As artificial intelligence deployments outgrow their experimental phase, Asia-Pacific organizations are now leaning on infrastructure standardisation and sovereign AI to scale globally and dodge supply chain bottlenecks. This transformation was a key theme at a recent media briefing on the sidelines of Dell Technologies World, where executives from Dell, Standard Chartered and South Korean tech giant Naver Cloud discussed how the maturity of the AI cycle is reshaping datacentres across the region.

Dell revealed that its AI factory customer base has surged from 3,000 to over 5,000 in the past year. Yet beneath the rapid adoption of AI software and Nvidia-powered infrastructure lies a deeper need for resilient, highly commoditised infrastructure. This need is driving organisations to rethink their entire technology stack, from hardware choices to cloud architectures and governance models.

Standard Chartered: Simplifying for scale and resilience

For Standard Chartered, operating across 54 global markets required the bank to redesign its private cloud infrastructure to achieve global scale and survive hardware shortages. The bank operates 52 country datacentres and four global datacentres as it looks to become a “super connector” for clients operating across borders. To manage this sprawling footprint, the global head of infrastructure and operations, John Sharratt, led a radical simplification effort.

Sharratt’s team eliminated all specialised hardware components in favour of a fully virtualised, hyper-converged environment where the standard unit of scale is the server rack itself. The remit of “simplicity, commodity and scale” meant that all storage, networking and security had to be hyperconverged. The bank eliminated standalone storage area networks and physical firewall appliances, instead relying on interchangeable commodity hardware – specifically Dell servers and switches – housed within standard racks.

By avoiding highly specialised components, Standard Chartered has shielded itself from the worst of the industry’s supply chain shortages. “If you have a very specialist design, you cannot substitute components if the NICs, memory or disks are not available,” said Sharratt. “By eliminating that specialisation, we can literally roll a rack off the back of a lorry and have workloads running in just 24 hours.”

The bold move required navigating decades of technical debt, which is notoriously difficult to do in the financial services sector. The bank set up an architectural review board run by engineers to systematically refactor, virtualise and scale every legacy application. “There’s always lots of legacy in a banking environment,” noted Sharratt. “We have resolved all that legacy. There’s no physical server; it is all virtualised. We are sitting in an extremely comfortable position as a bank to ride out the supply chain problems.”

Sharratt revealed that the bank’s estate in Asia, which accounts for 70% of its global infrastructure footprint, is already running on this new architecture, with the model currently being deployed in the UK. “This is not a story of what we’re going to do,” he added. “This is a story of what we’ve done.” The shift to hyper-converged infrastructure not only improves resilience but also reduces operational complexity, allowing the bank to scale more quickly across its markets.

Naver Cloud: Taking sovereign AI global

While Standard Chartered focuses on standardising infrastructure, Naver Cloud is leveraging its massive domestic datacentre footprint to export sovereign AI capabilities globally. Naver, South Korea’s leading IT portal and one of the few global search engines to successfully defend its home turf against Google, operates massive infrastructure, including the multi-megawatt Gak Sejong datacentre. Having built its own generative AI model, HyperClova X, the company is now partnering with Dell and Nvidia to deploy AI factories tailored for digital sovereignty.

Kim Yu-won, CEO of Naver Cloud, noted that owning the full stack – from datacentres and graphics processing units to the underlying AI models – gives the company a unique advantage as governments and highly regulated industries look to protect their data. “In a world where sovereignty is key, we are highly flexible in giving each customer specific security and governance,” said Kim. “We want to provide customers that prioritise sovereignty with a dedicated private cloud, and on top of that, we want to integrate with AI technology.”

Naver Cloud is already taking this strategy beyond Korea, partnering with Thailand’s Siam AI to develop a Thai large language model and launching a joint venture in Saudi Arabia to build digital twin capabilities. These partnerships demonstrate how sovereign AI can be tailored to local languages, cultures and regulatory requirements. The company’s approach reflects a broader trend in Asia-Pacific, where governments are increasingly demanding that sensitive data remain within national borders and be processed on locally controlled infrastructure.

“Infrastructure and models only matter if they solve real-world problems,” said Kim. “Ultimately, what we want to create is unprecedented practical value that does not exist in the world today.” This focus on value creation rather than technology for its own sake is a key differentiator for Naver Cloud as it competes with global hyperscalers.

The sovereign AI model also addresses concerns about data privacy and national security. By offering dedicated private clouds with AI capabilities baked in, Naver Cloud enables customers in sectors like finance, healthcare and government to adopt generative AI without ceding control of their data. This is particularly attractive in Asia-Pacific, where data localisation laws are becoming more stringent.

Dell’s role in the ecosystem

Dell Technologies’ newly appointed leader for the APAC region, Richard McLaughlin, said helping customers navigate supply chain challenges and chart a path to becoming AI-driven companies remain his top priorities. “The AI ecosystem is changing as it is being embraced and created by our customers in the AI economy,” said McLaughlin. “New business models, products and services are emerging in the region as agentic frameworks become more commonplace. We’re seeing the region’s enterprises accelerating, advancing, innovating and entering agent lifecycle development at pace.”

McLaughlin added that Dell is actively working with enterprise clients on “demand shaping” over the next four to five years to improve supply chain resilience, echoing Sharratt’s sentiment that disciplined infrastructure planning is critical. “We believe that we have the supply chain advantage in the marketplace,” said McLaughlin. “We have over 40 years of relationships with suppliers to help de-risk the supply chain for our key customers.”

The combination of standardised infrastructure, sovereign AI platforms and strong supply chain partnerships is enabling Asia-Pacific companies to rewire their technology stacks for the AI era without falling victim to component shortages or vendor lock-in. This approach not only accelerates AI adoption but also ensures that deployments are sustainable and aligned with regional regulatory requirements.

As more organisations in Asia move from experimental AI projects to full-scale production, the lessons from Standard Chartered and Naver Cloud offer a blueprint for success. Standardisation reduces complexity and improves resilience, while sovereign AI provides the control and customisation that regulated industries need. Together, these strategies are helping the region’s enterprises become truly AI-driven, creating new business models and services that were previously unimaginable.

Source: ComputerWeekly.com News