Entries by Angela Lambert, Principal Analyst and Practice Manager

Dell Technologies World 2026 Highlights Dell’s Growing Leadership in Enterprise AI Infrastructure

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Dell Technologies World 2026 reinforced the success of the company’s long-term AI strategy. While Dell Technologies (Dell) has spent the last three years aggressively ramping production to meet intense demand for infrastructure to support model training, the company has also been preparing for the coming inference-heavy phase of AI, which will create a significant opportunity with its enterprise customers. Dell is staying true to its roots as a hardware company by reinforcing that the brand of hardware that organizations select to support their most critical initiatives matters more now than ever.

AI Alliances Will Increasingly Target OT

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New and expanding partnerships are increasingly targeting the convergence of IT and OT, as system integrators (SIs) align with OEMs, manufacturing ISVs and silicon providers. This momentum is driven by the strong growth potential in high-tech manufacturing, where solutions that improve accuracy, efficiency and safety can be deployed on-site without reliance on rack-scale compute systems in neoclouds or Tier 1 clouds. As a result, while AI has long operated at the edge, these partnerships will accelerate both the sophistication of AI-driven use cases and the pace of solution framework development.

2026 Predictions: AI Momentum Drives Deeper Ecosystem Alliances

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2026 will be a transitional year defined by technology ecosystem expansions — multiparty alliances spanning IT, OT, devices, edge and silicon; industrial/physical AI acceleration, especially at the edge and in manufacturing; and strategic bottlenecks as skill shortages and infrastructure gaps slow sovereign AI adoption. TBR expects significant changes in how technology vendors collaborate and compete, which lays the groundwork for broader, more integrated AI ecosystems. This is an optimistic prediction. Multiparty alliances require exceptional leadership, shared understanding of commercial models and transparency among partners, and AI aids only the last of these. The human component remains the most significant roadblock. IT-OT convergence and a surge in connected everything have been a TBR (and broader market) prediction for years, and while “signs point to yes,” as the Magic 8 Ball says, 2026 could be another year of disappointing progress, as hype around physical AI could far outpace reality.

Ecosystem Intelligence: Key Strategic Changes for 2025

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In 2025 IT services companies and consultancies will refine their alliances, winnowing lists of 100-plus technology partners to the handful that drive more than 90% of their business, articulate a clear joint value proposition, and align at both the leadership and sales force levels. A technology- and partner-agnostic approach was always a bit of a fiction and in the coming years will become a relic of the past. To make all that happen, IT services companies, cloud and on-premises infrastructure vendors, and consultancies will invest in ecosystem intelligence and elevate alliance management within their organizations.