AI is finally coming to the data — not the other way around

For years, enterprises wanting to use AI had to do things the hard way — extract data from their databases, send it somewhere else for processing and then bring it back. SQL Server 2025 reflects a turning point: AI capabilities are built directly into the engine, so the data never has to leave.

The Dell Technologies Inc.–Microsoft Corp. partnership has spent years building toward exactly this moment, converging database, automation and hybrid cloud capabilities into a stack designed to let AI meet data where it already lives. That convergence took a significant step forward with the general availability of SQL Server 2025 and new announcements around the Dell Automation Platform, according to Bob Ward (pictured, right), principal architect at Microsoft.

“The key architecture for AI capabilities is integrating with things like embedding models for vector searching or chat completion models for AI agents. But we do it all inside the engine — the SQL Server Engine,” Ward said. “We [formed a] partnership with Dell so that we can connect to anything on premises. I can connect to Azure Local, Dell, Nvidia Factory. We just got a framework built in so it doesn’t matter where you’re running these AI models, we can easily integrate with it.”

Ward and Robert Sonders (left), technical staff global engineering technologist for platform automation and multicloud software at Dell, spoke with theCUBE’s John Furrier and Gemma Allen at Dell Technologies World 2026, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed SQL Server 2025 built-in AI capabilities, the Dell Automation Platform, hybrid sovereignty and agentic use cases. (* Disclosure below.)

SQL Server 2025 and hybrid AI infrastructure

The Dell–Microsoft integration addresses a pressure point well documented across enterprise information technology. Roughly 70% of application development and platform leaders cite data fragmentation as the top blocker to scaling AI beyond pilots. Industries where data sovereignty is non-negotiable — healthcare chief among them — are emerging as the earliest adopters, Ward noted.

“In a patient room, [hospital staff] want to be able to go into a digital chart using SQL Server as a data source and say, ‘I need clinical recommendations,'” Ward said. “That’s going to [trigger] some sort of job that may go submit an order within the hospital — using AI technology behind the scenes to go make those decisions with the data.”

On the infrastructure side, Dell’s Automation Platform and Dell Private Cloud provide the operational backbone, allowing customers to deploy Azure Local on-premises and manage the full hardware lifecycle — firmware, updates and day-two operations — while maintaining consistent control through Azure Arc, Sonders explained. The architecture lets organizations run SQL Server in virtual machines or Kubernetes containers without learning separate skill sets for cloud and on-premises environments. For enterprises weighing the move from public cloud to on-premises AI deployment, the question is less about capability than about whether the full lifecycle — from hardware to workload — can be managed as a single, coherent system, Sonders added.

“We start at the tin — we start in the box — maintaining hardware, firmware updates, rolling that through,” Sonders said. “Once we get to a point, we connect to the cloud control plane, Azure bits come down [and] SQL Server can be loaded through Azure. We could do it even with a custom blueprint if it’s a specific need, however we want to do that, however customers want to do that. That’s the full life cycle for that type of deployment.”

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