Lenovo Channel Leaders on AI PCs, 360 'Journeys' and Services Channel Conflict

With its Tech World event back to back with the Canalys Forum North America this month, there's been plenty of news around channel programs, AI and data center technology for Lenovo channel partners to digest.

The most significant landed last week when the PC and infrastructure giant said it would start offering customized versions of its Lenovo 360 Framework to meet the specific needs of various partner types and the technologies they sell.

Also this month, the company unveiled ThinkSystem N1380 Neptune, which it's calling a vertical liquid cooling breakthrough. The technology rolled out across its partner ecosystem, enabling organizations to build and run accelerated computing for generative AI while reducing data center power consumption by up to 40%.

That came on the heels of another important infrastructure announcement earlier this year, when Lenovo introduced NetApp AIPod with Lenovo ThinkSystems services for Nvidia OVX. It's a converged infrastructure solution that the companies together say is optimized for the generative AI era.

Of course it comes as no surprise that Lenovo is right in the middle of the AI PC revolution, which most analysts expect will pick up steam in 2025 as Microsoft phases out support for Windows 10 devices and companies look to refresh COVID-era PCs for their employees.

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That also depends a lot on budgets and the overall state of the economy. A new poll of Candefero, the Canalys channel partner community, revealed that 37% expect less than 10% of their customers will refresh/upgrade their PC fleets next year. Almost one-half (47%) said they expected to refresh between 10% and 49% of their customers' PCs.

Channel Futures sat down with Jeff Taylor, worldwide channel strategy leader, and Pascal Bourguet, VP, international markets, COO and global channel chief, to learn more about Lenovo 360's tailored journeys, AI PCs and the pending refresh cycle, and to get answers to questions about channel conflict within the company's services business.

The conversation took place at the Canalys Forum North America in Miami Beach, Florida. We've edited for length and clarity.

CF: Talk about the new tailored journeys in Lenovo 360. What are the biggest advantages for your partner community?

Jeff Taylor: When we built Lenovo 360, we intentionally called it a framework and not a program, because the whole idea was that a framework can flex and be agile. This is a bit of a proof point around that. Lenovo 360 has three pillars: We call them enable, connect and grow. And with each of those, we’ve built an ecosystem. There's a whole bunch of “stuff” that we do to enable, there's a whole bunch of stuff that we do to connect and a bunch of stuff we do to grow. So if you're a VAR, this is how we enable, connect and grow.

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Lenovo's Jeff Taylor

When we started looking more broadly across the landscape, an MSP is very different than a VAR. So how you enable an MSP, and the types of programs you do, the types of training, the platforms that you create for them, is different. So what we've done is we've reached into our ecosystem and flexed the framework so that we can have Lenovo 360 for MSPs. So if you're an MSP, you get a bespoke experience because of the kind of flexibility and agility of the framework. We're doing the same thing with global systems integrators. Then we challenged ourselves and said, "It's not just a route to market. What about technology?" So same thing with AI. How do you enable, connect and grow around AI? Data management is another one where we have a focus. And then we also said, "What about verticals? What about those partners that are focused on specific vertical markets?" So we're also developing Lenovo 360 for education.

The value is that the framework can flex. We're not forcing you into a pre-established, rigid model. We're saying, “Hey, we've created a framework, and if you’re interested in managed services, this is how the framework works for you. If you're interested in education, this is how it works for you, etc. So these pathways, or these journeys, there's an infinite supply of them. What we've announced are the first five.

Lenovo's Pascal Bourguet

Pascal Bourguet: We don't want to pigeonhole partners into a box. Those boxes are blurring. It's very, very difficult to [distinguish] between a real MSP and a real VAR. Those frontiers are blurring. A partner one day could be very interested in flexing to Lenovo 360 for [education] but the next day could be driving an AI opportunity, a business development opportunity and want to flex to Lenovo 360 for AI.

See the slideshow above for the rest of our Q&A.