Dell Schedules Three AI Data Platform Features for First Half of 2027

Dell Technologies plans to add three data-context tools to the Dell AI Data Platform in the first half of 2027, giving enterprise AI agents ways to work with structured and unstructured information. The additions are meant to provide shared definitions, mapped data relationships and topic-specific guidance within the platform.

The Unified Semantic Layer will apply consistent business definitions to structured and unstructured data. The Enterprise Knowledge Graph will map relationships among data, while Knowledge Agents will offer guidance on specific topics under customer-set rules for data, quality and spending. Dell scheduled all three features for release in the first half of 2027.

The platform is the data foundation for Dell AI Factory and spans storage, data orchestration, analytics and search. The Dell Storage Performance Tool and AI-ready data services were available as of the Oct. 6 announcement; further Apache Arrow acceleration is planned for the first half of 2027.

In September 2026 internal tests, Dell used NVIDIA cuDF on a PowerEdge R770 with NVIDIA RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs. The Data Processing Engine averaged a 3.9-times speedup over CPU-only Apache Spark runs and reached a peak 20.4-times speedup on a batch data-mining workload. The tests used default configurations without performance tuning, and results could differ in other deployments.

PowerScale security and multitenancy enhancements scheduled for November 2026 are set to support up to 500 tenants per cluster, mutual Transport Layer Security (TLS) over Network File System (NFS) and more granular role-based access controls. NVIDIA-accelerated Data Processing Engine enhancements are planned for December.

The Knowledge Agents are distinct from Dell’s Deskside Agentic AI, which was available in May for running agent workflows locally on workstations. That solution combines Dell workstations, NVIDIA NemoClaw software and Dell Services. Dell’s discussion of enterprise AI costs as agents scale covered the cost side of those deployment choices.

“Data without context is just noise,” said Arthur Lewis, president of Dell Technologies’ Infrastructure Solutions Group.

The next listed milestone is the PowerScale update in November, followed by the Data Processing Engine enhancements in December.