Dell Technologies hosted its Predictions: 2026 & Beyond briefing for the Asia Pacific Japan & Greater China (APJC) media, where the company’s Global Chief Technology Officer & Chief AI Officer, John Roese, and APJC President, Peter Marrs, outlined the transformative technology trends and Dell’s strategies for accelerating AI adoption and innovation in the region.
According to Roese, the rapid acceleration of AI is set to profoundly reengineer the entire fabric of enterprise and industry, driving new ways of operating, building, and innovating at an unprecedented scale and pace.
Focus on scalability and real adoption
A key trend is the shift in focus towards scaling AI for tangible business outcomes. “Conversations are on very real adoption, and AI is creating a truly transformational opportunity,” said Marrs. “We are working with customers across the region to build AI at scale.” For example, Sandisk in Malaysia is a customer Dell is working with to deliver advanced AI solutions for smart manufacturing and product design, achieving up to 95% lights-out factory operation.
Marrs noted that growing deployment of agentic AI is an example of this transformation, with organisations such as Zoho in India already working with Dell to accelerate agentic AI adoption by delivering contextual, privacy-first and multimodal enterprise AI solutions. “AI has become more accessible for all companies in the region, and what we’ve been doing is successfully building foundations with customers to deploy AI at scale.”
Roese highlighted that the industry is now entering the autonomous agent era, where agentic AI is evolving from a helpful assistant to an integral manager of complex, long-running processes. “We expect that as people go on the agentic journey into 2026, they will be surprised by how much more agents do for them than they anticipated. Its very presence will bring value to make humans more efficient, and make the non-AI work, work better,” he noted.
As the industry continues to build and deploy more enterprise AI, Roese also emphasised the need for businesses to rethink how they treat and make resilient AI factories. “Dell is a leader in this space, bringing the two worlds of AI factories as well as cyber recovery, resiliency, vaults, and data protection together for enterprises to stay in production.”
Sovereign AI and governance as the foundation for innovation
With the light-speed acceleration of AI development, there is a degree of volatility. Roese predicted that the demand for robust governance frameworks and private, controlled AI environments will become undeniable, urging the industry to build on both internal and external AI guardrails that allow organisations to innovate safely and sustainably.
“Last year, we predicted that ‘Agentic’ would be the word of 2025. This year, the word ‘Governance’ is going to play a much bigger role,” Roese said. “The technology and its use cases are not going to be successful if you do not have discipline and governance around how you operate your AI strategy as either an enterprise, a region, or a country.”
Roese emphasised that “the number one complexity of moving fast and moving forward is to establish a governance structure, a set of rules that people understand how they can follow, a way to prioritise what is important.”
At national levels, the rapid rise of sovereign AI ecosystems will continue as AI becomes critical to state-level interests. Marrs discussed this trend’s momentum, noting that like many countries in the region, enterprises are also actively building their own frameworks to drive local innovation, with strong foundations already in place.
Marrs added that sovereign AI is creating a new stream of the AI economy and ecosystem, driving economic transformation in this growing AI economy, citing partnerships with customers like Macquarie Data Centres in Australia and NAVER Cloud in South Korea to establish secure, local infrastructure that underpins trusted AI innovation.
Roese echoed that the forecast of the sovereign AI industry is to be much bigger than what many anticipate today, as all efforts will need infrastructure as a foundational capability.
Building the ecosystem for impact and progress
To bridge that gap, Marrs reiterated the importance of a collaborative ecosystem in nurturing a skilled talent pool and advancing the region’s AI competitiveness, citing the APJ AI Innovation Hub as an initiative that is delivering impact through the combination of Dell’s capabilities, talent, and ecosystem.
“By working with experts, government, and industry peers, we’ve made unbelievable headway in fostering skill development and advancing our collective expertise,” said Marrs. “Together, we are accelerating Asia’s leadership as an AI region, identifying key steps to bolster the region’s growth. Dell is excited about how we’re participating and helping with this transformat
