AI and other data-intensive workloads are changing how organizations think about infrastructure. But for midsize businesses, preparing for the future is not about building hyperscale infrastructure. It is about creating a practical foundation that can support evolving workloads without adding unnecessary cost or complexity.
The massive increase in demand for energy dedicated to AI workloads won't just be driven by the biggest corporations, but also the medium-sized businesses that make up the backbone of the global economy. IT teams will need infrastructure that can support new applications and more data while continuing to run core workloads reliably.
But as the power and performance requirements continue to evolve, especially as AI usage swells, what might the modern infrastructure of the future look like? As businesses prepare for the future, they need infrastructure that is efficient, secure, scalable, and easy to manage. Solutions such as Dell PowerEdge servers with Intel® Xeon® 6 processors, Dell PowerStore Gen 3, and Dell PowerProtect provide the foundation for AI workloads, while hybrid-cloud and distributed-management capabilities help organizations scale with confidence. Together, these technologies help simplify operations, protect critical data, and deliver the performance and reliability needed to support AI-driven innovation.
The challenges of legacy infrastructure
Infrastructure has been a major focus of discussion in recent months, with gigawatt-scale data center campuses emerging around the world to support the next wave of AI innovation. But while attention often centers on hyperscale deployments and their growing power demands, the more immediate challenge for many midsize businesses is modernizing the aging infrastructure that supports day-to-day operations.
The rise in demand for AI and other modern workloads exposes the limitations of older infrastructure. Aging servers and storage can consume more power, slow applications, limit scalability and make it harder for lean IT teams to maintain a consistent security and recovery posture.
Fortunately, midsize businesses do not need to adopt hyperscale architectures to overcome these challenges. Instead, they need infrastructure that delivers the right balance of performance, scalability, efficiency and resiliency for the workloads they run every day, from virtualization and databases to analytics, collaboration tools and emerging AI applications.
Beyond AI, businesses will want to assess whether their cloud-facing systems are generally fit for purpose. For instance, IT teams may be maintaining outdated servers and storage facilities that slow down apps and also heighten security risk. Organizations also need disaster-recovery mechanisms that go beyond simple backups and support continuity through hardware failures, cyber incidents and site outages.
A practical infrastructure strategy for the rest of the decade rests on four priorities: right-sized computing, integrated hybrid and distributed management, built-in security and cyber resilience, and predictable efficiency. Together, these priorities help midsize businesses modernize infrastructure, support emerging AI requirements, and simplify IT operations rather than add complexity.
Planning for better computing and efficiency
First, the infrastructure should combine on-premises and cloud services with consistent deployment, orchestration and lifecycle management across distributed environments. Second, it should provide the performance and efficiency to support modern workloads, including AI where it delivers clear business value. Finally, security and cyber resilience should be built into the environment from servers through storage, backup and recovery.
Replacing aging equipment is a practical first step in modernizing the technology stack. Newer, more efficient servers and storage can help midsize businesses consolidate workloads, improve performance per watt and create more predictable operating costs.
"Many organizations today use older equipment that may be less efficient than more modern servers and storage systems," writes Global Multicloud Lead, Dell Technologies Consulting Services Portfolio, Matt Liebowitz, in a blog post. "By taking inventory of what IT assets are in place today and their consumption, we help customers make decisions about replacing aging hardware to improve overall efficiency."
The shift to planning for better computing means choosing platforms that consolidate workloads, improve efficiency, and leave additional room to scale as the business needs evolve through the years. The goal is not to predict every future workload; it is to create an adaptable foundation that can support change without repeated disruption. That's where Dell's infrastructure powered by Intel comes into play.
Building the future
When planning future infrastructure, businesses should look beyond individual components. The foundation should bring together efficient compute, storage, networking, and power considerations with the software, security, automation, and orchestration layers needed to operate the environment simply and reliably.
Building that foundation is often easier with the support of a trusted technology partner. In fact, research shows 95% of organizations agree that working with a trusted partner accelerates investment returns. For growing businesses, the right technology provider can help simplify modernization, reduce operational complexity, and create a clear path to greater efficiency, resilience, and AI readiness.
Together, Dell and Intel can lay down the groundwork for this future, with the modern infrastructure approach allowing businesses to refresh legacy systems, unify IT operations and bake in resilience from the outset. Dell PowerEdge servers with Intel Xeon 6 processors support modern workloads with built-in security and efficient performance. Dell PowerStore Gen 3, built on Intel Xeon Scalable processors and end-to-end NVMe architecture, helps improve storage efficiency, automate routine management and strengthen cyber resilience. Dell PowerProtect helps protect critical data with immutable backups and guided recovery workflows.
Dell's strategy also gives smaller IT teams a simple and affordable way to deploy and manage infrastructure, with predictable costs and flexible consumption. Built-in cyber resilience matters just as much as performance, especially for medium businesses that need to recover quickly without stitching together multiple tools. The need for security, as well as resilience to withstand any disasters, is also baked in thanks to hardened servers and storage, immutable backups, and guided recovery workflows.
Modern-facing infrastructure like this also boasts much better power efficiency generation upon generation. One new Intel based PowerEdge R770, for example, can deliver five times the performance by replacing five R740xd servers, according to internal testing. Slashing power usage from 28,700W to 9,800W also saves $23,000. It's certainly a step in the right direction as the industry moves toward more power-efficient and less expensive infrastructure to lower the barrier to entry for growing businesses who want to power up their operations with AI.
Businesses preparing for 2030 do not need to wait for a perfect vision of the future. They can start today by assessing aging infrastructure, identifying the workloads and data that matter most, and building a simple, secure, and scalable foundation that can evolve over time. With solutions from Dell Technologies and Intel, organizations can modernize with confidence and scale as their needs change.
Explore how Dell and Intel modern infrastructure solutions can help your midsize business refresh aging systems, protect critical data, simplify operations and scale with confidence.