Dell urges partners to 'buckle up' for onslaught of data demands

Vendor lays out emerging technologies that will transform businesses in next five years at its Forum event in London

Partners must be ready to help customers deal with the "tsunami of data" that will be produced in the next five years, according to Dell's UK commercial boss Claire Vyvyan.

Speaking during the opening keynote at the vendor's Forum event in London, Vyvyan (pictured) rallied partners to consider the implications that a host of emerging technologies will have on their business and how they can guide customers through their own accumulating datasets.

"The next five years in technology will probably see as much development, in a technical sense, in all our businesses and services as we've seen in the last 15 years - since the birth of the internet, effectively," she told attendees at the event.

"So buckle up because the next five years are going to be super exciting for all of us."

Emerging technologies such as edge computing, 5G and Internet of Things (IoT) gaining traction in the mainstream will cause the world to become "awash with data" and partners should expect an increase in helping customers with moving, analysing and securing their data, she added.

"Individually, each of those technologies can really transform your business and your services and the economy on the whole," she said.

"But if you put them together, they really are going to transform whole industries, whole economies, and change the world that we live in today."

Vyvyan implored attendees to consider partnering with Dell as they embark on their data management journeys, stating that the ties between business and technology will become closer in the next five years as emerging technologies become widely adopted.

"Business and technology are intimately connected today and that's going to accelerate with these emerging technologies and Dell Technologies would love to be your partner in that journey," she stated.

"We're a hugely innovative company, we're accelerating the pace of our innovation in order to change the pace at which the world is moving and we'd love to be your technology partner."

Vyvan's comments were further built on by Allison Dew, Dell Technologies' chief marketing officer, who told attendees which technologies the tech giant was placing its bets on in order to harness the potential around data.

Dell has predicted that 163 zettabytes of data will be created by 2025 and Dew laid out the five technologies that the vendor believes will help turn that data into "action": artificial intelligence (AI), hybrid cloud, the edge, software-defined and workforce modernisation.

"[It is] this combination of these five trends powered by the immense amount of data that has led to our better understanding of what we actually do in this space," she said.

"There's this real promise of digital transformation. So when we talk about digital transformation to our customers, our partners and frankly, ourselves, we boil it down to this very simple conversation: every organisation needs to be a digital organisation, powered by data running in a multi-cloud world."

Dew then set out the vendor's stall to entice partners to work closely with the vendor and thanked them for helping it become the "largest technology provider" in the UK and Ireland.

"We want to really break down this conversation about the possibility of technology, but also the real work behind what we need to do to make that possibility real," she stated at the keynote.

"The industry has been talking about digital transformation for a number of years and there's a lot of hype in it and there's a lot of confusion about what's really happening.

"Look at where we could help your business, your services, the things you're doing today, to change what you're doing to extend and serve your customers even better."