DELL TECHNOLOGIES WORLD, LAS VEGAS — Customer data, disaggregated infrastructure and sovereignty are competitive advantages for telcos and communication service providers in the current economy, according to top Dell Technologies executives.
Operators "have some of the richest data sets of any company in the world," said Arthur Lewis, president of the Dell Infrastructure Solutions Group, in response to a question from Fierce at a press and analyst Q&A with top Dell executives Tuesday.
Communication service providers should be sure to understand subscriber information to build more competitive offers, understand network performance in real time and take advantage of "massive, incredible opportunity," Lewis said.
Sovereign AI rules
"In telco, there's certainly a continual move for disaggregated infrastructure using more industry-standard server architectures, and that's been a fast-growing business for us," said Michael Dell, chairman and CEO.
Telcos are building AI inference capabilities "in the context of sovereign AI," he said. In many cases, governments deploying sovereign infrastructure turn to local telcos as "their first go-to" for implementation.
Dell COO Jeff Clarke's advice to telcos was short and to the point: "My message would be modernize, and modernize quickly," he said.
Dell's comments are consistent with company strategy, as disaggregated, industry-standard architectures are the company's core business. Dell launched an on-premises sovereign AI stack earlier this week, in part to serve operators looking to build sovereign cloud infrastructure for regulated enterprise customers and governments.
With cloud-based radio now rivaling the performance of proprietary solutions, telcos at last have the technology infrastructure needed to achieve the kind of business transformation that has been promised, but elusive, for more than a decade, said Sandro Tavares, who until recently led Dell's telecom marketing and now heads enterprise server marketing (including telco), in a 1:1 interview with Fierce Monday.
Dell rattles the supply chain
The executives also discussed chip shortages, supply chain issues and geopolitics. "The first rule and golden rule of our supply chain and servicing our customers is secure supply," Clarke said. "It helps when you're four times bigger than your competitors. Scale matters."
Dell and its customers face inflation across the board – for memory, leading-edge silicon, raw materials and fuel to move materials, and that is outside of Dell's control, he said.
"We have a general premise that Michael has led the company by, which is we focus on what we can control," Clarke said. The company is allocating supply for customers and working with customers on collaboratively planning for future demand over multiple years.
"There's more demand than there is supply, but we do have an incredibly robust supply chain," Dell said.
Supply chain issues are rippling across the telco and cloud industries. Hyperscalers are grabbing up fiber for AI and data centers, leaving operators scrambling.
Ciena reported a $7 billion order backlog in Q1 2026 as supply chain constraints persist. On the other hand, Extreme Networks cited its supply chain assurance as a strategic advantage in its recent quarterly earnings report, in which it reported its eighth consecutive quarter of sequential product revenue growth.