Generative AI (GenAI) has been called the ‘accelerator of the decade’, representing a significant and immediate opportunity for organisations to unlock insight from data, elevate productivity and transform customer experience.
A subset of artificial intelligence (AI), GenAI can leverage large data sets to create high-quality content in many forms, including text, images, video and software code.
However, capitalising on the extraordinary potential of GenAI is easier said than done. It brings with it immense complexity as well as questions around which model to choose, how to produce business outcomes quickly, and how to manage risks such as data protection, security and cost control, among others.
To better understand what’s limiting or stopping organisations from embracing these innovations, Dell Technologies recently surveyed 500 IT leaders from several countries to generate important insights around readiness and potential.
According to the GenAI Pulse Survey, 76 percent of information technology decision-makers think that the impact of GenAI on their organisation will be significant, if not transformative. Top areas of influence listed included productivity gains, streamlining of processes and cost savings. In fact, 49 percent of respondents believe that they will see meaningful results from their AI investments in between six months to a year.
But despite these very positive results, over a third of leaders surveyed revealed hesitance in implementing AI, listing concerns around data security, complexity of implementation and the effects on existing teams.
“GenAI shows exciting potential for innovation, but it also opens up difficulties in terms of implementation and risk,” explains Wilfred Mokhaloane, pre-sales engineer at Pinnacle, a local Dell partner. “Challenges are mounting around how to prioritise use cases, determine technical feasibility and maximise business value.
“There are numerous use cases aligned to GenAI, and it’s critical for businesses to identify and prioritise those that are best aligned to specific business needs. Could it be customer operations, content creation, software development or sales and marketing?,” he asks.
Helping local businesses to take the first step in their GenAI journeys
“With the recent launch of our AI-focused services division, Pinnacle is working very closely with Dell to help our local channel and end user clients determine where to start in their AI journeys, gauge their readiness in leveraging GenAI across business and IT dimensions, and how to gain the very real value promised.”
As part of its collaboration with Dell, Pinnacle is offering an intensive half-day workshop to its South African Development Community (SADC) channel partners and their customers.
“The Dell Accelerator Workshop for GenAI provides an excellent starting point to determining how a business will achieve maximised benefits from GenAI. It draws on Dell’s extensive experience working with thousands of other organisations, focusing on the activities required to achieve a company’s desired end state and next steps to further advance its business and IT strategies.”
The Accelerator Workshop helps companies to identify their current state, single out challenges within the environment, define goals and objectives, establish a vision for an ideal future state, develop an executive roadmap, and outline expected results and benefits.
Dell Technologies Services provides a full portfolio of options across the GenAI lifecycle to further help businesses accelerate time to value of high performance GenAI architecture, and enable the creation of GenAI solutions aligned to specific business needs and use cases.
“Dell Technologies has the world’s broadest GenAI solutions portfolio – from desktop to data centre to cloud – and the company recently announced its expansion of the Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA to include new server, edge, workstation, solutions and services advancements that speed AI adoption and innovation.
“Dell’s end-to-end capabilities are a core differentiator, and one that Pinnacle believes will help support local organisations to leverage AI in order to move boldly into this next technological revolution,” Mokhaloane concludes.
For more information on the Dell solutions available locally through Pinnacle, please contact Wilfred Mokhaloane at wilfredm@pinnacle.co.za or +27 (0) 11 265-3000. Alternatively, please visit https://www.pinnacle.co.za/brands-managers-page/dell-enterprise.