Dell Technologies has sponsored this post.

NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise is officially open for business. The software platform was announced earlier this year and evaluated by hundreds of companies before NVIDIA declared its general availability at the company’s fall GTC 21 conference in November.

“Gathering all that feedback from the early evaluation testers made Omniverse Enterprise more robust and richer in capabilities and functionality. And with the availability of enterprise-level support, this was the right time to make it available to a much larger audience,” commented Himanshu Iyer, Senior Product Marketing Manager at NVIDIA.

What is NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise?

Collaboration, the fundamental frontier.

These are the voyages of the Omniverse Enterprise.

Its continuing mission: To seek out new workflows and simulations.

To boldly go where no platform has gone before.

—Smart Tech: The NVIDIA Generation

In our overview of NVIDIA Omniverse earlier this year, NVIDIA described Omniverse as “a software platform for collaboration and simulation targeted at anyone working in 3D.” Replace “anyone” with “any company” and you get NVIDIA’s vision for Omniverse Enterprise.

There is a reason collaboration is frontloaded in NVIDIA’s description of Omniverse Enterprise. While the platform includes an array of interesting technologies encompassing simulation, AI, XR, IoT and more, it is arguable that Omniverse Enterprise’s raison d'être is to foster collaboration—to consolidate disparate applications, 3D models, teams and individuals around a single source of truth.

“The beauty of Omniverse Enterprise is that it enables collaboration across multiple different applications,” praised Gary Radburn, Dell’s whimsically titled Director of Virtually eVeRything. “Not only that, but everybody can work simultaneously in real time.”

There are three main components that allow Omniverse Enterprise to serve as a collaborative hub. The heart of the platform is Nucleus, a file server that can be deployed on-prem or within a private cloud. Nucleus is responsible for synchronizing and coordinating all Omniverse services and applications across an enterprise.

The second collaborative component of Omniverse Enterprise is its open source file framework foundation, called Universal Scene Description, or USD. Originally developed by Pixar for 3D animation, USD has evolved to become a framework for composing any 3D data. NVIDIA often likens USD to “the HTML of 3D” for its potential to standardize 3D data across applications.

The third and final component that allows Omniverse Enterprise to consolidate disparate workflows is a growing list of connectors to third-party 3D software. Omniverse Enterprise currently supports Autodesk 3ds Max, Autodesk Maya, Autodesk Revit, McNeel & Associates Rhino (and Grasshopper), Trimble Sketchup and Epic Games Unreal Engine 4. At its GTC event, NIVDIA announced six new beta connectors in the pipeline: Esri ArcGIS CityEngine, PTC Onshape, Reallusion iClone, Replica AI Voice, Radical AI Pose Estimation and Lightmap HDR Light Studio. Many more connectors are still forthcoming, according to NVIDIA.

Hardware for NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise

NVIDIA made its name not with enterprise software, but with graphics hardware. RTX GPUs, NVIDIA’s current lineup of professional graphics processors featuring real-time ray tracing and AI acceleration, are a major part of Omniverse Enterprise. Naturally, so are the workstations employed by Omniverse users and the server hardware deployed by IT administrators.

That is why NVIDIA has put Omniverse Enterprise in the hands of its hardware partners. Several of NVIDIA’s most trusted hardware partners have been given the keys to the platform, serving as resellers and facilitating support at the hardware level. Among these partners is Dell, a pairing which both companies have enthusiastically embraced.

“Dell has that true end-to-end offering for the infrastructure, and so partnering with NVIDIA to launch Omniverse Enterprise makes absolute sense,” explained Radburn. “We can actually architect end-to-end solutions for the customer, rather than just point product.”

“Dell is one of our key partners and they see how Omniverse Enterprise is going to be beneficial to their customers as well,” Iyer added. “Using RTX-certified systems is really the key to get the best performance out of Omniverse Enterprise.”

It starts with Omniverse Nucleus, the central server that powers collaboration in Omniverse Enterprise. While Nucleus does not require RTX graphics—nor any other dedicated GPU—the hardware must be capable of accommodating every Omniverse Enterprise user throughout an organization. The Nucleus server, and its accompanying memory, storage and networking resources, should have room to scale as the number of Omniverse users grows. Dell considers its datacenter products a perfect fit for Omniverse Enterprise users.

“We have our ISG [Infrastructure Solutions Group] teams and our PowerEdge range and our PowerStore range all coming together to give you that backend power that you need for Nucleus to run in a multi-user environment,” said Radburn.

For end users of Omniverse Enterprise, RTX-equipped workstations are a must, as the platform takes full advantage of the real-time ray tracing those graphics cards enable. That said, mobile workstations, tower workstations and even remote workstations are all fair game. The Dell Precision 5000 and 7000 series of mobile workstations offer RTX graphics, from the entry-level RTX A2000 (4GB VRAM) to the top-of-the-line RTX A5000 (16GB VRAM). As for tower workstations, the Dell Precision 7920 Tower can be equipped with up to three NVIDIA RTX A6000 cards (48GB VRAM each) for the most demanding Omniverse workloads.

The Dell Precision 7920 Rack is a datacenter version of the workstation, a 2U form factor that Radburn affectionately describes as “like taking our 7920 Tower and putting it under a steamroller.”

“You can put a couple of NVIDIA RTX cards inside of that, so you’ve got as much power as you want, but you don't have that heat and noise being generated at home,” Radburn continued. “You remote into this workstation from home through a thin client, so you’re getting a near-workstation experience but with all the power back in the datacenter. The power that Dell brings to the table is the scalability of the solutions.”

Omniverse Enterprise Support

One of the biggest lessons NVIDIA learned throughout the Omniverse Enterprise beta was the importance of enterprise support, according to Iyer.

“Talking to companies who have these large design and simulation teams, we learned that having the right type of technical support is very important,” Iyer recounted. “NVIDIA is going to work with these organizations. It’s going to be more of a partnership. Omniverse Enterprise is a platform which they can customize to their needs, so providing the right support is really important.”

Every Omniverse Enterprise subscription comes with full enterprise support, including updates, maintenance, priority bug fixes, 8x5 business standard support and 24x7 remote business standard support. For businesses that want to go further, the Technical Account Manager (TAM) for Omniverse Enterprise Support will provide a personal NVIDIA point of contact and regular support meetings.

“Customers can contact NVIDIA to get any type of support,” explained Iyer. “It could be with installation, with particular parts of the software, or with extensions that NVIDIA provides.”

The Future of Omniverse

Emerging from its early evaluations, NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise is still working to establish itself in industry. But the platform is already making waves. Companies such as KPF, Woods Bagot, and DNEG are all using the platform for core design collaboration, and others are taking it even further. BMW, Ericsson and Lockheed Martin have all demonstrated fascinating applications of Omniverse Enterprise—to create a factory of the future, to optimize 5G at a city scale and to simulate realistic wildfires, respectively.

Where will Omniverse Enterprise go next? NVIDIA has plans on a planetary scale, looking to build a digital twin of the Earth itself. And from there, well, even the sky may be no limit.

To learn more about NVIDIA Omniverse and the Dell workstations that support it, visit Dell.com/Omniverse.