Vendors, Partners Rally Around AI PCs, Hybrid Cloud

CANALYS FORUM NORTH AMERICA — Some of the top vendors serving the channel got a chance to take the stage Thursday in Miami Beach, Florida, alongside their top partners at Canalys Forum North America to talk about everything from AI to cloud to their successful relationships.

Sarah Miles, founder and CEO of Milestone Tech, a California-based HPE partner, discussed how some of her customers are choosing to keep their data on-premises rather than pushing everything to the cloud, citing security concerns and hidden fees they sometimes encounter.

HPE GreenLake, she said, offers a modern cloud experience that customers can have in their own data centers.

HPE says 62% of applications are deployed in on-premises private cloud or non-cloud environments today due to compliance, security, performance and other factors.

"With GreenLake, we bring the cloud to wherever you want it, edge to cloud," said Phil Soper, North America head of channel sales at HPE. "And our partner community has rallied around that message."

Left to right: Chief analyst Alastair Edwards, Dell's Ray Lipsky and Future Tech Enterprises' Mike Watkinson at Canalys Forum North America 2024, Miami Beach, Oct. 24.

Dell, Lenovo and AI PCs

Artificial intelligence, and specifically AI PCs, continued to be a big part of the conversation on day two of Canalys Forum North America.

Mike Watkinson, CRO of Future Tech Enterprise, a Dell Technologies partner, encouraged partners to give customers everything they need at the outset so they can get up and running without headaches.

“We want to give tools to the end user ready to use," said Watkinson. "If I’m an engineer, I don’t want to receive an expensive GPU tool and then spend the next several days figuring out how to use it."

Left to right: Chief analyst Alastair Edwards, Lenovo's Pascal Bourguet and CDW's Mark Chong at Canalys Forum North America 2024, Miami Beach, Oct. 24.

Lenovo global channel chief and chief operating officer Pascal Bourguet says vendors and partners need to educate customers on AI and encourage the use of AI tools before they can successfully sell AI PCs.

"If we don't drive usage to the end user, whether through ChatGPT or whether it's through Copilot or through gen AI tools within a company, then the AI PC will be a mirage," Bourguet told Channel Futures.

The industry expects a big refresh cycle in the coming year as Microsoft ends support for WIndows 10 and enough time has passed since the big boost in sales that emanated from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Canalys Channel Partner of the Year Awards

Canalys handed out its Channel Partner of the Year awards on stage Thursday.

Presidio took home hardware for Overall Partner of the Year for its "numerous customer solutions driving flexibility, security and performance." Other honorees were SHI as Sustainability Partner of the Year and Sycomp and Innovation Partner of the Year.