Dell Technologies has introduced NativeEdge, an edge operations software platform to help businesses simplify and optimise secure edge deployments.

Users can streamline edge operations across thousands of devices and locations from the edge to core data centres and multiple clouds.

NativeEdge delivers secure device onboarding at scale, remote management and multi-cloud application orchestration. It is purpose-built to power any enterprise edge use case with zero-touch deployment and an open system design, integrating with hardware across Dell’s end-to-end portfolio. With zero-trust capabilities built in, NativeEdge reduces security risk by protecting applications and infrastructure.

“Moving data is complicated and expensive, which has resulted in massively distributed architectures that can be difficult to manage, provision and automate,” said Jeff Clarke, vice chairman at Dell Technologies. “As our customers look to fuel new workloads and AI at the edge, they are turning to Dell to find simpler and more effective ways to manage and secure their ecosystem of edge technologies and applications.”

For example, a large manufacturer may need to automate packaging and shipping across its numerous factory sites in various geographies. This means connecting multiple technologies, such as IoT, streaming data and machine vision, which requires dedicated devices to run multiple software applications across locations. Testing and deploying infrastructure to run the applications can take months.

Using NativeEdge, the manufacturer can consolidate its technology stacks using existing investments and reduce the time to deploy edge assets and applications from months to weeks. The platform uses automation to streamline edge operations and helps the manufacturer quickly and securely roll out applications to all sites from a central location.

A Dell study of nearly 100 large users examined the potential economic impact of NativeEdge-enabled deployments for a typical manufacturer with an average of 25 facilities. A three-year investment in NativeEdge managing 75% of a manufacturing organisation’s edge assets showed it could achieve up to 130% return-on-investment on their NativeEdge deployment.

It could also reduce the time required to onboard devices by up to 20 minutes for each edge infrastructure asset managed. Edge asset deployment times could be accelerated and edge operations costs decreased with zero touch provisioning.

There were also savings on transportation costs by decreasing the need for site-support dispatches, helping reduce travel time as well as CO₂ emissions by up to 14 metric tons.

The NativeEdge software platform will be available to customers, OEMs and partners in 50 countries beginning August 2023.

• Dell Technologies and Nvidia have announced a joint initiative to make it easier for businesses to build and use generative AI models on-premises to deliver quickly and securely better customer service, market intelligence, enterprise search and a range of other capabilities.

Project Helix will deliver a series of full-stack offerings with technical expertise and pre-built tools based on Dell and Nvidia infrastructure and software. It includes a complete blueprint to help enterprises use their proprietary data and more easily deploy generative AI responsibly and accurately.