As enterprises navigate the rapidly evolving technological landscape of 2025, Artificial Intelligence and distributed computing architectures are reshaping IT priorities across industries. In this exclusive interview with CIO&Leader, Ela Krishnan, Vice President of Software Development at Dell Technologies, offers critical insights into how these transformations are influencing enterprise decision-making and technology adoption strategies.
Drawing on perspectives shared by Dell’s leadership, Krishnan outlines how enterprises can develop scalable AI architectures that maximize business value while addressing growing concerns around computing efficiency and environmental impact. Edited excerpts are as below:
Vice President of Software Development,
Dell Technologies
CIO&Leader: What key trends do you foresee shaping the IT landscape, particularly in areas like cloud infrastructure, AI/ML, and high-performance computing?
Ela Krishnan: In 2025, the IT landscape will be fundamentally shaped by AI, cloud infrastructure, and high-performance computing. Echoing the thoughts of Jeff Clarke, our Vice Chairman and COO, AI will become ubiquitous, extending beyond data centers to edge devices and AI-powered PCs, making processing more efficient and secure. Enterprises will focus on developing scalable AI architectures to deploy artificial intelligence seamlessly across their operations and maximize return on investment. Additionally, disaggregated data centers will allow for faster scaling of compute, storage, and network resources, enabling businesses to keep pace with evolving AI demands.
AI will expand beyond automation into advanced applications like agentic AI. The shift will increasingly move toward distributed architectures with edge computing and AI-powered PCs enhancing speed and security. Advances in GPUs, CPUs, and NPUs will allow personal computers to handle AI workloads locally, leading to a significant PC refresh cycle across organizations.
CIO&Leader: How will these trends influence enterprise decision-making and technology adoption?
Ela Krishnan: Enterprises will prioritize AI integration and cloud-to-edge computing in their decision-making. In 2025, businesses will focus on selecting the right AI tools and platforms, investing in modern data centers and edge technologies to support AI workloads. Sustainability will become a key factor in technology decisions, as companies increasingly seek energy-efficient solutions alongside high-performance computing requirements.
CIO&Leader: What do you think will be the key priorities for CIOs in 2025?
Ela Krishnan: CIOs in 2025 will prioritize scaling AI solutions and modernizing infrastructure to accommodate growing AI workloads. Key priorities will include optimizing data centers for AI training and inferencing, ensuring infrastructure can support the move towards distributed AI architectures. Additionally, sustainability will be a critical focus, particularly in adopting energy-efficient hardware to meet environmental goals.
CIOs will be developing comprehensive AI adoption strategies to drive business transformation. Infrastructure modernization—upgrading data centers and integrating edge computing to manage AI workloads—will represent a significant investment area. Ensuring robust security measures and efficient data management across increasingly distributed systems will remain essential responsibilities.
CIO&Leader: How will Dell Technologies’ offerings align with these priorities?
Ela Krishnan: We support CIOs with innovations in AI acceleration, data center modernization, and energy-efficient solutions. As our COO Jeff Clarke noted, AI-driven workloads and scalable, high-performance computing are vital for businesses. Dell’s advancements in processors, GPUs, and AI-driven solutions will help meet these needs, enabling CIOs to handle the increasing demands of AI and distributed computing environments.
CIO&Leader Could you share any upcoming Dell Technologies initiatives or product innovations that align with these anticipated trends?
Ela Krishnan: We are prioritizing AI acceleration, with solutions designed to optimize AI workloads both in the data center and at the edge. AI-powered PCs and modernized data centers will define our future product roadmap. Additionally, Dell is focusing on energy-efficient hardware, such as liquid cooling systems, to help businesses meet sustainability goals while maintaining performance requirements.
CIO&Leader: How is Dell Technologies addressing industry needs in areas like AI-driven workloads, data center modernization, or sustainability?
Ela Krishnan: We are committed to developing scalable AI architectures that support both training and inference workloads, helping businesses manage AI’s exponential growth and computing demands. Sustainability remains a key focus, with energy-efficient hardware and innovative cooling solutions designed to reduce carbon footprints while optimizing AI performance.
We are empowering enterprises with tools to scale AI effectively and maximize business value, delivering energy-efficient solutions that reduce environmental impact, and enhancing data processing and security capabilities across distributed computing environments.