Dell Planning Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence Investments To Drive Server Growth

Dell EMC, subsidiary of Dell Technologies brands, said Wednesday it was looking into investing in emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, blockchain, data analytics, and cloud-compliance. This new investment plan was designed with the aim of retaining the company's top position in India’s server market.

“The clients are looking to tap these technologies, which is why we are bringing in servers that allow them to optimize on traditional workloads as well as invest into new age workloads such as cloud, artificial intelligence, analytics, and blockchain,” said Manish Gupta, senior director and general manager of Infrastructure Solutions Group, Dell EMC India, the Economic Times, an Indian daily, reported.

The clients of Dell EMC India include major local IT firms, banks, financial organizations, and insurance companies. This list also includes the Indian government which is reportedly taking a keen interest in blockchain applications.

Dell EMC's servers and networking business posted revenue of $5.1 billion in the second quarter of 2018, a 34 percent increase from 2017. The company believes this new age technology can bring in modern architecture and scalability into the business. For this reason, Dell EMC launched a new server called PowerEdge MX earlier in September that would support both traditional and emerging data center workloads.

At the time when PowerEdge MX was launched, there was no mention of the server being integrated with blockchain. That announcement was made by Gupta on Wednesday, when talking about the company's interest in the new technologies.

Ashley Gorakhpurwalla, president and general manager of Dell EMC Server and Infrastructure Systems, explained what PowerEdge MX does: "PowerEdge MX enables a modular approach to flexibly build and combine compute, storage, and networking, so organizations can transform their IT in a way that optimizes resources and offers investment protection for future generations of technological advances."

Another Dell subsidiary, VMware, has been working on Project Concord— an open-source blockchain infrastructure designed to be both scalable and energy efficient. In a blog post in August, VMware announced the project aims to give a base for blockchain implementations which can solve certain scaling issues in cloud computing and virtualization industry.

Earlier in 2018, the south Indian state of Telangana announced it would sign memoranda of understanding with blockchain firms that could allow the state to implement the technology across various government services. Notably, the Telangana government partnered with Tech Mahindra, an Indian multinational provider of information technology, to launch India’s first ‘Blockchain District.'

While the country's IT companies and government bodies are receptive to blockchain, the country's Supreme Court is currently in the midst of examining a contentious circular issued by India's central bank, the Reserve Bank of India. The circular, issued in April directed banks in the country to stop offering services to cryptocurrency-related entities.

Dell shares closed 0.35 percent lower Wednesday on New York Stock Exchange, while the overall NYSE Composite Index closed with a fall of 0.45 percent.