Dell Technologies launches PowerStore Elite in India as majority of servers shift to local production

Majority of Dell servers now made in India amid surge in local AI demand

Dell Technologies is significantly boosting its local manufacturing in India, with most servers now produced domestically to meet growing demand for data sovereignty and AI integration. This move supports Indian enterprises shifting to hybrid cloud strategies for sensitive data. Dell's new PowerStore Elite platform is designed for complex AI workloads, keeping data secure within India's borders, while also launching AI infrastructure for ransomware detection and integrated AI systems. Driven by a growing emphasis on data sovereignty and the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence, US tech major Dell Technologies is significantly expanding its domestic manufacturing footprint in India, with a majority of its servers now being produced locally, a senior company executive said on Tuesday. Venkat Sitaram, Senior Director and Country Head, Infrastructure Solutions Group, India, Dell Technologies, said that while the locally manufactured products primarily serve the Indian market, the company will be open to exporting when the need arises. "A large part of our portfolio, spanning across the client solutions group and infrastructure solutions group ... a majority of those servers are made in India. Locally, we participated in PLI 1.0; now in 2.0, we are a major player. We have that roadmap for continuing to serve our customers here with Make in India requirements," Sitaram told PTI. The push for local infrastructure is being heavily influenced by Indian enterprises re-evaluating their cloud strategies. He noted a distinct shift towards hybrid architectures, where companies are choosing to keep sensitive and critical workloads on-premises rather than relying entirely on public clouds. The demand for robust local infrastructure is further accelerated by the integration of AI into core business strategies, led by sectors such as banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), telecommunications, healthcare, and government. Addressing concerns about advanced AI systems replacing traditional IT and back-office jobs, Sitaram maintained a positive outlook for the tech job market. "It's not replacing; it's in fact creating more and more... It's having a multiplier effect", he said, noting a rapid emergence of niche technical roles and a growing focus on skill-building among institutions and enterprises. Dell on Tuesday announced the India launch of PowerStore Elite, a new-generation data platform. The on-premises storage solution is designed to support complex AI workflows while ensuring that enterprise data remains secure within India's borders. Sitaram described the platform as a "single point solution" capable of handling both legacy and modern AI workloads. Alongside PowerStore Elite, the company also introduced a broader portfolio of AI infrastructure. This includes 'Dell Cyber Detect' for AI-powered ransomware detection at the storage layer and 'Dell PowerRack', an integrated rack-scale AI system.

Dell Technologies Launches PowerStore Elite In India to Accelerate AI Infrastructure Transformation

It gives organizations freedom from vendor lock-in and resilience against supply constraints. Every component, including drives, controllers and networking, is modular and field-upgradable, so infrastructure evolves without downtime or data migration. Dell Technologies announced the availability of Dell PowerStore Elite in India, alongside a broad portfolio of AI infrastructure innovations that give Indian enterprises the foundation to move from AI ambition to AI outcomes, on infrastructure they control, with data they trust. "For India's CIOs and CTOs, the AI era has three non-negotiables: speed of deployment, sovereignty of data and measurable return on infrastructure," said Venkat Sitaram, Senior Director and Country Head, Infrastructure Solutions Group, India, Dell Technologies. "With PowerStore Elite, Dell Private Cloud and the industry's broadest agentic AI portfolio, we are giving Indian enterprises a single, validated foundation to deliver on all three. The new Dell AI Ecosystem brings Google, OpenAI, NVIDIA, Hugging Face, Palantir, SpaceXAI and ServiceNow on one open, on-premise infrastructure platform and that is precisely the ecosystem advantage Indian enterprises need to move from AI experimentation to AI leadership." PowerStore Elite redefines what infrastructure modernization means for the AI era. Every component including drives, controllers and networking is modular and field-upgradable, so enterprises modernize continuously, on their own terms, without downtime or data migration. As AI requirements evolve, the infrastructure evolves with them, spanning deskside agent development through data center-scale deployment giving Indian enterprises a secure, cost-disciplined foundation to run agentic AI on infrastructure they own, next to the data their agents depend on. Dell Cyber Detect, available for PowerStore in Q3 2026, extends AI-powered ransomware detection directly into the storage layer. Trained on thousands of ransomware variants and inspecting data at the byte level with 99.99% accuracy , it identifies the last known clean copy so organizations can recover fast reducing manual effort by up to 95% and resolving issues up to 10x faster than traditional approaches. Dell Deskside Agentic AI gives workgroups the ability to deploy autonomous AI agents locally by handling models from 30 billion to 1 trillion parameters with data sovereignty built in and cloud API costs reduced by up to 87% over two years . With NVIDIA OpenShell now supported across the entire Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA, what runs at the desk scales seamlessly to the data center on a single, consistent security and governance framework. Dell PowerRack, the industry's first fully integrated rack-scale AI system with compute, networking and storage engineered as one, moves enterprises from delivery to production in under 6.5 hours. As the first to ship systems built on the NVIDIA Vera Rubin platform, delivering up to 10x lower cost per token for large-scale agentic AI inferencing, Dell has fundamentally rewritten the economics of enterprise AI for Indian organizations ready to build it as core infrastructure. New ecosystem advancements include support for VMware Cloud Foundation 9.1, Microsoft Azure Local and Dell PowerStore Elite integration with Nutanix AHV giving Indian enterprises maximum flexibility to modernize on their own terms.

Dell Technologies Accelerates AI Infrastructure Transformation with the launch of PowerStore Elite in India

Innovations from Dell Technologies World 2026 arrive in India, purpose-built for enterprises that demand AI scale, data sovereignty and cyber resilience Dell Technologies today announced the availability of Dell PowerStore Elite in India, alongside a broad portfolio of AI infrastructure innovations that give Indian enterprises the foundation to move from AI ambition to AI outcomes, on infrastructure they control, with data they trust. "For India's CIOs and CTOs, the AI era has three non-negotiables: speed of deployment, sovereignty of data and measurable return on infrastructure," said Venkat Sitaram, Senior Director and Country Head, Infrastructure Solutions Group, India, Dell Technologies. "With PowerStore Elite, Dell Private Cloud and the industry's broadest agentic AI portfolio, we are giving Indian enterprises a single, validated foundation to deliver on all three. The new Dell AI Ecosystem brings Google, OpenAI, NVIDIA, Hugging Face, Palantir, SpaceXAI and ServiceNow on one open, on-premise infrastructure platform and that is precisely the ecosystem advantage Indian enterprises need to move from AI experimentation to AI leadership." Why It Matters for Indian Enterprises For Indian enterprises managing explosive data growth alongside AI workloads, PowerStore Elite eliminates the traditional storage refresh cycle. Built on industry-standard E3 NVMe flash, it gives organizations freedom from vendor lock-in and resilience against supply constraints. Every component, including drives, controllers and networking, is modular and field-upgradable, so infrastructure evolves without downtime or data migration. Dell PowerStore Elite: Redefining Enterprise Storage for the Agentic AI Era Agentic AI demands proximity to enterprise data, and PowerStore Elite is engineered to deliver precisely that. With up to 3x greater performance and density than previous generations, up to 5.8 petabytes of effective capacity in a single 3U appliance[1] and an industry-best 6:1 data reduction [2]guarantee, PowerStore Elite provides the scale and efficiency required to support accelerating AI data growth without compromising cost discipline. By positioning high-performance, cyber-resilient storage directly where enterprise data resides, organizations can give their AI agents the access, context and lineage necessary to operate with accuracy and confidence at production scale. PowerStore Elite redefines what infrastructure modernization means for the AI era. Every component including drives, controllers and networking is modular and field-upgradable, so enterprises modernize continuously, on their own terms, without downtime or data migration. As AI requirements evolve, the infrastructure evolves with them, spanning deskside agent development through data center-scale deployment giving Indian enterprises a secure, cost-disciplined foundation to run agentic AI on infrastructure they own, next to the data their agents depend on. Dell Cyber Detect, available for PowerStore in Q3 2026, extends AI-powered ransomware detection directly into the storage layer. Trained on thousands of ransomware variants and inspecting data at the byte level with 99.99% accuracy[3], it identifies the last known clean copy so organizations can recover fast reducing manual effort by up to 95% and resolving issues up to 10x faster than traditional approaches. Agentic AI at Scale: Giving Every Indian Enterprise the Infrastructure to Act, Not Just Analyze Dell expanded the Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA into a complete foundation for agentic AI. Systems that reason, plan and execute complex workflows autonomously, on-premise, with data that never leaves the organization. For Indian enterprises, especially in regulated sectors like financial services, healthcare, legal and the public sector, this is the infrastructure foundation that makes sovereign, production-scale AI a reality. Dell Deskside Agentic AI gives workgroups the ability to deploy autonomous AI agents locally by handling models from 30 billion to 1 trillion parameters with data sovereignty built in and cloud API costs reduced by up to 87% over two years[4]. With NVIDIA OpenShell now supported across the entire Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA, what runs at the desk scales seamlessly to the data center on a single, consistent security and governance framework. Dell PowerRack, the industry's first fully integrated rack-scale AI system with compute, networking and storage engineered as one, moves enterprises from delivery to production in under 6.5 hours. As the first to ship systems built on the NVIDIA Vera Rubin platform, delivering up to 10x lower cost per token for large-scale agentic AI inferencing, Dell has fundamentally rewritten the economics of enterprise AI for Indian organizations ready to build it as core infrastructure. Dell Private Cloud: Simplifying Operations Without Sacrificing Control PowerStore Elite forms the foundation of Dell Private Cloud, delivered through the Dell Automation Platform (DAP), gives organizations a standardized foundation that unifies compute, storage and networking while supporting their preferred cloud stack from Broadcom, Microsoft, Nutanix and Red Hat on open, disaggregated Dell infrastructure. It scales compute and storage independently, avoids lock-in and delivers up to 65% cost savings [5]versus hyperconverged infrastructure. New ecosystem advancements include support for VMware Cloud Foundation 9.1, Microsoft Azure Local and Dell PowerStore Elite integration with Nutanix AHV giving Indian enterprises maximum flexibility to modernize on their own terms. Indian Enterprises Leading the Way Omega Healthcare Management Services, supporting leading U.S. hospitals through 24/7 global operations, modernized its core IT foundation using Dell Private Cloud. The platform unified PowerEdge compute, PowerStore storage and PowerConnect networking across delivery centers, enabling independent scaling and consistent performance keeping clinical and administrative workflows uninterrupted across a follow-the-sun delivery model where downtime is simply not an option.

Not thinking about storage in AI is a mistake: Dell's Venkat Sitaram

India's AI edge lies in skills, education and healthcare adoption When most enterprises map out their journey onto the AI bandwagon, they think of CPUs first, then the great GPU gold rush. Storage isn't at the top of their priority list, the unglamorous plumbing storing all the intelligence. Venkat Sitaram, Senior Director and Country Head of Dell Technologies' Infrastructure Solutions Group in India, wants to flip that picture on its head. I sat down with him in New Delhi, where Dell announced the India availability of PowerStore Elite - an all-flash memory storage platform - alongside a broad sweep of AI infrastructure innovations. In our conversation, Sitaram kept pointing to a more foundational premise, of how the entire AI conversation has the wrong starting point. "Storage overhaul is the foundation, as data has become the foundational layer for AI success. And if that storage infrastructure is intelligent, highly automated and cyber resilient, don't you think it's a compelling proposition to every enterprise today?" I pushed back on behalf of the sceptics. What makes storage so critical that ignoring it would be a mistake? Venkat didn't hedge even a little bit in his response. "Not thinking about storage would be the biggest mistake. Whether you are using agentic AI or in the early stages, it doesn't matter. Wherever there is data creation, you need a place to store that safely, securely, protected all the time. For this you need an intelligent infrastructure where storage becomes an integral part," emphasised Venkat. Also read: Dell and NVIDIA combine to power NxtGen's largest India AI factory "The heart of any tech infrastructure is storage," explained Venkat. "That's where all the core operations reside. If that is not well configured or well architected, your business continuity is impacted." From dumb hard drive to intelligent layer This is where I tried to play devil's advocate. Fundamentally, I said, storage is a dumb thing - it's a hard drive, and a hard drive doesn't need to be smart. So how does storage actually become intelligent, rather than just enabling an intelligent orchestration layer above it? Venkat Sitaram reached for the hard drive itself to make his point, and this is where the commercial logic of PowerStore Elite came into focus. "Imagine there is a 500TB hard drive, and with the PowerStore Elite, the intelligence and the software built in, it is allowing you to use 3 petabytes, six times," he explained. The consolidation, he argued, is the whole game. "So instead of buying six, you are buying only one, and still saving on operational cost." That 6:1 data reduction figure is the one Dell is putting front and centre with this launch -- the company is marketing PowerStore Elite with an industry-best 6:1 data reduction guarantee and up to 5.8 petabytes of effective capacity in a single 3U appliance. The evolving datacentre footprint One of the threads I'd jotted down during his keynote was the shifting nature of datacentre itself, how OEM solutions (like the ones from Dell and its competitors) have evolved from the pre-AI-boom era. I asked him how that demand is translating, and what a datacentre stack from five years ago looks like now. "Look, the cost of economics has changed with the advent of all the cloud technologies that came in. Today it is AI, but if you were to go back seven years, it was cloud," Venkat pointed out. Why did people go from on-prem to cloud? "They found that leasing that with that economical model is cheaper and running it as an operational cost. So the fundamentals of that economics changed." When I asked for a concrete sense of how a server stack has physically evolved or shrunk, Venkat mentioned key numbers to show how the needle has moved: "If you were to run let's say 100 odd servers with a power consumption of 100 kilowatt. Now within the same power envelope, you can run almost 3x capacity. Imagine 300 servers with the same envelope. And density has only gotten more and more efficient. That's the change that we're bringing," he emphasised. Also read: Zero tax, $200 billion dreams: India wants to power world's AI infrastructure I told him "AI factory" sounds like jargon to anyone not already steeped in this world, and asked for the simplest possible definition. Venkat bristled in response, "How can it be a jargon? It's not jargon, it's real," he said without mincing any words. "It's a framework where you bring together your use cases, data, ecosystem and AI accelerated infrastructure with data protection and sustainability in place. Something that can help you run your pilot into production quickly within hours and days is an unimaginable disruption. AI factory as a framework is really catching 5,000 plus customers and growing fast," mentioned Venkat. OEMs like Dell are clearly trying to consolidate vertically as much as possible, so is heterogeneity dead in the AI world? How do you marry vertical integration with genuine choice? Dell's Venkat Sitaram was firm that the two aren't in conflict. "Heterogeneity isn't dead, it will continue to be there. And from Dell's perspective, it's about enabling that for our customers. Heterogeneous hypervisors on Dell Private Cloud, heterogeneous GPU solutions on Dell AI factory, whether it is NVIDIA or AMD. Those choices exist to help customers leverage the best economics." India's AI edge is all about skills I asked who the largest customers adopting Dell's AI Factory solutions in the first wave actually are. As expected, Venkat Sitaram rattled off regulated industries - government, large enterprises, banking, financial services, telco. But his real interest was in where AI capabilities spread next in India. "I think this is going to proliferate into education and healthcare. Because AI skills have become important," Venkat suggested. He connected the rise in AI skills directly to infrastructure investment. "You have to build an infrastructure campus ready for AI. Only then can you produce students who are AI capable and knowledgeable and have industry collaborations, so that they can solve real-world problems. And India has that opportunity and that's where we're seeing a lot of investments coming in education. So it's going to be a pervasive technology across segments. SMEs are also catching up fast."