If enterprise data is the oil, Dell wants disaggregated infrastructure to be the pipeline

The vast majority of enterprise data still resides on-premises, making it a natural anchor for the next wave of AI deployments. As organizations race to operationalize agentic AI, the operational complexity and rigid cost structures of legacy hyperconverged infrastructure are increasingly hard to justify, according to Travis Vigil (pictured, left), senior vice president of product management at Dell Technologies Inc. The alternative Dell is pushing is disaggregated infrastructure — separating compute from storage so enterprises can scale each on its own, escaping the one-size-fits-all constraints of legacy HCI.

“The vast majority of data still resides on-premises, and being able to bring the compute and the data management and the orchestration and the automation to where the data lives is not only cheaper — it’s more efficient,” Vigil said. “Customers, more than ever, need to turn the data that they have [into results]. That’s the oil — everything else is just piping to get value from the oil, and the ability to leverage that in place is critical to our customers.”

Vigil and Caitlin Gordon (right), senior vice president of product management for private cloud and AI solutions at Dell, spoke with theCUBE’s John Furrier and Dave Vellante at Dell Technologies World 2026, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed disaggregated infrastructure, private cloud momentum and Dell’s expanding AI ecosystem strategy. (* Disclosure below.)

Disaggregated infrastructure displaces HCI as AI demands scale

The pressure to escape hyperconverged lock-in is now at the center of Dell’s disaggregated cloud pitch. Major announcements at Dell Technologies World include expanded support for VMware Cloud Foundation 9.1, Microsoft Azure Local and Nutanix on PowerStore — all anchored to a disaggregated infrastructure model that scales compute and storage independently and can deliver up to 65% cost savings versus HCI, according to Gordon.

“The reality is that Dell Private Cloud, with disaggregated infrastructure, with PowerStore now, has a six to one data reduction — you have up to 65% acquisition cost savings,” Gordon said. “On top of that, the private cloud software gives you the operational savings. It’s really a cost benefit analysis that is undisputed for every one of our customers. We’re really trying to help them get out of the handcuffs of HCI and get [them] into the freedom that they need with Dell Private Cloud.”

PowerStore Elite is central to the storage refresh, being the largest platform overhaul since PowerStore’s original 2020 launch — delivering three times the performance and three times the density, with throughput reaching 40 gigabytes per second to keep GPU clusters continuously fed, according to Vigil. A new AI ISV ecosystem program further extends that value by letting partners self-validate integrations at scale, Gordon added.

“Having the new AI ISV ecosystem program enables us to bring ecosystem providers in context of their use cases, and have Dell validation behind that and be able to really scale that for our enterprise customers,” she said. “We can really help them onboard and deploy those in an automated fashion as well all through the Dell Automation Platform.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Dell Technologies World 2026:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Dell Technologies World. Neither Dell, the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE