB300 serve as high-memory local workstations capable of advanced inference tasks, including medical imaging analysis and AI-assisted classification.

Desktop and mobile workstations acting as primary AI operating systems

Deskside AI systems are becoming increasingly central to enterprise interactions with AI workloads. 

Walker suggests that desktops and mobile workstations are becoming the primary operational layer where AI agents, local inference, and enterprise workflows coverage before scaling outward into larger infrastructure deployments.

Local Deskside AI systems help reduce operational AI costs by limiting the number of queries sent to expensive frontier cloud models. Because of this, local AI works not only as a privacy and governance advantage but also as a practical financial optimization layer.

How Deskside AI addresses sensitive data risks

Hammons emphasized that Deskside AI becomes essential when organizations cannot risk sensitive information leaving local environments. Local AI systems can be critical for NDA-bound work, confidential partner projects, and regulated enterprise environments.

Security has emerged as one of the strongest recurring arguments for Deskside AI. Hammons and Walker both describe local systems as environments where enterprises maintain control over intellectual property, governance, device security, and endpoint validation without exposing data externally.

“There’s the tokenomics that we’re going to save money by using the local AI, but since that data stays local, there’s security, there’s privacy, and there’s a governance aspect to it,” said Hammons. “There’s a ton of benefits to bring our data down closer to where your data is.”

However, they don’t present Deskside AI as a replacement for cloud AI entirely. Instead, both described a hybrid operating model in which local systems handle privacy-sensitive and operational workloads, while frontier cloud models continue to support large-scale reasoning tasks.

“Only some of the queries would go to the cloud – the frontier model,” said Walker. “The rest of them would go to the [Deskside].”

Model selection, validation, and enterprise guidance

Hammons explained Dell’s approach to continuously evaluating and benchmarking models, while Walker detailed how Dell translates those findings into educational content, validated designs, and partner guidance for enterprise customers. 

Enterprises are no longer evaluating AI in abstract terms but are instead actively determining which models perform best for specific tasks, how those models scale across local and cloud infrastructure, and how organizations can maintain consistency as the AI ecosystem evolves rapidly.

Hammons explained that Dell is building internal benchmarking and continuous evaluation processes to compare models against practical enterprise use cases. Instead of relying solely on public benchmarks, Dell is continuously testing models in real operational environments to determine which systems are best suited for coding, reasoning, inference, and enterprise automation tasks. He also discussed Dell’s effort to create reference architectures and validated designs that customers and partners can use as deployment guidance.

How Dell is providing guidance and enablement to channel partners

Additionally, Walker described how Dell translates those findings into educational resources, partner enablement, and deployment frameworks – positioning Dell as a hardware provider and as an organization that seeks to guide enterprises through the rapidly shifting AI landscape by combining infrastructure recommendations, workload guidance, and operational best practices.

Overall, Dell’s emerging strategy centers on Deskside agentic AI, blending local compute, scalable infrastructure, and practical enterprise deployment. 

Walker and Hammons emphasized the idea that organizations are still in an active experimentation phase, but one that is rapidly moving toward operational adoption.

From software engineering agents and local workstation inference to governance, security, and cost optimization, agentic AI is reshaping how enterprises build, secure, and scale their workflows today.

Recently, Dell partners DXC and WWT discussed with Channel Insider how Dell’s evolving partner program and AI infrastructure strategy are driving enterprise modernization. Read more about their perspectives on the enhancements Dell recently made.