Dell Technologies eyes agentic context and quality gains with new AI Data Platform features

Updates to the Dell AI Data Platform aim to provide more reliable AI systems and reduce costs, according to the tech giant.

In a sweeping update to the platform, Dell technologies has unveiled three new features, including a “Unified Semantic Layer” designed to improve visibility for unstructured and structured data sources.

In a blog post detailing the move, the company said this will give data more “consistent business meaning” by providing users with rules, definitions, and a searchable glossary “so a term means the same thing everywhere it appears”.

“If one system calls it a client and another calls it an account, AI now knows they’re the same thing,” Dell explained. “Users can also import existing ontologies and classification taxonomies, reusing industry-standard or enterprise-specific taxonomy assets”.

As part of this, Dell confirmed it will draw upon Nvidia Auto-Ontology, an open source library used to design and build knowledge graphs.

Dell targets AI context gains

On that front, platform users will now have access to the Enterprise Knowledge Graph feature. According to Dell, this maps how structured and unstructured data is related, and plays a key role in the Unified Semantic Layer.

“It uses metadata, lineage, and query history to keep tuning the graph as activity changes. When an agent asks a question, the platform pulls in every related piece it's allowed to see,” the company noted in a blog post.

New "Knowledge Agents" will run parallel to these new features, according to Dell Technologies.

The company said these “put context to work” and will act as a complementary tool to provide teams with insights on data sources and infrastructure environments.

AI costs in the spotlight

Dell Technologies said the new features come at a pivotal time for organizations, many of whom are scaling AI projects and encountering infrastructure-related bottlenecks.

“In most cases, the model isn’t the bottleneck to achieving enterprise scale for AI,” the company said. “The data is. A company’s most useful information sits in files, databases, cloud services, and systems across multiple sites.”

These disparate and fragmented data sources mean agents burn through tokens to reconstruct answers and derive context from enterprise information, said Arthur Lewis, president of Dell’s Infrastructure Solutions Group.

“Data without context is just noise,” he commented. “Most enterprises have spent years making their data accessible. That’s not the same as making it usable.”

“An agent that can find a customer record but doesn’t know what it means, how it connects to everything else, or whether it can be trusted isn’t intelligent. It’s just fast.”

Lewis added that by focusing on providing greater visibility and context for agents will “get more out of the data they already have”.

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