Partners should bank on APAC customers race to operationalize AI, says Akamai’s SVP

"Partners with that kind of applied, industry-specific expertise are well positioned to add value here," says Sean Li, Senior Vice President of Sales and Managing Director, APAC at Akamai.

The top opportunity for channel partners across the Asia Pacific region right now is to tap on customers' desire to move from exploring AI to putting it to work across the business.

Sean Li, Akamai’s senior vice president of Sales and managing director, APAC has seen a shift in conversations around AI adoption. Enterprises are keen on operationalizing AI in a more secure, reliable manner, and with scale, but many find issues with building an infrastructure that can adequately support the massive transformation.

“It's about a recalibration,” said Li. “Right now in Asia Pacific, the divide is not between developed and emerging market, but between customers who are still experimenting AI and those who are considering how to operationalize AI.

“[They’re in] different markets, different industries, and they are moving with different pace but they are all heading in the same direction.”

For instance, gaming companies are using AI to power real-time player interactions, banks are personalizing the experience the moment a customer logs in, and broadcasters are applying AI to tasks such as real-time dubbing and transcoding.

“Partners with that kind of applied, industry-specific expertise are well positioned to add value here,” Li told CRN Asia.

AI is not a one-size-fits-all solution

As always, there is no one-size-fits-all solution, so partners must consider different AI use cases to meet varied infrastructure requirements from latency, to scalability, security, and cost.

“We’re not saying that everything has to go to the edge,” said Jay Jenkins, chief technology officer, Cloud Computing at Akamai during a media briefing. “The idea here is to give customers flexibility and choice about where they run their AI.”

For some enterprises, latency is the most important issue and therefore need to run AI at the edge, said Jenkins. Others may need it where large-scale computing resources are, which would mean running it in the core cloud regions. Many others may need to run it where the infrastructure costs the least.

“This new world of distributed infrastructure for AI is about balancing all those things to meet the goals of the customer [and] the organization, and to meet the expected returns on these AI investments,” he said.

Supporting partners in a crowded AI market

The tricky part in meeting customers’ business needs and realizing ROI in APAC is the sheer amount of options available in the market today. Li acknowledged the high level of competition and shared with CRN Asia that the team is ready to support partners through its unified program, Akamai Partner Connect.

Ultimately, the team wants to help partners continuously build their skills and expertise through multiple enablement programs and be able to provide additional services to scale the business.

“What we are seeing is that partners are increasingly being asked to do more than sell,” he said. “They are playing a much more active role in helping customers move beyond deployment and turn AI and security investments into something that delivers real business value at scale. That shift is shaping how we support our partner ecosystem.

“Our channel ecosystem is fundamental to our growth strategy in the region. We want to keep improving the incentives, revenue opportunities, and solutions we bring to partners so they can capture more of what’s happening in AI and security right now.”