Artificial Intelligence continues to reshape how technology is designed, deployed, and scaled across modern organizations. In this new episode of the Destination AI Podcast, Fabrice Bagniakana, AI Director for Europe at TD SYNNEX, speaks with Paul Brook, AI infrastructure & Data Management specialist pre-sales for EMEA at Dell Technologies.
Together, they explore how Dell is approaching the rapidly evolving AI landscape—from its strategy to “bring AI to your data,” to the concept of the AI Factory as a practical, end-to-end framework for helping organisations move from early AI experimentation to production at scale.
The conversation also delves into one of the biggest challenges in AI today—data readiness—and how Dell’s storage and data platform solutions help customers prepare, govern, and operationalize data for AI at scale. Paul also discusses the growing shift toward fine-tuning and inference on existing models, the strategic collaboration between Dell, NVIDIA, and TD SYNNEX, and the role of the new Dell AI Factory Labs across Europe in enabling partners and customers to test, validate, and accelerate real AI use cases.
This discussion offers a clear and pragmatic perspective on how Dell, together with TD SYNNEX and its partner ecosystem, is helping organizations across EMEA unlock value from AI faster and more reliably.
Fabrice Bagniakana : Paul, to start, could you introduce yourself and tell us about your role at Dell Technologies?
Paul Brook : I am in specialty pre-sales EMEA and my specialty is AI, Data and Quantum Computing
Fabrice : AI is transforming every part of the IT landscape. Could you share Dell’s overall strategy in AI and how you’re supporting customers and partners across Europe?
Paul : Overall we really would want folks to use as the infrastructure provider of choice. To do this our strategy is to Bring AI to your data , make it easy to adopt AI and support customers and partners in scaling this, from AI PC’s though Data centers and the edge.
Fabrice : Dell talks a lot about the ‘AI Factory’ as an end-to-end concept. How do you explain this to a CIO who wants to move from AI experiments to something scalable and repeatable across the business?
Paul : Key to the AI strategy is the AI factory, we are a manufacturer, so we do see the world though the lens of a factory. The AI factory is a pragmatic, open, end-to-end approach that brings AI to your data, right-sizes the infrastructure, and gets real use cases into production—fast—with our partners at the heart of this along-side our customers data
Fabrice : Data is often the real bottleneck for AI. How are Dell’s storage and data lakehouse offerings helping customers get their data ‘AI-ready’ at scale?
Paul : Indeed, a good friend (and colleague) of mine at Dell has taken a well-known phrase and updated it. Ihab ElGhazzawi says what do you get when you have AI and you put garbage (data) into AI? The phrase Garbage in – most folks say Garbage out. Ihab points out how in the ASI world the equation is now Garbage in ‘really expensive Garbage out.’ To support customers the Dell Data Platform for AI, where we explore with partners and customers how to federate data, secure this but- in a flexible world, show how to make the right data available to the right systems ant the right time.
Fabrice : From your perspective in EMEA, are customers more focused on training their own models on Dell infrastructure, or on fine-tuning and running existing foundation models within the Dell–NVIDIA stack?
Paul : The huge majority of AI projects, outside of the Neo-Cloud space are organisations simply wanting to make use of AI to support their organisation, improve how the operate, reach =more customers or patients or whatever they want to do. This leans heavily into the fine-tuning and inference space. The AI factory provides a platform where your local reseller and service partner can provide a platform against which you can build, buy or both to get the Ai your customer wants and needs.
Fabrice : Dell, NVIDIA, and TD SYNNEX have launched Dell AI Factory Labs across Europe, located in France, the UK, and Germany. What kind of value can those labs bring to channel partners and end customers across Europe?
Paul : We just talked about build or buy, and our resellers and partners of TD SYNNEX can provide both in many cases. Configuring off the shelf products or building from pre-trained models (A great process accelerated by NVIDIA through their enterprise software suite. The TS SYNNEX labs mean customers can test, try before buy or prove concepts, they can see for themselves what AI can do, interact with demos, so many ways in which the Labs bring AI to life, it is exciting.
Fabrice : Dell and TD SYNNEX are working closely together to bring these innovations to market through the Destination AI Program. From your perspective, what does this collaboration mean for partners and customers across EMEA?
Paul : Return on investment and fast time to results for your customers. We read so much about AI not working or being deemed a failure but between TDSYNNEX and Dell we can help you jump to the front of the line with knowing what good looks like, how to show this to customers and ultimately getting super sticky with their AI because what our partners and customer love is AI that works, delivers value and scales. We have the track record, the ecosystem and the know-how with the labs to show your customers how to make this happen.
