for AI Infrastructure

KeyConsiderations

Why AI?

A Digitized World Requires Data – and the Infrastructure to Handle It

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming how consumers and enterprises work, learn, and play. Winning organizations will be those that use AI – as well as machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) – to:

Data is core for AI/ML/DL use cases, and unstructured data is driving data growth in AI initiatives:

Handling ever-growing data sets is critical to accelerate AI initiatives. What’s needed is an AI infrastructure solution that balances compute and storage, memory, and networking capabilities.

Cost is the main reason for moving accelerated workloads from the cloud to on-premise, followed by data security and lack of performancein the cloud across all accelerator technologies.

Traditional datacenter architecture can’t run AI workloads e�iciently. Enter acceleration technologies for AI. An IDC survey on customer perceptions of acceleration technologies indicates:

Many companies are jumping in with both feet:

But few are in full production:

are currentlyexploringAI initiatives

Deliver meaningful insights and value-added predictions

of organizations had AI models in production

were in theproof-of-concept stage

are experimentingwith AI

Uncover new business opportunities and revenue sources

Improve processes, products, or services across industries anduse cases

Enable digital transformation

Source: IDC, Q3 2019 Market View: Infrastructure for AI

Source: IDC’s Artificial Intelligence Global Adoption Trends and Strategies survey

Source: IDC's Worldwide File and Object-based Storage Forecast 2018

Source: How End Users in 10 Industries Are Perceiving Importance and Satisfaction with Server Acceleration: An IDC survey of 200 respondents on Customer Perceptions regarding Acceleration Technologies 2018 – Part 1, n=200

49%

18% 15%16%

By 2022, 881 exabytes of storage capacity will be shipped in support of unstructured data

Do not use GPUsDeploy in cloud Of users deployGPUs on-premisesacross all industries

On-premise GPU deploymentis expected to increase

On-premises vs. Cloud

from to50.8%today

54.2%in 12 months

Industries and Criteriafor Infrastructure Choice

Business needs to obtain AI insights at speed, especially in certain industries.Acceleration for AI/DL occurs most often in:

An IDC survey of technology buyers considering compute and storage infrastructure found:

The top three industry criteria in choosing an AI infrastructure:

1.

1.

2.

2.

3.

3.

Finance LifeSciences

Broadcast/Telecomand Healthcare

Ships with full stack of frameworks, SDKs, tool kits

Provides AI/HPC-related support/consulting

O�ers specific server form factor

Source: How End Users in 10 Industries Are Perceiving Importance and Satisfaction with Server Acceleration: An IDC survey of 200 respondents on Customer Perceptions regarding Acceleration Technologies 2018 – Part 1, n=200

66%

82%

60%

Plan to use or currently use compute andstorage in a corporate datacenter or co-location

Would purchase new infrastructure includingservers and storage for thier AI initiatives

Have purchased SSD-based all flash arraysfor AI training and inferencing

Source: IDC's Enterprise Infrastructure Market Pulse 2019

IDC GuidanceThe ideal AI infrastructure is an optimal combination of compute and storage. Other key considerationsfor companies planning to jump into AI include:

Ease of use in terms of deployment, management, and scale

Partnerships that include ecosystem of software and frameworks

Experience as technology supplier

Support from supplier or integrator for compute, storage, and networking

Flexibility to support various requirements across di�erent AI projects

Portfolio benefits of supporting integrated products for AI from a single technology supplier

To learn more about the importance of choosing AI infrastructure,download the IDC Technology Spotlight,

“Unleashing the Power of AI Initiatives with the Right Infrastructure,”sponsored by Dell EMC

All IDC research is © 2019 by IDC. All rights reserved. All IDC materials are licensed with IDC’s permission and in no way does the use or publication of IDC research indicate IDC’s endorsement of Dell’s products or strategies. Document #US45578019

An IDC Infographic, sponsored by Dell EMC

53%34% 13%