Tech Data and Dell Technologies keen on being customers’ long-term AI transformation partners

Tech Data and Dell Technologies share how their partnership has evolved along with the transforming ecosystem and changing customer demands.

Two years into the collaboration, Tech Data and Dell Technologies can confidently say that it has enabled enterprise customers as well as ecosystem partners better focus on outcomes and closer to achieving their AI transformation goals.

“When we started to have conversations with our partners, they were not just looking for hardware and software,” Mohamed Noorul Huq, Center of Excellence (COE) & Solutions Director at Tech Data Asia Pacific and Japan told CRN Asia.

“They were looking into solving real use case problems or business problems, and this became very horizontal- and vertical-focused across the industries.”

He found it was easier to solve the horizontal issues, which were a “common denominator” amongst organizations looking to improve productivity, or seeking out content generation and virtual assistance. The vertical issues required a lot more expertise.

“The vertical ones are where you need a lot of in-depth [knowledge],” said Huq. “That’s where you need to have somebody who understands the industry, the workflow, and also the integration of advanced solutions as well as endpoint, so Dell provides both ends.

“They are not just in one space. They are in the enterprise space and in the end-user computing space. In the space of AI now we need to ensure that all aspects of this are covered and the independent software vendors (ISVs) are going to be instrumental.”

Day-one to long-term support

Ng Nam Guan, Dell Technologies’ General Manager and Head of Global Smart Cities and APJ AI Innovation Hub, added that the partnership has been integral in supporting their “relentless focus” on enabling outcomes. Customers are also past the phase of asking if the AI will work, and looking for ROI as well as trusted long-term transformation partners.

“Data readiness is a key consideration as we move from AI experimentation to production,” said Ng. “A lot of the consideration is about who will be the one to help me design my architecture? Is this a trusted partner? Who can help me with the day-one work, which in the case of deployment, does this partner have the capability?

“Does this partner have the expertise in integrating with my existing infrastructure? Because data integration is really key [as] we’re not just looking at lab data. So having someone that [has] this day-one experience is important.”

Tech Data’s domain expertise has been critical in providing the day-one support to drive Dell’s portfolio of solutions, said Ng. More than that, customers are also looking for reliable partners for the long journey ahead.

“[They will ask] Do I have someone that does not just have the skill sets but also the stamina and scale to help me with my managed services?” said Ng. “In the long term, I will either need to have a whole team to run all these projects or a trusted partner that can provide that managed services for me.”

The future

The collaboration between Tech Data and Dell Technologies is thus focused on doing what they can to continuously serve customers and their evolving needs.

“Dell is a very strategic partner,” said Huq. “Dell itself has extended strategic partnerships with a lot of other solution providers such as Nvidia, Microsoft, Broadcom, and VMware. It's very important for Tech Data to tap onto that expertise and strength.

“For Tech Data, we now need to create repeatable and scalable solution models that can reach out to as many partners — that’s where we will bring in our expertise.”

He shared that the team is now working with Dell’s pre-sales representations to have conversations around this. They hope to generate a “healthy stream” of potential pipelines soon.

“With the AI space, with infrastructure, everybody knows that it’s really going to be more and no longer less, so compute, storage, network security, all of this [demand] is going to triple or even more than that,” said Huq. “That’s where I think Dell becomes a single vendor that spans across all of this, not just the hardware piece but also on the software as well.”