Cloudera & Dell join forces for unified Private AI platform

Cloudera has announced the integration of Dell ObjectScale with its data and AI platform, resulting in a joint offering aimed at providing enterprises with a comprehensive Private AI platform for enhanced data governance and scalability.

The new integration is designed to enable customers to run all of Cloudera's compute engines directly against Dell ObjectScale storage, forming what both companies describe as a validated and integrated data platform solution.

This approach intends to alleviate common challenges enterprises face with AI initiatives, particularly those concerning the complexity of data locality and secure data access.

A recent Cloudera survey, titled 'The Evolution of AI: The State of Enterprise AI and Data Architecture', highlighted ongoing complexity within enterprise IT storage. The survey found that 63% of IT leaders use private cloud for storage, 52% utilise public cloud, and 42% rely on data warehouses. These diverse storage architectures present substantial hurdles to fully leveraging AI, according to Cloudera.

The integration focuses on enabling organisations to manage both structured and unstructured data within a single repository and to access the information rapidly and securely. By leveraging Dell ObjectScale as an S3-compatible object store, Cloudera aims to help users overcome barriers to adopting AI at scale within enterprise environments.

Solution details

The collaboration supports a range of Cloudera AI services, including the Cloudera AI Workbench, Inference Service, and Agent Studio. These tools facilitate the development, deployment and automation of AI models, with particular attention to data governance and regulatory compliance.

The Cloudera AI Workbench is a secure environment designed for building, training, and refining AI models with governed data. The Cloudera Inference Service enables the deployment and utilisation of these AI models at scale, with a focus on efficiency and affordability. Cloudera Agent Studio provides capabilities for designing and using AI agents to automate business operations.

By integrating infrastructure and platform capabilities from Dell Technologies and Cloudera, the companies are positioning their joint solution as an option for industries that require robust data handling, security, and clear cost structures.

Business and operational impact

The companies state that this offering enables enterprises to accelerate AI adoption, simplify task management, and deploy Private AI agents efficiently. The unified platform also aims to reduce total cost of ownership while addressing regulatory needs, which is relevant for sectors with stringent data privacy and compliance requirements.

"Businesses need AI systems that can grow with them, keep data secure, and have clear, predictable costs," said Abhas Ricky, Chief Strategy Officer, Cloudera.

"Bringing Dell ObjectScale together with Cloudera enables organizations to industrialize AI use cases using secure data, deploy them efficiently, and create smart agents, all with predictable economics, and without hidden fees. This is the quickest and most reliable way for large companies to put AI to work and create intelligent agents. Cloudera is uniquely positioned to unify governed enterprise data with AI services on modern storage, creating the only Private AI platform that combines governance, performance, and clear economics at an industrial scale."

Travis Vigil, Senior Vice President, ISG Product Management at Dell Technologies, commented on the companies' shared priorities in developing the solution.

"This collaboration reflects our shared commitment to giving customers more flexibility in managing and scaling their data," said Travis Vigil.

"With Dell ObjectScale now integrated with Cloudera, we're helping customers bring storage and AI closer together to empower smarter, faster decision-making that drives business growth."

The combined efforts are aimed at giving customers more flexibility as they manage increasingly complex AI-driven workloads across multiple environments. By providing an integrated stack - from storage through compute - the objective is to allow organisations to focus on their business use cases, regulatory demands, and cost control when deploying AI solutions.

The Cloudera and Dell ObjectScale integration is available to joint customers and is positioned to assist businesses in industries such as financial services, healthcare, and manufacturing by bringing together secure data storage and AI operationalisation frameworks under unified governance.